What I don’t hate is authors as a class. I love authors who turn in manuscripts that are reasonably clean; authors who can make their deadlines or at least warn you if they’re going to blow one; authors who view the publisher’s staff as professionals who are trying to make the book as great as possible.

(Authors who send food-treats at Christmas are extra loveable.)

At my end, the quality of the writing or the story or the subject is irrelevant (except insofar as it might direct us to choose one freelance copyeditor over another). My department’s job is to take whatever we are given and make it the very best it can be. We start out with our enthusiasm on “high” by default. Every book is a new challenge, a new subject, a new design, a new opportunity to stretch skills.

The only thing that can kill that enthusiasm is the author being an entitled jerk and not respecting that everyone is working their tails off for him or her.

During my career, I never saw a time when deadlines were not critically important. There’s a reason they are called “dead”lines. If someone signs a contract to deliver a product by a certain date, then fails to deliver that product, the other party to the contract has a justifiable right to bitch about it. At minimum.

Non-fiction is different than fiction writing. When I’m trying to put together a fiction story, sometimes I just stall out for a while. But there is never any excuse for stopping when you are dealing with non-fiction. If you are writing about existing facts, it means that oyu are either descibing something or expressing an opinion about something. Or both. In either case, it’s not the kind fo thinking that requires a person to go off on some mountaintop and meditate.

Speaking of which, nobody said a writer has to be a hermit either. What color is the sky in this guy’s world?

And advances? Say what? What are these “advances” you speak of?