Authditor
Author. Editor. I tried coming up with a portmanteau for what I do, but the best I could manage was ‘authditor’ (given that ‘auditor’ was already taken). Somehow this unholy Vulcan-mind-meld of roles has not so far completely done my head in. Then again, maybe I’m not the best judge of these things.
Being both an author and an editor means you sympathise with parties on each side of the brilliant-writing divide. You know how hard it is to crank out a draft, but you also know the groaning horror of facing trite, clichéd, poorly spelled, and even more poorly punctuated slop from overly sensitive and precious wordsmiths. Being an authditor is like being a swinging voter, except you’re not necessarily also a bogan.
So in late October, my collaboration with Sean Sennett on an anthology of Australian music street press will be marching inexorably through the landscape in what I hope will be plague proportions. Like any good anthology, it will be big and fat and absolutely chock-a-block with references to Iggy’s Fun House record. It even has the word ‘boner’ a few times for good measure.
To create the book, Sean and I trawled (really there’s no other word for it) through more than 1,300 issues of Time Off. A conservative average of three interviews per issue still comes up with around 4,000 stories to consider. We had to reduce that to under a hundred. It was a wild ride. Digital files exist only for articles published since around 1997. Everything before that had to be eyeballed. Neck pain, eyestrain and inky fingers were standard fare. It was fun, though. Prominent advertisements for massage parlours jostled with exhortations about how AM Stereo was going to transform Australia’s radio landscape. I took photos. When you’re locked in the world of your subject, strange things happen. I almost wet my pants when I saw a 1984 interview with Johnny Marr. Then I almost threw the computer through the window when I Googled the quotes and realised the story was rehashed from a contemporary article in The Face.
To help us deal with the volume, we identified early on a core list of artists we thought should get a jersey. That list ran to about two-hundred. Each of those artists might have featured anywhere from a single interview to ten or more. We had to decide not just on artist, but the era (was that period interesting for the artist?) and author (did the piece take an interesting angle?).
We were working with previously published pieces, but pieces composed in a very different environment to ours. A few people pulling together pages and pages of articles, information and ads every single week. As an editor, when I came across a rough patch of prose, I mostly sided with the authors. Spelling howlers? Blame the lack of resources or the deadline. Change the text, shrug, and move on to the next sentence. As an editor, it was easy to take a withering approach. As an authditor, the feelings were mixed. Still, the results are exciting.
There was a point to this article when I started. Now I’m just in need of a good editor. Know any?
Read MoreByron Bay Writers Festival
If you’re heading to the Byron Bay Writers Festival and you’re interested in writing (you poor sod), it may behove you to check out the Nuts & Bolts professional development workshop for writers.
BBWF Nuts & Bolts is proudly sponsored by The Australian Writer’s Marketplace, and programmed and chaired by Queensland Writers Centre. Now in its fourth successful year, BBWF Nuts & Bolts will provide a full day of information for beginner/emerging writers seeking to develop the craft and business of writing.
This year it has the distinction of containing not one, but two Groths. They’ll never know what hit them.
Date: Thursday 5 August
Time: 10am – 4pm
Venue: SCU ROOM, Byron Community & Cultural Centre, Byron Bay
I’ll be on the afternoon panel on digital publishing, kicking off at 1:00pm. This session will include four presentations, with a moderated Q&A.
Presenters:
- if:book Australia representative: Digital publishing overview
- Rob Collings, publisher: Digital markets: opportunities and marketing
- Simon Groth: an author’s experience in digital publishing
- Alex Adsett, publishing contracts specialist: New business models: risks and rights
Darren’s session is on after mine, so he gets the last word. Typical.
Read MoreBook Blog
We have set up a specific blog for Off the Record which will kick off this coming Wednesday at 25yearsofstreetpress.com. For your convenience, here’s the first post:
Off the Record has been compiled from articles originally published in Australian street press from 1986 to 2010. It contains interviews with no less than 95 artists: Australian and international, some at the top of their game, others somewhere else entirely. Many of the articles were published only once on the week of issue and have otherwise remained under dust until now.
So who made the final cut? Who of the thousands of artists interviewed over the years were interesting enough to make it back into print. It’s already our most frequently asked question, although usually in the form of:
‘So is [insert favourite band] in it? Huh?’
We could just post a list of the artists, but that would be boring. Instead we’ll reveal each artist individually and with visual aids.
Starting Wednesday 21st July, a video clip will appear on the blog featuring the first artist. Every day after that we will post another video until the book’s release.
Keep your eyes on 25yearsofstreetpress.com for updates all the way to October.
Read MoreUpcoming Book: Off the Record
With Sean Sennett, I have just completed co-editing an anthology of music interviews from Australian street press.
Off the Record: 25 Years of Music Street Press will be published on 25th October 2010 by UQP and features interviews with ninety-five artists from 1986 to 2010—from bands on the cusp of greatness to megastars at the height of their powers—all imbued with street press indie sensibility.
We won’t reveal yet which bands made it into the book. All in good time.
I will post some thoughts on the editing process in the coming months, but for now feel free to get excited in anticipation. After all, this will be huge.
Read MoreThe Books
