Author: Paul Lagasse

Paul Lagasse provides expert-to-expert communications services to nonprofit, business, and government clients in the metro Baltimore-DC area. Specialties include science and medical writing, technical report editing, and content marketing.

The 2010 iPhone Calendar Wallpapers are Here

2010 Calendar iPhone WallpaperIf Santa brings you a brand new iPhone or iPod touch this Christmas, why not deck its halls with these free 2010 calendar wallpapers, compliments of Active Voice Writing & Editorial Services?

Designed using the same fonts, colors, and icon styles as your iPhone, you’ll forget that these handy calendars didn’t come installed.

You can download the calendar wallpapers here. And while you’re there, check out some of the the other free downloadable wallpapers and productivity templates that I’ve designed for writers, freelancers, and creatives in all fields.

To install the iPhone wallpapers, simply download and drop them in your “Pictures” folder on your computer. The next time you sync your iPhone or iPod touch, iTunes will automatically copy the wallpapers over. Then, launch the Photos app to set the appropriate calendar as your wallpaper. That’s all there is to it! The next time you wake your computer from sleep, the Active Voice 2010 calendar wallpaper will be in place, ready for use.

Active Voice offers iPhone wallpapers as free .png graphics that you can download to your desktop and use in your favorite planner. They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike License.

pitching topics? try news radio

Casting about for topics to pitch an editor? Here’s a source of story ideas you might have overlooked: local news talk radio stations.

News radio stations have to fill airtime 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s a lot of 30- to 45-second stories to tell. In between news headlines on the half hour, traffic and weather “on the eights” (or the fives or the tens), and the commentary, the nooks and crannies are filled with great topics that you can mine for inspiration — seasonal hints, interesting citizens, notable businesses, winning teams, and upcoming events. Just find your own slant, identify some interview prospects, and serve. Just be sure to give credit where it is due, when appropriate; it will show your professionalism and your attention to detail. (“Hey, he really did his research!”)

Pitching to a magazine that serves a regional market that you don’t know much about? Look for nearby news stations that stream their broadcasts live on the web. You can find stream lists in your media player, by visiting stream broadcasters like Live365, or by consulting online station directories such as Streaming Radio Guide. If you want to really fine-tune your search, Radio-Locator lets you search by Zip code, station call letters, and topic.

Like electricity, radio is always there, waiting for you to plug in.

Image: iStockPhoto.com

diplomacy 101 for freelance writers

Freelance writers usually spend a lot of time negotiating with clients and subject matter experts. From contract and payment agreements to progress meetings to conference calls to final product reviews, at almost every step of the process the freelancer is called on to answer questions, address concerns, or placate anxieties.

Instead of thinking of these as interruptions, think of them as opportunities. Each interaction with a client is another chance to sell them on you, not just your work.

If you’re used to working alone and yelling at the computer about how boneheaded your client is (hypothetically, of course; none of my clients ever cause me to do that), then you will probably find this short list of handy, bacon-saving diplomacy tips helpful:

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2010.0 hpda calendars are here

With December fast approaching, now is a good time to start printing out your new hPDA calendar templates for the first half of 2010. You can download them for free on the Active Voice Downloads page, along with the 2009.5 calendar template if you still need one. Just click on “See the Templates” –> “Organization and Lists.”

Active Voice offers a wide range of wallpapers and hPDA templates as free .png and scalable-vector .pdf graphics that you can download to your desktop and use in your favorite planner or mobile device. They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Noncommercial – Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

And while you’re there, why not take a look at some of the other free templates I offer? I have templates for just about all your note-taking needs — plus some you probably hadn’t even thought of. If you don’t see something you need, or have an idea for improving something, feel free to leave me a comment or contact me.

freelancing in tough times

Although the Dow may have peaked 10,000 again, freelancers tend to operate in a “lagging indicator” market — a lot of companies still have yet to really rebound, and once they do they have to develop fresh confidence that their rebound is not about to re-rebound. Then they can build up their work and staff again — and then they’ll be able to think about farming work out to their stable of freelancers again.

One thing that’s been a shock to a lot of writers is the discovery that they can lose even their oldest, most trusted clients just like that — and the hardest part is not taking it personally. Long-term clients become like friends; you know about their kids and their vacations, you send them birthday cards and get invited to their company holiday dinners. But they’re often in the same boat as you. Earlier this year, I wrote an article for one of my oldest clients and the following week I wrote her a letter of recommendation. In the intervening time, she and the rest of her department had been laid off.

It’s been that bad.

But just because things are starting to look up (however sluggishly) it doesn’t mean you can afford to let out a sigh of relief and wait for the phone to start ringing. The beginning of the upswing is a good time to get people thinking about you. Here are some things that might help you generate some much-needed future business.

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A Writer Looks at Copyediting

Katharine O’Moore-Klopf of KOK Edit posted a link to the following article on the EFA discussion list, and I thought it would make a valuable addition to the list of articles on copyediting that I posted recently.

Scott Berkun, “How copyediting looks and feels:”

“Copyeditors have a tough job. They have to sort out what the author was trying to do, and then help them do it. But if a writer botches a sentence or a paragraph (or chapter), it’s hard for copyeditors to figure out the intent. And of course writing is more than grammar and tense, it’s also less tangible factors like honesty, relevance, humor and value, which the copyeditor might sense is lacking but can’t fix on their own.”

(This copyeditor can’t resist pointing out that the last line above should read: “. . . on his or her own.”)

The article is a useful overview of how authors interact with copyeditors for the benefit of the final product. The comments that follow the article are both thoughtful and helpful as well. And I love his definition of copyediting: “where someone gets ‘all up in your sentences.'”

Some more words of wisdom:

“Good copyeditors are underpaid. They have the most intimate involvement in the creative process, even though it’s late in the game. In many cases they make mediocre writers look good. And of course a bad copyeditor can make an interesting or entertaining writer seem boring and dull.”

Writers and managers: do you value your copyeditors?

just how useful are copy editors?

Three articles approach the question from unique yet complementary angles:

John McIntyre, “Evaluating Copy Editors,” from You Don’t Say:

“If you happen to oversee copy editors, one of our nation’s fast-dwindling resources, you might be interested in some suggestions on how to evaluate their performance. If you are a civilian, unclear what copy editors do, apart from filing for unemployment insurance, this post will suggest to you what is being sacrificed at the publications you read. “

John White, “3 Ways to Make Your Subject Matter Experts Think,” from How to Hire a Copy Editor:

“Why would you run the risk of antagonizing a customer or engineer who is doing you a favor by allowing you to pick his brain for a white paper or case study?

This writer is smart enough not to try to impress the interviewee with her knowledge of the business or technology. She doesn’t need to know more in those fields to make the interviewee think.

It’s all in the three questions she poses them to explain it.”

Ruth Samuelson, “A Missing Sense of ‘Place’ on Acker,” from the Washington (DC) CityPaper:

“Behind every article, there a few—sometimes many—fact-checking dramas you’ll never catch wind of in the final draft.

You think your story’s done. Then, you spend two hours selecting one word. Seriously.

Case in point: . . . “

field report: documents to go for iphone (updated for 1.1)

IPhone and iPod Touch apps for creating and editing business documents have surged to the top ranks of the App Store’s popularity charts. This is good news for freelance writers who work in the field and who like to travel light.

Over the course of the next few entries I’ll be reporting on my field tests of some of my favorite apps. These won’t be full-blown reviews, but rather brief and complementary summaries of the highlights (and lowlights) of each app that revealed themselves while I put them through their paces.

First up is the long-anticipated DataViz Documents to Go for the iPhone app.

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word diagnostics

I’m always looking for useful analogies to convey how good editing can improve advertising copy, web features, white papers, and other written communications. This morning I was reading an article about medicine and it hit me that what editors do when revising a piece of written work is analogous to what doctors do when diagnosing a patient’s symptoms.

Like a living organism, written copy is a complex system of interactive elements that can be rendered “unhealthy” by the presence of errors in spelling, grammar, or logic. A good editor, like a good doctor, knows how to read the symptoms — for example, “this doesn’t sound right, but I don’t know why” — and can suggest corrections that will restore the piece to optimum health. 

Let’s take a look at how you can apply the four cornerstones of diagnostic medicine to make your writing all better.

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