Editor-in-Chief:  A Publishing Journey

When you're publishing a novel on your own, perhaps the most important step is to put your ego aside and spring for a professional editor.  You're too close to your own work and your writer friends might be helpful, but you need someone who knows their business.  The surest way to turn off your reader is with a novel full of typos, misspellings and grammar errors.

When my time came, I looked around at various options, both local and online.  I finally settled on Lynn O'Dell of Red Adept Publishing.  At the time I subscribed to Lynn's blog, Red Adept Reviews.  Alas, the review site has closed up its doors, but editing site is up and running.  Lynn's price was reasonable, perhaps even more so when you realize what you get.  She copy edits your manuscript, providing feedback both by phone and e-mail.  After each revision, she reviews the manuscript again until you're satisfied with the draft.  That draft then goes to a couple of different proof readers.  By the time they're done, your manuscript is sparkling clean.  Not only that, but the process picks up other errors along the way. In my novel, Harkness, I had Mussolini's body hanging from a lamppost in Rome.  One of the proofreaders pointed out that it was actually in Milan.  Nice catch.

If your manuscript needs more than copy editing, I think there are two choices -- first, find yourself a solid writer's group, one focused on your genre and also workshops your manuscript. If your manuscript is complete and needs some serious input, you might think about a manuscript consultant.  I wouldn't recommend this unless you're very serious.  I used one of my instructors in the Vermont College MFA program, Ellen Lesser. She isn't cheap, but she is very, very good.  This is one service I wouldn't get from an ad in the back of a writer's magazine.  Check around with your writer friends, see if there's someone they would recommend.  Read the consultant's work.  If they haven't published, move on to someone else.  Published writers are good, MFA instructors are better.  Don't expect them to do your work for you, you're the author, they're helping you round your manuscript into shape.  After working with Ellen, I realized my novel needed a complete make over.  The characters and general plot would remain the same, but the basic structure needed to be remodeled.  I'm still working on that one.

Journey to the Dark Side - Part Deux

Once I was a PC snob, I've converted to the dark side, bought myself a MacBook and now I am a confirmed Mac Nerd.

The Machine

What I like about the Mac:

The Leopard operating system is rock solid.  I've owned my Macbook for over a month and the system has yet to crash.  Boot times for my Dell would take several minutes, for the Mac it runs about 30 seconds and most of the time, I just close it up without turning off the system.  It pops right back up the moment I open the lid.  When I try that it XP, it system would go into a fatal sleep mode.

My MacBook is half the size of my Dell and the batteries seem to discharge much more slowly.  The built-in wireless card connects to my Buffalo wireless network without a hitch.  I connected my laptop to my Canon printer and the system recognized the printer and started printing without a hitch.   I was nervous about getting just 2 gigs of RAM - that's just barely enough memory to run Vista, but apparently that's more than enough memory for the Mac.  So far, it seems to handle everything I've thrown at it.

Programs are seamlessly integrated together.  No need to futz around with settings trying to make programs make nice with each other.

Backup using Time Machine is a dream.  I purchased an external Passport HD, reformatted it for the Mac and hooked it up to the USB port on my Mac.  Time Machine did the rest.  Backups are painless and run in the background.

Oh yeah, the all aluminum case is way cool.

What I don't like:

The glass track pad is a moderate pain in the kiester.  Apple did issue a software patch for it, but it still glitches from time to time.

Software:

Being cheap, I opted for iWork instead of Microsoft Office.  Although iWork Pages saves documents in its own format, it can read Word files.  To save in Word, I have to 'export' the file.  Most Mac software is thought of as being more 'intuitive' that Windows, but I'm not convinced.  There's still a learning curve which system you use.  I generally like Pages.  My biggest gripe is that it didn't come with a manual - so help is on disk or on-line.  Whoever designed it wasn't a writer.  Formatting page numbers, especially starting a novel chapter at any page other than page 1, requires plowing through menus.  It's much easier with Word.

Safari vs. Firefox  I haven't tried Firefox for the Mac, Safari satisfies most of my needs.  It doesn't have the Window's version of  Firefox's capability to block ads or install a wide variety of plug-ins, but then again, Safari doesn't have the memory leaks that plague Firefox either.

iPhoto seems lightweight in comparison to Photoshop Elements, so I opted to purchase PE.  I've installed it, but haven't used it much.  To be effective, I'll need to try to hook the laptop up to a monitor.

My biggest gripe on software is the lack of a decent financial management program.  I'd been using MS Money on my PC, but that isn't available for the Mac.  Reviews for Quicken for Mac are abysmal, so I've been searching for something to manage my money.  I tried a turkey called Cha-Ching.  It's a dog, don't bother.  I recently bought something called Checkbook which is okay, but not as sophisticated as Money.  It'll do for now, but there's a market out there for a programmer willing to work on it.

I love my MacBook.  So much so, that I'm thinking about replacing my Dell desktop with an iMac.  Sigh, how far the mighty PC snob has fallen.