On May 1 we officially moved into our new digs on 8th Avenue. I had no idea how important space can be – for the last couple of months, Folio had more-or-less been functioning out of Paige’s less-than-palatial digs: which worked well in the short-term, but less well in the long-term. There wasn’t really space (ah, New York real estate!) for everyone at Folio to gather and talk and plot and scheme; and everything felt really makeshift. And try, I beg of you, to spend a couple of months dealing with real estate brokers and landlords. They were all very nice, but seemed drink glue or cement every morning for breakfast, making everything take far longer, and far more glacially, than we could have ever imagined: so a space that we thought we’d get into in March, at the latest, took til May. Ah, the joy of having your own business, I guess.
So anyway that fabulous May Day the space was finally ours. It’s not palatial by any means – reception area, four offices, central conference room – but it looks terrific and it’s ours. Paige, a former decorator, chose everything in burgundy and cream, with very cool art-deco-ish light fixtures. The first time I opened the door into the office I thought “wow, no way they’ll let me in here” – and then I remembered that this was my office, and “they” was “me.” It was an odd moment, but don’t tell anyone – they still think I belong, for some unknown reason. There’s still quite a bit of decorating to do, yet – we haven’t put up the shelves for our books, or hung pictures – but the desks are there, and chairs, and a gorgeous cherry conference table (thank you, Scott); and, most important, our phones and printers. Hopefully next month we’ll have everything done; then we’ll have an office-warming party – and you’re invited, of course.
Appearance and process, as you can gather, are much on my mind these days; which segues me, only a little clumsily, into the appearance – and formatting – of a manuscript. When it comes to the appearance of a manuscript, everybody’s an expert. You should bind it, you should leave it loose, you should wrap it in plastic, you should never wrap it in plastic, you should use courier as your font, you should never use courier, you should underline, you should use italics, you should never underline or use italics – and that’s only for starters. Makes my head want to explode, thinking about it.
The key thing to remember is that you want your manuscript to be – oh, surprise, surprise – readable. That’s absolutely key. Whether or not you’ll admit it, you want people to read the pages you sent. So definitely avoid all those cool and cutesy fonts that the Microsoft gurus included with your wordprocessing program – stick to one of the basics: Times Roman, Arial, or Courier (or a minor variation of one of them – I’m always partial to Palatino). Between you and me, I’d avoid Courier, too. Years ago, back in the dawn of the world, somebody (I think it was actually my gods, Strunk & White) decreed that all manuscripts should be printed in Courier since it was most like a typewriter font. Of course nowadays there are specially constructed places of torture (outside the U.S. territories, of course) for people who type (or, even more horrifically, actually write out, longhand) their manuscript – but you wouldn’t want anybody to even think that you’d type the sucker, would you? So I ask you: what’s the point of Courier? It’s fat, the letters take up more room on each line; which means of course that you can have less words on the page, which means that you’re using up more paper, killing more trees, and making some poor unsuspecting agent or editor have to haul around a couple of extra pounds of paper. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Courier should simply be banned as an option. I’m joking, of course – I’m sure there are people out there, people who are perfectly nice in many other ways, who actually like Courier; who hunger for Courier; who scorn Times Roman or Arial as being too banal, too zesty, or too sacred to be used on something as tawdry as a manuscript page – but I, for one, will steer clear of Courier if I’m given a chance. I’m not kidding: if I have two manuscript sitting in front of me, and one’s in Times Roman and the other’s in Courier, I don’t even have to think about which one I’ll pick up. The Courier will always sift to the bottom of the “to be read” pile.
Another thing to discuss, since we’re on the subject: whitespace. Ya know how when you’re typing you put an extra space between paragraphs? My advice is: don’t. Having a lot of whitespace between paragraphs can slow down your reader’s reading. “No way,” you yell, “if there are less words on the page, then my reader will have to turn the page more quickly! That’ll make my book more of a page-turner, not less!” I humbly disagree. I think that extra white space indicates a temporal or spatial gap – a break in the narrative that you’re indicating on the page as well as through indicators in the text itself. If that extra space occurs between each paragraph, my brain, at least, makes the teensiest little pause – and that slows the reading down.
On, now, to margins. Stick with 1” or 1.5” margins, no secrets there. I’m always flabbergasted when people send manuscripts with 2” margins – there’s barely any room for the text, what with all that luxurious white margin everywhere. (See above, where we discuss the fatness of your manuscript: if you have hugely wide margins, your manuscript will, of necessity, be fatter; making it a more daunting prospect for that innocent young agent or editor.)
Finally, and here’s a biggie: headers and footers. (If you don’t know what a header or footer is, I cannot help you.) It’s a given that you should put the page number on each page of the manuscript, but do yourself a favor and put your name and the manuscript title on every page, as well, right near the page number. Manuscripts have the extraordinary ability to merge with one another – especially when they’re stacked next to the bed and the dog jumps on them and spreads them all over the floor and you’re late for work and you gather them all up together and then you spend hours on the train trying to sort them all out. I’m constantly amazed at how sneaky and demanding those single sheets from a manuscript can be – constantly blowing away, or sliding off the pile, or sticking to the envelope they came in, or to somebody else’s envelope that happened to wander near them. If you put your name and the book’s title on each page, along with the page number, everyone’s life is just so much better.
As for binding your manuscript, or not binding it or plasticwrap or no plasticwrap: my honest feeling is – who cares. I sure don’t.
Well, that’s it for me, this week. On to BEA (Book Expo of America – one of the big book conventions of the year) and then, oh joy, to hanging those bookshelves.
So anyway that fabulous May Day the space was finally ours. It’s not palatial by any means – reception area, four offices, central conference room – but it looks terrific and it’s ours. Paige, a former decorator, chose everything in burgundy and cream, with very cool art-deco-ish light fixtures. The first time I opened the door into the office I thought “wow, no way they’ll let me in here” – and then I remembered that this was my office, and “they” was “me.” It was an odd moment, but don’t tell anyone – they still think I belong, for some unknown reason. There’s still quite a bit of decorating to do, yet – we haven’t put up the shelves for our books, or hung pictures – but the desks are there, and chairs, and a gorgeous cherry conference table (thank you, Scott); and, most important, our phones and printers. Hopefully next month we’ll have everything done; then we’ll have an office-warming party – and you’re invited, of course.
Appearance and process, as you can gather, are much on my mind these days; which segues me, only a little clumsily, into the appearance – and formatting – of a manuscript. When it comes to the appearance of a manuscript, everybody’s an expert. You should bind it, you should leave it loose, you should wrap it in plastic, you should never wrap it in plastic, you should use courier as your font, you should never use courier, you should underline, you should use italics, you should never underline or use italics – and that’s only for starters. Makes my head want to explode, thinking about it.
The key thing to remember is that you want your manuscript to be – oh, surprise, surprise – readable. That’s absolutely key. Whether or not you’ll admit it, you want people to read the pages you sent. So definitely avoid all those cool and cutesy fonts that the Microsoft gurus included with your wordprocessing program – stick to one of the basics: Times Roman, Arial, or Courier (or a minor variation of one of them – I’m always partial to Palatino). Between you and me, I’d avoid Courier, too. Years ago, back in the dawn of the world, somebody (I think it was actually my gods, Strunk & White) decreed that all manuscripts should be printed in Courier since it was most like a typewriter font. Of course nowadays there are specially constructed places of torture (outside the U.S. territories, of course) for people who type (or, even more horrifically, actually write out, longhand) their manuscript – but you wouldn’t want anybody to even think that you’d type the sucker, would you? So I ask you: what’s the point of Courier? It’s fat, the letters take up more room on each line; which means of course that you can have less words on the page, which means that you’re using up more paper, killing more trees, and making some poor unsuspecting agent or editor have to haul around a couple of extra pounds of paper. The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Courier should simply be banned as an option. I’m joking, of course – I’m sure there are people out there, people who are perfectly nice in many other ways, who actually like Courier; who hunger for Courier; who scorn Times Roman or Arial as being too banal, too zesty, or too sacred to be used on something as tawdry as a manuscript page – but I, for one, will steer clear of Courier if I’m given a chance. I’m not kidding: if I have two manuscript sitting in front of me, and one’s in Times Roman and the other’s in Courier, I don’t even have to think about which one I’ll pick up. The Courier will always sift to the bottom of the “to be read” pile.
Another thing to discuss, since we’re on the subject: whitespace. Ya know how when you’re typing you put an extra space between paragraphs? My advice is: don’t. Having a lot of whitespace between paragraphs can slow down your reader’s reading. “No way,” you yell, “if there are less words on the page, then my reader will have to turn the page more quickly! That’ll make my book more of a page-turner, not less!” I humbly disagree. I think that extra white space indicates a temporal or spatial gap – a break in the narrative that you’re indicating on the page as well as through indicators in the text itself. If that extra space occurs between each paragraph, my brain, at least, makes the teensiest little pause – and that slows the reading down.
On, now, to margins. Stick with 1” or 1.5” margins, no secrets there. I’m always flabbergasted when people send manuscripts with 2” margins – there’s barely any room for the text, what with all that luxurious white margin everywhere. (See above, where we discuss the fatness of your manuscript: if you have hugely wide margins, your manuscript will, of necessity, be fatter; making it a more daunting prospect for that innocent young agent or editor.)
Finally, and here’s a biggie: headers and footers. (If you don’t know what a header or footer is, I cannot help you.) It’s a given that you should put the page number on each page of the manuscript, but do yourself a favor and put your name and the manuscript title on every page, as well, right near the page number. Manuscripts have the extraordinary ability to merge with one another – especially when they’re stacked next to the bed and the dog jumps on them and spreads them all over the floor and you’re late for work and you gather them all up together and then you spend hours on the train trying to sort them all out. I’m constantly amazed at how sneaky and demanding those single sheets from a manuscript can be – constantly blowing away, or sliding off the pile, or sticking to the envelope they came in, or to somebody else’s envelope that happened to wander near them. If you put your name and the book’s title on each page, along with the page number, everyone’s life is just so much better.
As for binding your manuscript, or not binding it or plasticwrap or no plasticwrap: my honest feeling is – who cares. I sure don’t.
Well, that’s it for me, this week. On to BEA (Book Expo of America – one of the big book conventions of the year) and then, oh joy, to hanging those bookshelves.
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