Writers cannot, repeat cannot do business without a standard Non-Disclosure slash Non-Circumvention Agreement in place between themselves and anyone else involved in the project. I promised a post about this issue some time ago, and when the topic came up in casual conversation today, I was reminded to write about it here.

An NDA, as it’s commonly referred to, is basically a little paper that you sign with a potential client / boss / partner / collaborator before you tell them a single thing about your fab million-dollar idea. The paper basically says that I won’t tell your secrets and you won’t tell mine. A good NDA should bind both parties to exactly the same obligations, the same way. I’m so dead-set on this that I’m happy for anyone who reads this to download a copy of my current NDA here for free.

Now here’s the part where I explain that I’m not a lawyer, and that you shouldn’t take legal advice from me, like, ever. I’m just a person who’s been burned about a dozen times, and has seen others hit the same way. Live and learn – from my experience. When reading this PDF you’ll notice that it’s stamped in blood-red with the word “EXAMPLE” all over the place, which is there to remind you about this paragraph that states clearly that a blog entry is NOT, I repeat, NOT a replacement for quality legal advice. The reason I’m offering this document is so that you can read it through and get a good idea of what I’m talking about.

Pay special attention to the words “To use such information, trade secrets and strategies only for the purpose of evaluating proposals and projects or developing projects pursuant to a written agreement authorizing the application;” which means that you will have to write some sort of contract with your client. This document is not a contract for work – but it should always accompany one. This is what you sign before you discuss their/your, idea or even get remotely close to a contract. I update it from time to time, if I think of anything that needs to be added. But as you read it here, this has been in use for about a year without any edits, so I think it’s pretty complete.

I sign this exact document with virtually everyone my biz comes in contact with, including my authors (of course), my print rep, my marketing guru, my publicist, my channel sales rep, the bookkeeper that only comes on Fridays, the cameraman on the video projects, my regular UPS guy, and the cleaning lady who vacs the office. I’m not kidding. It costs nothing, takes 5 minutes, and shows professionalism. I simply can’t talk to you (or even in front of you – despite how lovely my cleaning lady is) unless we have both signed this document.

This is one of those learn-the-hard-way moments that I really hope you’ll take my advice on.

Tony Haynes, a well-known poet and songwriter, is the author of an upcoming book titled “GreetingsBook“, which is a book of greeting cards, ready for you to insert your personal poetry next to that of Haynes. Haynes is known as the “48-Second Poet”, a reference to his ability to conjure up poetry out of thin air.

According to the site, a GreetingsBook has “…8 to 24 pages. Each page is perforated & scored. Each page comes complete with text & artwork. There is a pouch located in the back of every GreetingsBook. Inside of it, there’s an envelope available for each card in the collection. This makes it easy and convenient to send your sentiments.” Glad to see he’s patenting the idea. A book of cards is a cool idea that seems fresh compared to old-fashioned eMail.

Like a teddy bear with a button instead of one eye, Haynes is adorable and friendly, and he wants to show you how modern poetry can have a meaningful impact on your life. As the composer of poetry about my leaky condo, I can attest to the therapeutic value of poetry, particularly when it comes to stress reduction.

I’ll be watching Haynes’ site for more info.

Rick is the author of the upcoming book The Freshman Fly Fisher, with which I was very pleased to edit and assist him. I managed to corner Rick today to ask him about the marketing development and other aspects of his book project. He was extremely forthcoming, and this 25-minute video podcast is our complete interview. If you’re a writer who’s been wondering what the process is like to actually get your book out into the market, this is a great interview to encourage you. (Providing you ignore the cell phone that rang in the background about 1/3 of the way into our chat. Oh well – live and learn…) Rick also talks about the book and fishing and general, which is a great example of how he is able to show real passion for his subject: the key to his sales strategy.

Rick is pre-selling copies of Freshman at flyfishfanatic.ca. If you order before February 1st, he’ll pay the shipping.

I’ve been meaning to take the content I created some time ago for a course I created called “Blogging for Authors”, and translate it to this site as a permanent reference for former students. Now I don’t need to – check out this blog post from Writer’s Digest Editor Maria Schneider that gives 20 tips for Authors who Blog.

While there are some elaborations and slight adjustments I would make to her comments (see below), Schneider gets the big three bang on the money: commitment, regularity, and avoiding being overly serious are important. (Hmm, almost sounds like great marital advice, except for the regularity. Actually, I take that back: being regular has definitely made my husband easier to live with.)

Areas where I differ with Schneider include her recommendations on frequency, where she states that weekly is enough. I disagree: if your objective is to build a large audience, daily is a necessity. But perhaps, like my own blog, that’s not the primary objective.

The other area where I disagree is in terms of posting length. I’ve made a deliberate and strategic decision to make my own blog about longer posts that are more in-depth, like articles, rather than little posts. The smaller list of subscribers that I have now accumulated is a group of serious readers who frequently give excellent feedback in the form of comments. This has acted like a filter to improve the quality of my list, which has garnered me several lovely clients that already know my style by the time we meet face-to-face.

Overall, this is a great posting and I plan to return regularly to read Schneider’s posts.

Give the people what they want – not what you want to give them. (Does this sound like a great new catch phrase? Remember, you heard it here first.) What I mean by this is that it pays to ask people what they want to watch, read, or listen to. Don’t sell them your fantasy: sell them theirs.

Bob Parsons, the CEO of GoDaddy.com, is, well, a misogynist. As the owner of a t-shirt that advertises my editing services with the words, “Let’s get textual” spread across my chest, I’m hardly in a position to be critical of anyone who uses marketing with sexual overtones. However, there is a way to use this marketing for greatest benefit, and avoid the potential backfire.

I’m not bothered by T&A in advertising. Many of my female friends are surprised by this, but I know what many of these so-called bimbos are making in various industries, so there’s no abuse going on – they’re clever businesswomen. I say if sex sells, then by all means, use it.

However, sex only sells when there’s an obvious relationship to the product. Beautiful women posing on beautiful cars. Pouty lips leaving lipstick marks on expensive shirt collars. Well-dressed blondes hitting on guys who use dye to cover their grey. But babes in swimsuits and tight leather selling… domain names? Huh? I don’t see what one has to do with the other.

I’ve personally witnessed the power of using sex to sell in the computer biz. We’re talking about an industry where gawky software geeks (like my husband) line up at trade shows to get their nametags autographed by Booth Babes dressed as Daisy Duke, Lara Croft, and other computer game characters, or “melon girls”, as we used to call them. Sex is ALL OVER the computer industry.

Bob seems to think he’s selling to this group – the nerds. In fact, from what I’ve witnessed, GoDaddy has not cornered the technical market. Their claim of 25%-32% market share must therefore be based on private individuals, small business owners, middle-managers, and other “regular” customers. I’d bet that many of that group are women, and that all (or at least, most) of that market sector do not fantasize about the girls in GoDaddy’s SuperBowl ads. SuperBowl ads or not, he’s just not lending enough credibility to the product to justify ignoring a big chunk of market share with these crazy ads.

GoDaddy thinks they are being clever by being “unconventional“. Why then, are they bothering to ask their customers for their opinion on their ads? It’s clear that some people find them offensive, because that’s one of the pre-filled in answers on the drop-down list. (I just found them to be of poor production quality, with casting and concept really lacking in originality. It’s just same-old, same-old.)

If he really wants to be clever, why not script an ad where the woman-behind-the-scenes, the one doing all the real work for the Big Boss Lady, uses GoDaddy.com to register all of her domain names in only minutes? Then make her male coworker, the nerd in the next cubicle, fall madly in love with her for her sheer genius, take her into his arms by the coffee machine, and kiss her passionately? The end of the commercial could be the two of them going off into the sunset, where they decide to open a small business together, which becomes wildly successful and goes IPO in only 18 months. (Talk about fulfilling everyone’s fantasy.)

About that t-shirt of mine, I don’t wear it in front of clients, or even potential clients. It’s more of a joke with friends – my nerdy-geek thing played into a kind of nerdy-chic thing. Maybe I should take a tip from Bob Parsons, who has a pretty great gig going on. He is getting his customers / stockholders to pay to fulfill his fantasies, not theirs. What a brilliant idea! How can I get a customer to pay me to come to my house and wax my floors?

I am deeply moved by this talk by fiction author Isabel Allende*. I am ashamed that I have never read her work, and plan to change that quickly. Allende’s talk is about PASSION, and particularly about passionate women, some of them in the most unlikely circumstances you could imagine. (As I discovered by looking up more of her work on her attractive and highly functional website, it seems that embarrassingly independent women are her specialty.)

Allende is from Chile, a country that I visited as a young adult in 1989. Even as young and unworldly as I was at the time, I was still awake enough to recognize many signs that indicated Chile was not up to speed on certain social responsibilities that were considered normal in my native Canada. Buses spewed massive amounts of unregulated air pollution from towering pipes, overmining and other primary industry had left whole areas of the countryside devastated, and incredible poverty sat right alongside humiliating wealth. The status of women was not discussed as much as the status of their husband’s bank accounts. It’s amazing that a woman like Allende survived in this society.

Allende points out the relentlessness of certain problems the world over regarding women, and how they are not being solved. We hear the same themes over and over again: disease, rape, lack of control over their bodies, lives and economic situation, etc. People in any time and place all want, need and deserve the same things: respect and freedom. And it’s a surprisingly small percentage of us on this planet that are actually getting it. That’s not the worst part: it’s only those of us that get respect that even seem to know we deserve it.

The worst stories we heard 20 years ago are still happening because people like you and I have failed to act. Things are still as bad – perhaps worse? – than they have ever been for most women in developing countries. The world ignores things like the rape of 14-year old girls in Cambodia, by men who believe that sex with a young enough virgin will cure them of AIDS. We ignore things like a pregnant widowed mother of 7 in a Congo refugee camp, struggling to prevent her oldest daughter from being brutalized by standing between her and the loaded gun of one of the guards. How can this happen? And what the hell is wrong with us that we let it?

I’ll be quick to tell you that the Congo mother of 9 (she was pregnant with tiny twin boys!) was put on an American rescue plane, and survived this nightmare to flourish in Phoenix, Arizona. I know that if I were reading this, I’d want to know that there were some happy endings. Otherwise, it’s hardly worth trying to solve the problems.

So, how can we make more happy endings in the global problem surrounding women? If half of our local population was being treated this way, how would we react? How could we force the fastest and most effective change for the best cost-effectiveness? What can we learn from thinking about how to solve this problem if it were local, and apply that lesson in places like the Congo?

Enter Patrick Awuah, another speaker on Ted.com. Awuah has founded Ashesi Liberal Arts college in Ghana, aimed at creating better leaders. Awuah describes his experience of coming to the USA as a young man, and for the first time, being given the opportunity to think critically and be analytical. He points out that the “… future state of the world … depends on what’s happening to Africa.” The three main problems of corruption, weak institutions, and the poorly-trained leaders that run them come up over and over again in Ghana, as witnessed by Awuah when he returned home to Ghana with his own family, after working for 10 years at Microsoft in Seattle. Awuah recognized that the only way to solve the problems with leadership in Ghana was to eliminate the problem at the source, and so he put his time, money, and energy into the educational system.

What if we enabled him to grow that school and invite more students from all over Ghana? An entire new wave of ethical, entrepreneurial leaders would cut a swatch of massive change in only one generation. 51% of that generation is women who will not be forced to live the way their mothers did. The change might start with the woman who was voted head of Ashesi’s student government – the first woman ever voted head of any student government in Ghana, ever.

Engaging smart kids is no new strategy – it’s a very old one. It has a long history of success, despite its supposed simpleness.

*In case you are not yet aware of TED.com, where this video stems from, it’s a wonderful organization devoted to the exchange of powerful ideas. I always love a good speaker, so this website is a joy for someone like myself. Here you’ll find many world-class speakers on video, and all delivered free for anyone to view.

I’m a huge fan of Adrian Berry, (additional link) who is the author of The Next 500 Years, among a wide variety of other titles. This was the first book of his that I read, and it opened my eyes to a whole new universe, literally and figuratively.

It was in this book that Berry very neatly quoted Arthur C. Clarke, (and then elaborated greatly on the theme) that the last people who are qualified to make predictions about technology and our future are the Scientists. This is because “Experts” really specialize in telling us what our limits are.

For example…
1) Wireless communication cannot take place across the Atlantic. (Disproved 12 December 1901.)
2) It is not possible to split the atom. (Accomplished 17 December 1938 – and predicted even earlier, by a woman no less!)
3) A mile cannot possibly be run by a human in 4 minutes. (Blown away May 6, 1954.)
4) There is no way to cure AIDS. (Wait and see, but I’m betting on the positive.)
It almost seems as if each time a prediction involving limits is made, it challenges someone who doesn’t know any better to prove the prediction false.

Enter the only person who is not only qualified to make predictions about the future, but defines our lives by doing so: the Science Fiction Writer. Berry cites a number of examples of “fantastic” suggestions made by Science Fiction Writers that have miraculously come true, including things like microwaves, televisions, computers, and space travel.

There is one chapter in this book that is of particular interest to anyone who has read a recent article from the Journal Nature, or heard it reported on television as I did. The article in Nature points out that global warming seems to be linked to a variety of natural, cyclical trends, and is not entirely the fault of ignorant and selfish gas-powered humans. So far, this research only refers to results calculated on a seasonal basis, but it would be interesting to track things like arctic temperature changes over a 100-year period in relation to the natural phenomenon quoted. (Which of course, we are now building the historical data to accomplish.) Isn’t it interesting how Berry suggests the same thing in this book published in 1995?

On page 59, Berry points out that without at least some naturally-occurring greenhouse effect, this planet would be totally inhospitable. And that any man-made effect is already being massively overwhelmed by an already observed longer-term totally natural planetary cycle. We’re clearly not producing most of the gases that are causing any problem (read: opportunity). Our real problem is that we’re not rolling with the punches.

In fact, Berry quotes a number of sources that seem to be ignored by the media, including: Robert Balling, author of Heated Debate; Knud Lassen and Eigil Friis-Christensen, author of the report Variability of the Solar Cycle During the Last Five Centuries and the Apparent Association with Terrestrial Climate; and Matthew Ridley, author of Down to Earth. (See Footnote.)

The issue of climate change is not one that can be solved in a blog entry, or even many, many blog entries. It’s clear that change is happening, for warmer or for cooler. (Check out Berry’s interesting essays on the Mini Ice Age, with the concept discussed here on Wikipedia by a variety of other authors.) My point here is that setting limits often challenges us to do better. Better energy sources, better learning opportunities about climate change, and (of course) better writing about the subject.

Footnote: Matthew Ridley is harshly critical of things like organic farming, which I’m an active supporter of, and is involved in things like genetically-engineered food crops, which I’m not. I only quote his work here related to the issue of climate change as referenced by Berry.

When passing through the Vancouver Airport recently, I was surprised to see a friend that I know through multimedia circles working there as a security guard. While Rob checked my bags for fertilizer bombs, his partner in crime (fighting) asked me what I did for a living.

“I’m an editor.” I replied.

“Oh.” (I pretended not to notice the flat, bored tone in his voice.) Then he piped up, “What do you edit? Newspapers?”

“No, actually I’m a book editor. Mostly business and lifestyle topics.”

I was moving over to get my laptop back from the x-ray conveyor, when he eagerly stepped up at my elbow and panted, “Wow! Really? How do you get into that racket?” Suddenly, I felt like a rockstar.

Good question. I sometimes ponder this myself, because when I started out, I had no idea that I’d ever end up working in the publishing field. I’ve had a very roundabout journey to this career, from dreaming about being a writer as a child, to an application to a Cordon Bleu school. My original stint in college was all about fine arts, but I left when I became convinced that a life as an artist was a quick path to starvation.

I did make an actual living working in technology for over 10 years, but when I realized that the next generation of kids were coming along, I started to feel my age and became bored. I needed serious change.

Around Y2K, knowing that I needed to get back to my literary roots, I was able to spin my experience in technology into a writing career, mostly focused on technical writing and writing for the web /eLearning. This turned out to be immensely rewarding. I went back to University, and attended the SFU Writing and Publishing Program. There I took my first editing class, and when I found myself debating the merits of apostrophe placement and charting sentences, I knew I was hooked.

According to the EAC, the Editor’s Association of Canada, most editors don’t start out to be Editors, and many of them fall into it by accident. In fact, the EAC’s certification (or rather, recognition) of professional editors is by a test that has no preparatory guide or course. It’s constructed so that only an editor who has a history in the business can pass it. The paradox of doing the job for a number of years before one can call themselves certified is interesting, yes. The value of experience is something less and less respected in a world of 6-month specialized training programs.

Although it’s true that what really makes an editor’s heart beat faster is a love of language, Editors perform a wide variety of tasks that all have their roots in quality communication strategies. Photo editors, fact-checkers, project managers, and all the other aspects of this job require a wide variety of creative and technical skills. These cover art and design all the way to production and logistics management, and in my case, a strong element of salesmanship. Editors are like vaudeville performers: part dancer, part singer, part comedian.

All of this means that ongoing education is a very important element in my job preparation. Like a mechanic working in the pits of the racetrack, I am always reading manuals, upgrading my technical knowledge, and ogling new tools. (Remember, I’m the one who collects vintage dictionaries. For fun.) I enjoy aspiring to emulate those grease monkeys, working on the sidelines to do a dirty job with as much style as possible, and make my authors (drivers) look as good as I possibly can.