More on restrictive clauses and commas

Just copying and pasting this from that old style guide I wrote. It might be useful to see some more examples, so here they are--

A nonessential (or nonrestrictive) subordinate clause is one which is not necessary to the meaning of the sentence but merely adds an additional idea. These clauses take commas.

If the essential meaning of the sentence changes, then the clause does not take commas. (Essential phrases and clauses do not take commas.)

Test by removing the clause to see if the meaning of the sentence changes.

Example: Jane Smith is the only cheerleader who didn’t get pregnant her senior year.

If you remove the clause, you get:

Jane Smith is the only cheerleader.

The meaning of the sentence is not the same. Therefore, the clause is essential and does not take commas.

Compare to: Jane Smith, who was the only cheerleader not to get pregnant her senior year, accepted a scholarship at Harvard.

If you remove the clause, you get:

Jane Smith accepted a scholarship at Harvard.

The meaning is the same. The extra clause merely adds new information. The clause is therefore nonessential and requires commas.

The same test and rules applies to essential and nonessential participial phrases.

Another example:

NONESSENTIAL: My sister, who works for the bank, drives a company car. (I have only one sister, and she happens to work for the bank.)

ESSENTIAL: My sister who works for the bank drives a company car. (I have more than one sister, and I am specifically referring to the one who works for the bank.)

Theresa

Restrictive clauses and commas

We were asked about this. It's really hard to explain and I never do it well-- ask my students. Basically, it's about whether a noun is "restricted" by the modifying clause that follows.

To start, a modifier is a word or phrase or clause which tells us more about a noun or verb. (The RED dress... he said VICIOUSLY). Those that modify a noun are called "adjectival".

A clause is a sentence element that includes a noun or pronoun and its verb. The most common adjectival clause (modifying a noun) is the relative clause, which usually, not always, starts with a "wh" pronoun, particularly who and which.

So:
The filmmaker Otto Filbenstein, who died in 1999, directed the remake of the French silent film C'est La Vie.
 The writers who went to Hollywood after the war often achieved financial success beyond their wildest dreams.

See the difference there? The first has commas around the modifying clause, and the second doesn't.

The first is "non-restrictive" because it is just additional information about the noun. It doesn't "restrict" the noun to a smaller group. You could take that "who" clause out and you'd still have the main point-- that Otto remade that French film.

The second is "restrictive." That is, this refers only to those writers who went to Hollywood after the war. The noun isn't really just "writers," but "writers who went to Hollywood after the war". It "restricts" the noun to this smaller group. You can't take out the "who" clause in this one, because it's necessary to say who achieved financial success. (The writers often achieved financial success.... It's a legitimate sentence, but it isn't what you mean-- all writers don't often achieve this success--  you're talking about only the ones who went to Hollywood before the war.)

(Everyone should learn to diagram sentences, because it's much clearer in a diagram that "The writers who went to Hollywood after the war" is the noun phrase.)

Point is, Non-Restrictive= comma before and after, because it's 'unnecessary information," useful, perhaps, interesting perhaps, but inessential. You can pull it out and the sentence still means what you want it to mean.

Restrictive= no commas, because the clause actually is part of the noun.
I'll give some examples, but you all supply some too, and that'll help!

My brother Phil, who is two years older, ran for Senate and won.  (NON, because his age is just additional information.)

Governors elected in the past two years often faced serious budgetary issues their first year in office. (RESTRICTIVE, because this refers only to those governors elected in the past two years. -- There's no "who" there, though it could be there--- Governors who were elected...)

N: Part-time students, who often have outside jobs, need to learn time management skills.
R: Students who haven't attended class the first week will be automatically dropped.
 
N.: The snow, which will be so grimy in a few days, is lovely tonight.
R: Coaches who choose to go for it rather than punt show trust in their offense.

N: A first-class upgrade, which allows the passenger more legroom, takes 60,000 points.
R: Bronco fans who move out of Denver can keep in touch through this Facebook page.

How about you all supplying some examples?
Alicia

The Narrow Character Focus

The dh mentioned the current trend towards revenge films, you know, Liam Neeson (hmm) as action star, manfully pursuing vengeance for his daughter's abduction, and Harrison Ford going after those who killed his wife, and Uma Thurman killing everyone something about her wedding (sorry, I could never actually watch that pair of films, not really needing to know how many different ways there are to kill other people).

Anyway, he said that something that made films of this genre seem thin is that the perspective is often so narrow, that we as viewers(readers) are meant to identify entirely with the protagonist and never question his goal or his motivation or take a wider view of the situation.

It's hard for a writer, I know, because we have to identify with the protagonist, and we certainly want the reader to do that too. But the reader is NOT the protagonist. The reader has and should have a slightly wider view, or rather, we ought to provide that wider view. It might be just the question of whether, say, the hero has perhaps gone too far in his vengeful actions, or a hint that perhaps the other guy might have another story, or just a sense that this might be disproportionate.

The protagonist doesn't actually have to consider this or express ambivalence for the reader to feel that. Another character, for example, can provide the other dimension (and it is dimensionality this adds-- depth is created by adding a different perspective). Spielberg's film Lincoln does both of these. Lincoln himself admits that his action in emancipating the slaves during the war might have been extra-constitutional, thus he is showing the other side of the question. But then, in regard to his own family, it takes his wife and son to add dimension to his refusal to let his son serve in the army. His wife (paradoxically) in providing his justification (keeping their child safe) forces Lincoln to remember that many parents haven't had that security. And Robert, the son, by showing his opposition forces Lincoln to say something that appalls even himself-- that every father wants to protect his son, but only Lincoln has the power to send thousands to their deaths and also the power to spare his own son. So in this case, the other characters are the ones who bring out the extra dimension.

In that case, the question is resolved when Lincoln reluctantly allows his son to serve, showing his complex moral progress.  If he'd been okay with this from the start, the question would never have been raised. It's the opposition or the conflict which provides the dimension.

So I guess-- it's important to get the reader to identify with the protagonist. But to offer a fuller reading experience, we might add to that by at least hinting at a more complicated dimensionality, that the world of the book is not confined merely to the one character's reality.

Alicia

That Again

Okay, this is where "that" things get a little more complicated. We're going to talk about culling "that" when used as a conjunction, but before we do that, we have to talk about conjunctions.

A conjunction is a word used to conjoin (get it? conjoin - conjunction) pieces of a sentence. And we know that the specific conjunction used usually indicates something about the nature of that conjoining. That is, and creates unity, but creates an exception, and so on. Usually, we think of a limited list of words when we think of conjunctions (FANBOYS = For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So), but sometimes that can be used as a conjunction to join two independent clauses.

He promised that he would be back in an hour.
She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

If you look at the parts on either side of that, you see complete clauses. And normally, if you drop a conjunction from between two independent clauses, you get a run-on sentence.

He promised he would be back in an hour.
She dreamed all night he held her while she slept.

In this case, though, the first one doesn't read like a run-on. The second one does, and it's awkward to my eyes, but the first one is just fine. So what is the difference? Because if you understand this key difference, you'll understand how to drop that from this kind of construction -- and when to leave it in place.

If you look closely at the first clause of the first sentence, He promised, and think about what it resembles, you might hit on the right answer. It reads like a simple two-word tag.

He said, "I will be back in an hour."

With that sentence, our mind absorbs the dialogue tag (He said) and the dialogue with no trouble at all. It would be the same with a thought tag.

He thought he would be back in an hour.

In this case, He thought is the tag. Notice the ellipsis? "That" has been dropped from this sentence, same as in our first example sentence, and it's perfectly readable. So if you have a clause that's functioning like a tag, you can safely drop it (in most cases) without damaging the meaning or grace of your prose. This is one elliptical sentence form that readers will absorb seamlessly.


Now let's revisit the sentence that read like a run-on when that was dropped.

She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

I chose this example to illustrate a point about tags. You might think that "dreamed" here is a thought tag, but it's not. It's an active verb. You know how we sometimes joke about active verbs used as dialogue tags with disastrous results?

She snorted, "Guess who called today." 

What would it sound like to snort those words? Maybe this is the way a cartoon pig speaks? Or maybe it's completely impossible to snort words. This is an active verb, not a speech tag, and using it as a speech tag throws off the sentence.

Ditto with using this kind of verb as a thought tag, and heaven spare us from writers who think adding "silently" cures the problem.

She silently snorted, guess who called today.

Yeah, that's laughably bad. Our original example sentence isn't this blatantly awful, but it allows me to make this important point: When you're debating whether to cull "that" from a sentence that looks like it might describe thoughts (dreams could be described as thoughts, right?), you still have to watch out for this active verb issue. The less the clause resembles a pure thought or dialogue tag, the less chance you can get away with cutting the conjunction that.

There is one final detail to discuss. In the dream example, we have words intervening between the two clauses.

She dreamed all night that he held her while she slept.

Intervening  words can also contribute to awkwardness if "that" is dropped. If we moved those words, we get something marginally better with the dropped conjunction.

All night she dreamed he held her while she slept.

It's not great, but it makes it a little easier for a reader to interpret that clause "she dreamed" like a tag. It makes the ellipsis a bit easier to read. Even though it still has a small degree of awkwardness, I might leave this alone in a manuscript, depending on the clarity and grace of the context.

I think that takes care of the "that" as a conjunction. Next up, we'll talk about "that" as a relative pronoun and when we can cut it.

Theresa

Emotional experiences in books

Let's think of ourselves as readers, which we were before we were writers. We're still going to learn most about writing from the authors we love. So let's talk about books that have affected you emotionally.

For example, there's a great Patrick O'Brian book, Reverse of the Medal, where the hero, a storied sea captain of great courage but not great intellect, has invested his war booty with someone who turns out to be a crook, and Jack gets charged with stock market fraud. He is sentenced to pillory (this is 1811) and forced to be shackled in a public square in London in the midst of a crowd which is going to pelt him with rocks and
rotten fruit.  But seamen (his fellow Royal Navy guys) show up from every corner of the kingdom and surround him and doff their caps in respect for him-- and of course, keep the rabble from humiliating him.

Reading this really did show me the separation that can occur between the reader's experience and the main character's experience. Jack feels overwhelming gratitude and humility, to be protected so well. The reader
feels pride mostly-- the opposite of humility-- because of the actions not of the hero, but of all these anonymous seamen. Centuries before Facebook, they manage to learn of this travesty and figure out how to
deal with it together, and they do it with a characteristically British blend of self-deprecation and bristling arrogance.

That is, in the final moments, and throughout the book, I as the reader of course identify with Jack, the protagonist. But every character, every scene, every setting, every value in this book contributes to the reader experience. I really learned from that book that the emotion comes from the entirety of the story, everything that builds up to the final scenes, and everything that comes from the interaction of all the characters with the events of the story and the settings.

So I learned it's really important to get the reader to identify with the protagonist. But that's not enough. The reader has to be able simultaneously identify deeply with the main character, but also have a fuller experience that comes from reading the whole book (which the hero can't do :).

Let's start with the totality of the book experience, the change from start to end, and then break it all down:

Theme: I'm just pointing to the title here-- this book is all about "reversal"-- of fortune, of expectations, of focus.

Change from start to end, the "praxis": Jack starts out at the top, a real war hero, a bit conceited about his new glory. Because of his gullibility and desire for wealth and status, he trusts the wrong person. So the change for him is from pride to shame, really from "moving up" to "falling down". This descent is paralleled in the war's progress. In the beginning, it seems that France (Napoleon) will be surrendering soon, that Britain will finally triumph (which it does, but not for another long year and not in this book). In fact, this misconception is what is used to trap Jack into the stock swindle. Point is, the nation's fortunes seem at the top to start, and that turns out to be wrong.

Situation change: But all of O'Brian's stories are more than the story of the main characters (Stephen, the other major character, has his own downfall). The situation is the Royal Navy at war, a war that the Navy won years ago (at Trafalgar), and at this point is more about acquiring wealth in ships and influence. The purity of purpose has been lost, along with the camaraderie that makes months at sea bearable. The powerful simplicity of the military at the beginning is corrupted into the deceptive, dangerous world of the City of London and Westminster (finance and politics).

Setting change: The setting starts out in that "wooden world" of the ship at sea, with its familiar traditions and simple loyalties. But half the book, the latter half, is mostly on land and in the sophisticated, deceptive world of London politics and finance. The ending takes place at Cornhill, in the City of London, the finance center, so very different than the ships and the sea. But that pillory scene brings the two worlds together as all the seamen "from Land's End to John o' Groats" arrive to protect Jack.

The fulfillment in the end: The end really does have to fulfill the promise of the rest of the book. The conflicts are intensified and then resolved, if not in the obvious fashion. The Reverse of the Medal's ending is particularly emotional because the verities are restored. Jack has, to some degree, abandoned his crew by associating with the men of finance and politics who destroy him. As a consequence, he loses his ship and his position in the Navy. (This is extremely affecting, btw.) That loss makes him remember what really counts. I know it sounds trite (it's not in the book), but he learns who his real friends are when every seamen in the kingdom shows up to honor him in his moment of greatest shame. (And then Stephen buys the old ship and gives it to him to be a merchant ship.)

The distinction between the protagonist's emotion at the end and the reader's: Jack's shame and loss are so entire, and the reader participates in that. But when the seamen come to protect him, Jack's response is appropriately (for him) gratitude and humility. He knows how badly he screwed it up, and how fortunate he is to be restored to the camaraderie and friendship he had moved beyond. But for the reader? We don't have to be confined to his experience. I know what I felt as I closed the book was pride-- pride in the Navy and these simple seamen who were able to forgive so generously-- and also admiration not just for the courage of Jack, but for the unstinting love of his wife and his best friend. I know I had a sense of the power of forgiveness, as everyone was able to forgive Jack and gather him back into the family of the Navy. That is, the reader response moves beyond Jack's to a greater understanding of the meaning of the story, and part of the emotional reaction (to me, at least) was a renewed hope in the goodness of humans. (A final reversal-- at the lowest, most humiliating moment in the 20-book series, we have the greatest joy.)

So how about you? What's a book that you can remember really experiencing emotionally-- the book, not just the character?  And how in the end did you feel and why?

Alicia

That One

Every now and then, I'll hear writers talk about searching their manuscripts for "that" and cutting the word from the text. You don't need it, they say. It's just clutter, they say. And so they type those for little letters into a find bar and cut away.

This worries me a little because the word does serve a purpose, and mere mindless cutting can create problems in the text. This is not an idle worry. I've seen these problems in manuscripts. Let's think about the ways we use that, and let's see if we can figure out when the usage is good. We'll start today with that as a pronoun.

That is her car in the third space. 

In this sentence, that is being used as a pronoun which substitutes for the noun car. The clause That is together form the main clause of the sentence, with the direct object her car and the prepositional phrase in the third space completing the predicate. It's a grammatically correct sentence. To eliminate that, you would either need to use a different pronoun --

It is her car in the third space.

Or you would need to revise the sentence to eliminate the pronoun altogether --

Her car is in the third space.

Either of these sentences is grammatically correct, but the differences between them are vast, to my eye. The first sentence, the one with that, to me appears to be emphasizing the specific car as distinguished from any other cars -- her car is not the one in the first space or second space. Her car is the one in the third space. That car, not those other cars.

The second sentence, with it, seems to me to be asserting ownership. It is her car, not his car, not your car, and not my car. The difference between the first and second sentences is subtle, though, because both are using structures of emphasis. This distinguishes them from the third sentence, which is stripped of any such emphasis. The third sentence is a mere statement of fact, providing the location of the car and identifying it as belonging to her. Neither of these facts are emphasized.

In some cases, you will want the emphasis, and in some cases, you will not. Much depends on context. So when you're looking at a pronoun usage of that, don't just cut it without evaluating whether it is being used as a means of emphasis. Most of us will make this decision on autopilot and get it right, but with all the that-cutting advice floating around the writersphere, make sure your autopilot doesn't get compromised!

Theresa

Dr. Who Tears

I'm way behind on my Doctor Who watching, because, well, really, David Tennant. I mean, he's gone. And I haven't been able to really accept this new guy, though I think he's on his third year. It's got to be hard following David Tennant.

Anyway, I'm up to sometime in his second year, and came across something important. It's actually amplified by this Doctor being sort of manic and unanchored, because the contrast when he pauses and say something wise is more pronounced. So he's talking to a young woman whose husband was killed in the war, and it's Christmas so she hasn't told her children because she doesn't want to spoil Christmas forever for them.

So he says that he understands, that she's angry because they're happy now and they'll be so sad later, and what's the point? He says, "They're happy now. They'll be sad later. So what use is the happiness?"

Then, very gently, she says, "Because they'll be sad later."

And that's it.

I was trying to reverse-engineer why this was so powerful. First, of course, the situation (children losing father, always sad). But also I think it's because the mom is having to pretend. She knows her husband is dead, but has to pretend that he's going to join them. The tension and conflict that deception adds is wonderfully poignant. I think often we want to portray the exact experience, but in fact the depth of emotion is often in the complications, the what-ifs and if-onlies, not the exact reality. If we can impose some complication, we might intensify the emotion.

The other thought though is that emotion is always paradoxical, and when we express it as a paradox, we are presenting its power.  How meaningless it is that they are happy now but only because they don't know they'll be sad later. And yet, there's exactly where the emotion is-- that they will be sad later, so the happiness now is even more important. And then -- we can look ahead-- the future pain will be that much greater because of the present happiness.

The paradox, the complication, can't really be explained, but can be expressed, and in simple terms, the simpler the more affecting:
Because they'll be sad later.

Emotion is complicated, and it's simple. The experience is complicated, but the expression is simple. Think about that. Our response to great emotion, however complicated, is tears, you know? Great joy. Great confusion, Great pain. Tears.

Complicated emotion, simple expression.

Alicia

Rights reversion

First: I AM NOT AN ATTORNEY. Theresa is, so she can smack me down if I'm wrong on all or some counts.

Second: This will be of limited interest if you don't have old publishing contracts. Then again, if you see a publishing contract in your future, you probably ought to research this: Reversion of Rights.

Third: Goodness, we writers sure are quick to kneel down and let the industry beat on us like a hard rain.

When I "sell" a book to a publisher, I'm not really usually selling it in the sense of giving them all rights to the book in perpetuity in exchange for some doubtlessly inadequate amount of money. (I have done that with a book or two, sold all rights forever. I don't advise it-- depends, however, on the $$. :) I am instead "licensing" the book, giving the publisher the right to publish, distribute, and sell the book for a certain period of time under certain conditions. The contract spells out the conditions (like usually the publisher must publish the book and have a certain number of copies for sale within a specified timeframe). Most contracts have some end -- they are not in perpetuity, and aren't supposed to be.

So as nasty as most publishing contracts are (and I've signed a lot of them, and usually they're so nasty attorneys consulted have to take antacids-- "there's an option required, but no consideration for it???"), they usually do have a "reversion clause". That means that if the publisher doesn't keep the book for sale in a certain quantity, the rights can revert to the author. The weird thing is-- this is part of the nastiness--  there is a specified time to the licensing period (seven years is common). But the publisher can often "retain rights" past that period by keeping the book in print and for sale.

Notice "in print" used to mean they had to go to the expense of printing and shipping physical books. Now "in print" can mean virtually no expense for the publisher, as it might mean just having an electronic version available for sale. Many contracts used to have specific requirements for this (like one of mine was that the publisher, to keep the rights, had to do a print run of 10K), but more and more, the clauses are pretty open, so that just having it for sale on Amazon might be enough to keep the rights. This is pretty pernicious, IMHO.

Another truly pernicious part of some of these clauses is that the rights claimed include "all rights including those not yet invented". In the 90s, electronic books hadn't been invented (not really), and so now many publishers are saying that, even for books 20 years old, they "own" not just the print rights (which have long since lapsed probably) but also have the right to put out an electronic edition whenever they want. And sometimes they do that, not to earn any real money or goodness knows to pay royalties to the author, but just to do a rights-grab-- you know, in case I turn out to be the next Stephen King or something. (Don't hold your breath!)

Many of us were puttering along, sadly giving up on old books. After all, we couldn't afford to get new versions printed, and anyway, the near-monopolistic control of bookselling until recently made it hard to get popular fiction self-pubbed books into the stores (not impossible, but hard). And even though we knew that our old publishers weren't likely ever to sell our books again, it wasn't like any other publisher was eager to reprint old romances or Westerns. So we just went on, assuming those books were lost forever. But then came, finally, the wonderful hardware that would present our wonderful books to new readers, and a host of new online booksellers to let us reach those readers. And all at virtually no cost! A miracle!

That's when many of us unearthed those old contracts and started trying to get our rights back to those old books, which could now reach a brand new audience.

The first mistake was thinking we needed to "request the rights back." In fact, usually we just need to "serve notice that the rights have reverted." That is, the publisher needs to do something affirmative (put out that new print edition, maybe) in order to keep the rights after a certain period where the book has been out of print.

What's been happening a lot is that an author will write to the old publisher and say, "I request that you return my rights to (title)," and the publisher JUST NEVER RESPONDS.  I can't tell you how often I've heard authors moan about books lost because the publisher never signed off on this rights reversion. Cough. Of course, every contract is different, but really. A publisher can't just ignore the letter and retain rights. We authors need to remember, these are OUR books that we licensed to them, often for pennies, and the contract did not cede the books to the publisher forever. And if the publisher doesn't respond to the letter, that means they have refused or neglected to assert any claim. (And even if they do assert a claim, that doesn't mean they have one. We as the creators have a claim. They probably don't if the book has been out of print. Check the contract. Hire an attorney. These days, it's worth it.)


Our serving them notice of the intention to take back the rights does not need their approval (depending of course on the contract, etc.). We just need to be able to prove (maybe registered mail receipt) that we did in fact serve them the notice. Sometimes there's a waiting period after service-- mine was 60 days. If they didn't do whatever that affirmative action was (10K copies in print for mine) in those 60 days, then the book is mine all mine again. Forever.

In fact, I've sent rights reversion letters about ten times. Once the publisher responded promptly with a letter recognizing the reversion. Once the letter came back (publisher out of business). Four times the publisher waited many months before finally sending the letter of acceptance. Four times I never heard anything. Every single one of those books, I put up for sale as soon as the specified waiting period was up. I never waited for the publisher to get around to responding to the letter. And if the publisher had responded by refusing? I'd send another letter saying, "The contract period is up. I've served notice of reversion. Your rights are terminated." They're welcome to come to Indiana and sue me. (They won't. They'd lose, so why bother?)  I don't mean to be cavalier, but we should not allow fear of litigation that probably will never happen get in the way of claiming our rights to our books.

Now there are all sorts of tricks publishers have used to get around our own ownership of our own books. I wish they'd put that much ingenuity into marketing books! And more recent contracts have been much more restrictive in the rights reversion clause. However, if you're signing a new contract, this is one clause it will pay to keep author-friendly. If you have an agent, talk through what you want and insist on getting that. And decide if you're willing to go to the mat to keep eventual control of your own work.

To tell you the truth, I'd advise giving up rights for a long time only if this is otherwise a great deal. It's one thing to license a book for $2500 advance when you can get the rights back in 10 years. It's entirely different to pretty much give the book away forever for a piddly advance, especially now when there are so many other options. There are many reasons for accepting a traditional publishing contract, and go for it if that's what you want. But I have to say I am very glad that my early contracts had what in retrospect was a pretty loose reversion clause so that now I'm making far, far more money selling the books on my own. Yeah, you know, when I was 32, I didn't look ahead and think that I might want the rights back 20 years later. But I did, and I'm really glad I asserted my rights and took the books back and offered them up for sale. I would not sign a contract now that pretty much took all rights unless the money was pretty darned good.

And I have to say this to publishers. Stop being obnoxious. This rights grab many of you are embarking on is alienating authors and driving us away. We have other options now! And often you're grabbing rights you have utterly no intention of exercising. Hey, you make money for us, you don't have to grab the rights! We'll rent them to you very politely. But if all you're going to do is hold on to rights to deprive us of benefitting from our own work? Well, how very Gordon Gecko of you. You need us more than we need you, and it really is about time publishers realized that.

I recently heard a publisher say, "These books are our intellectual property!" Arrgggh! No! They are the intellectual property of the person whose intellect created them. The author. Maybe instead of being nasty and asserting control over our own creations, publishers should try to be equitable and reasonable and offer us a reason to license our books to them. What a crazy idea. But you know, it just might work. Publishers can no longer rely on a near-monopoly to corral authors into the publishing paddock. If a book is good enough for a publisher to want it, it's probably good enough to be sold by the author herself. (Not that publishers are all that reliable in choosing books that will sell well. Many books that got rejected by the big publishers became bestsellers. I have one of those, as a matter of fact, published by a small press and rather lucratively. Not quite -- not near-- a seller like Harry Potter, of course, which was rejected by a dozen publishers.) And in that case, the publisher will need to make a good sales pitch about what the author will gain from this relationship when there really are other options.

And if worse comes to worst, after 35 years creators have the right to terminate anyone else's use of their work.
It's a limited period (five years, I think), so set your clock. Also this means all copyrights should be mentioned in your will and specifically left to one person (to reclaim the rights, the person has to have more than 50% ownership, it sounds like). You might not live to get your rights back under the termination law, but your heirs can.

Anyway, let's just stop talking about "requesting our rights back" or saying the publishers "gave us the rights back."  These are our rights. We need to know how to contractually assert our ownership. But usually we still own them, and they are OUR intellectual property, and publishers will do well to recognize for perhaps the first time in decades that authors are not "fodder" but rather essential partners in the bookselling trade. And if not, well, now we can go it alone. The liberation of saying that! Ah. I'll say it again. Now we can go it alone.


Alicia

Back in the saddle-- Non-American spelling

Hi, it's only been a month! Who knows where the time goes. Nowhere productive, I'd say.

Anyway, back again. I'll try and post more. I really want to post about what I call the Tyrannosauruses, the powerful industry professionals who are still powerful as the industry changes. But that will come later. Now I'm thinking about something much more trivial-- non-American spelling and formatting.

An Australian author who has been "dinged" in writing contests for her Australian word choice and formatting asked if she should try to standardize everything for American readers, or trust that they really can read English that isn't American. Good question!


 I think there are realities at issue here. First, of course Americans are perfectly capable of reading other forms of English, and publishers' worries about that are generally unfounded. Harry Potter, after all, managed to sell fairly well despite the terrible handicap of a British author using British terms. :)

American Publishers
However, those publishers will say, "We have a house style. We're not going to change that style (including spelling, punctuation, formatting) just for one author." And they're right too. Their editors and copyeditors and proofreaders and software are all geared to their own country's style. So if you sell a story to an American publisher and use "colour" instead of "color", expect it to be changed. No big deal. House style almost always rules. Even Harry Potter, after all, showed up in the US edition with double apostrophes for quotations! The publisher might be wrong about the ability of American readers to figure things out, but
there you have it. Those of us who have spent decades battling with "house style" tend to counsel choosing your battles when it comes to the copy edit. You know, "Okay, so they made Grandma into a friendly cocker spaniel. And they Americanized my spelling. Which should I go to the mat for?" :)

A couple thoughts-- will writing the story in your own style cause a publisher to reject you? Probably not, especially if the story is set in Australia. But don't be surprised if after buying the book, an American publisher sets the copy editor on all the URs. Probably they'll be gentle with your wordchoice (torch instead of flashlight), but monstrous on your punctuation. Just keep reminding yourself that JK Rowling had to put up with this too. (AS Byatt once wrote a funny article about having her British book Possession Americanized, with the pallid hero kind of Rambo-ized because the publisher assumed that American readers couldn't
abide a "slight" hero.)

Independent Publishing
And what if you're not going through a publisher but publishing it yourself? Well, then I'd say, go with what makes for a better experience for the reader, who is the only other person to consider then. Most readers who look for indie-pubbed books are very experienced readers who appreciate an author's voice, so don't worry that they'll be upset-- they're probably the least likely people to object to this. I would probably in the subtitle of the book or description make sure "Australian" is in there, like (title): An Australian Love Story, or in the description, this story, set in Australia.... the author, a native Aussie.... That is, give them a signal that this isn't Amy American's book. Then they have fair warning that if they are offended by non-American spelling, they should steer clear.

Contests 
As far as contests, really-- ignore any comments that don't make sense to you. And I say this as a chronic judge. Sometimes judges comment on things just to have something to comment on, and they don't mean for it to be taken as holy writ. And sometimes they DO mean for it to be taken as holy writ, but they're wrong or this is some individual issue they care about and no one else does (I have a lot of those ). If what they say sounds wrong to you, just ignore it.
And if you're being scored down for this, I'd complain to the coordinator of the contest.

I'm one of those who loves the slightly different "taste" of British books and those single quote marks, so go for it.
Alicia