Crusading for Professional and Ethical Standards
The American Society of Journalists and Authors is the nation's leading organization of independent nonfiction writers. With a membership of more than 1,100 outstanding freelance writers of magazine articles, trade books, and many other forms of nonfiction writing, ASJA offers extensive benefits and services focusing on professional development, including regular confidential market information, meetings with editors and others in the field, an exclusive referral service, seminars and workshops, discount services and, above all, the opportunity for members to explore professional issues and concerns with their peers. ASJA is a primary voice in representing freelancers' interests, serving as spokesman for their right to control and profit from uses of their work in the new media and otherwise. ASJA also brings leadership in establishing professional and ethical standards to the publishing industry by recognizing and encouraging the pursuit of excellence in nonfiction writing. The Society headquarters are in New York City, with active regional chapters in Northern and Southern California, the Rocky Mountain area, and Washington, DC. For those applying for membership, the Society looks for sustained evidence that you have written, on a freelance basis, full-length bylined magazine or newspaper articles in major publications published over a substantial period of time, or have had non-fiction books published by established publishers, or other equivalent freelance activity. There is a $25 application fee, applied to the one-time $100 initiation fee when you are accepted.
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Much Ado About Publishing
Invasion of the Published Amateur Writers:
In case you think that the recent brouhaha over James Frey’s memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was just an example of an author’s ego run amuck, think again.This wasn’t just about some author who lied in his memoir.
This was an example of the epidemic of amateur writers and authors who don’t know that you’re not supposed to make thinks up in a work of non-fiction.
It takes more than becoming published to make someone a professional writer or author. It takes a professional, informed approach to the craft and the business of being a writer or author. It takes knowledge of professional standards. Even if you use a ghostwriter.
The publishing industry is overrun by authors who, whether they write their own books or use a ghostwriter, do something else for a living. They’re not writers by trade. They’re not professionals who necessarily know the journalistic standards that also apply to non-fiction book publishing.
Far too many of them don’t even know that such standards exist. And some, when informed of them, resist adhering to them because they don’t understand how important they are, why they’re important, and that such standards aren’t an option or a suggestion, they are required.
Unfortunately, their publishing house editors have no idea that they’re often dealing with authors who are ignorant of these professional standards, as well as other important aspects of the publishing business.
I am not exaggerating.
During my 25-plus years as a professional, I’ve been a journalist, writer, author, ghostwriter, and editor, and I’ve had countless frustrating conversations, and yes, even loud arguments, with such writers/authors who have little, if any, knowledge of the standards and practices of the profession. It’s news to them that they’re not allowed to make up stuff when they’re writing non-fiction. They believe that “artistic license” or “creative license” allows them to do so.
It does not. It does not allow them to lie or invent things when they write non-fiction. It merely allows them to write artistically and creatively, rather than in a boring, dull manner.
Unfortunately, at some point in recent history, the phrase “creative” has become synonymous with “lying” and “fudging the truth.” We hear this all the time when people explain how they’ve “gotten creative” with facts, figures, events, explanations, and such.
Some people even believe that the recently added publishing category Creative Non-fiction is one in which it’s okay to lie.
Sorry, folks, that’s just not so.
Let’s get this straight once and for all: Non-fiction means that it’s not fiction, which means that the writer is not making things up or lying. Fiction, according to my handy copy of The Concise Oxford Dictionary, is defined as “feigning, invention; thing feigned or imagined, invented statement or narrative; literature consisting of such narrative, esp. novels,” as well as “conventionally accepted falsehood.”
And, according to said dictionary, the prefix “non” placed before a word means “not being.” So, non-fiction is “not being fiction” as in not being [a] conventionally accepted falsehood.
Got that?
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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.