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Writer’s Block Still Sucks

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As unlikely as it may seem to regular readers of these blogs, I’m still suffering from writer’s block.

Writer’s block? How could Maria be suffering from writer’s block? She writes blog entries several times a week and she still writes the computer books that pay the bills. How could she possibly think she’s blocked?

That’s what some of you might be thinking. And frankly, I think it, too. But I’m sure writer’s block is the problem. Sadly, I still can’t figure out what’s causing it.

Back in June, I wrote a blog entry complaining about writer’s block. Back then, I was having trouble writing almost anything I needed to write. No, not needed. Wanted. I couldn’t write anything I wanted to write.

That included fiction and eBooks for an eBook publisher I was writing for.

I still haven’t written another eBook for David. And, what’s bothering me most is the fact that I haven’t written a single new word of the mystery book I’ve been trying so hard to write.

Well, obviously I haven’t been trying hard enough. But let’s not go there, okay?

And this problem is making me feel miserable.

(Of course, it could be the weather that’s making me feel miserable. It’s been cloudy and rainy for a long time now — days, in fact — and I’m really not used to it. I live in Arizona where it’s sunny most of the time. This El Nino weather system we’ve been experiencing is great for the desert and the cattle and the wildlife and the wildflowers. But it’s making me understand why Seattle has the highest suicide rate in the world. It’s depressing!)

The problem is, I have an overwhelming need to write. I think that’s one of the reasons I write these blog entries. Something inside of me demands that I share my thoughts with others. Blogs make it easy. They also give me the freedom to write whatever I want to write about. So I don’t have to write 650 pages about how to use Mac OS X 10.4. (Well, actually, I do. But not in my spare time. Just during that 7 to 3 workday.) I can write about anything. The weather, politics, flying, or having a bad case of writer’s block.

Last time I wrote about writer’s block, someone e-mailed me with a lengthy message that advised me to read a specific book. There was a lot in that message and I put it aside to read it when I had more time. More time never seemed to come. Then I changed e-mail programs. The message and its advice was lost. (That’s another good reason to use the Comments feature on these blogs. I can’t lose a comment.)

Today, I was in a bookstore down in Surprise. (Sadly, the closest real bookstore to Wickenburg is 32.65 miles away.) I browsed the books in the reference section, the ones about writing. I found a few books about writer’s block. One was a psychology book that claimed to explain why writer’s block happened. It had diagrams of brains in it. The type was dense, without headings, and it looked very dull. I was afraid that reading it would give me reader’s block, which would probably be worse. A few other books claimed to cure writer’s block. Well, they didn’t actually use the word “cure” but they clearly indicated that they could help. They help by making you do exercises. One of the exercises chilled me to the bone: “Describe the first time you can remember being very embarrassed.” Who the hell wants to remember that? Writing about bad personal experiences is supposed to make you want to write more? I put the book back very quickly.

I’ve been reading a lot of books about writing lately. Sometime last year, I read On Writing by Stephen King. I was extremely surprised by how motivated I was when I’d finished it. (I wasn’t motivated to write while I was reading it because I was so absorbed in it that I couldn’t put it down.) Following Mr. King’s suggestion, I dedicated several hours every evening to my mystery novel project. In no time at all, I’d knocked off about 90 pages or 30,000 words. And what I’d written was pretty good. Then I ran out of steam. Big time. In fact, I guess you can say that the fire had been put out with ice water.

Then I started reading books about writing mysteries. Perhaps I’d be able to pick it up again when I got some advice from mystery writers. I started one book called…oh, hell. I don’t remember. And I don’t have it anymore. I hated the book so much that I donated it to my local library. The book was going to teach me how to write a mystery by using a sample story the author had come up with. The sample story was so gawdawful that I couldn’t bear to read about it. The poor victim — a teenage girl — couldn’t just be murdered. She had to be sexually abused (or made to look like she was) before being murdered. And the murderer was a wacko. (Obviously.) Sheesh. I could never write about something like that and I didn’t want to pretend I could. So I gave the book away.

Next, I picked up a book called The Weekend Novelist Writes a Mystery. The premise behind this book is that the reader is a part-time novelist with a busy day job and family. The reader can only spare time for writing the mystery on weekends. So the book set out tasks for 52 weekends. I figured that my time is a bit more flexible, so I could do most weekend assignments in one evening. For example, do a bunch of exercises that would define the detective. The victim. The murderer. You get the idea. I worked on my assignments faithfully for about a week and they really did help me out. But when it got to the point where I needed to come up with notes for scenes, I ran out of steam again.

That gave me the idea that my problem had something to do with plot. I knew what was going to happen, but not all the details. I needed the details to write them. But, for some reason, I couldn’t come up with a good outline.

I tried index cards, Word’s outline feature, and a notebook. I ended up with a bunch of index cards, a half-finished outline, and a lot of scribbled and disorganized notes.

There was something else nagging me, too. All the books I’d read so far assumed that the victim would die before the detective entered the story — or before the story even started. But after 30,000 words, my victim was still alive. And, at the rate I was going, he’d be alive for at least another 30,000 words. That meant I had to edit what I had to become more focused. But, for the record, I still don’t plan to kill him off before my readers get a chance to know him a little.

I started reading other stuff. I read a book called Seven Floors High, which I absolutely, positively, do not recommend. I bought the damn thing from Amazon.com after reading glowing praise about it in the online reviews. What crap! I think that every single review was written by one of the author’s friends or people who work for his publisher. And I really do mean that. There wasn’t anything worth wasting time on in that book. It was poorly written in first person, present tense (of all things!) and had more exclamation points than periods. It was repetitious, had virtually no plot, and was pointless in every sense of the word. It was about a guy who gets a job in telecomm startup in the U.K. The startup looks like a fraud and everyone who works there spends more time drinking and doing drugs than working. And throughout the book, there’s a “secret narrator” who interjects information about U.S. secret spy stuff, etc. Several conversations in the book were engineered just to share otherwise irrelevant information like this as part of the plot. But none of the characters were remotely involved with spy stuff, so none of it fit. It was weird and stupid and pointless. How an author can get a piece of drivel like that published is beyond me. Yet I kept reading, expecting it to get better at some point. Or for the telecomm startup plot to somehow connect with the spy stuff. After all, all those reviewers said such good things. In the end, I felt as if I’d been ripped off by Amazon.com. I will never buy a book based on a reader review again. And this one is so bad, I wouldn’t even donate it to my library. It went right into the trash.

I read some books about writing. Actually, I guess it’s safe to say that I started reading a few books about writing. The first was Bird by Bird. I don’t recommend it. It’s obviously for people who have been rejected so many times that they’re beside themselves with self-pity. The author tries to be funny with jokes about her own paranoia and hypochondria, clearly expecting the reader to feel the same way she does. I don’t. My paranoia is not as keenly developed — at least not yet — and I’m don’t have any undue concerns about my health. So I thought her jokes were pretty stupid, especially when she kept using the same themes over and over throughout the book. I made it about 3/4 of the way through it.

I started The Plot Thickens: Eight Ways to Bring Fiction to Life. After all, I had a plot problem, didn’t I? The book was good — well written and full of good insight — but I just didn’t feel like reading it. (Are you starting to get the idea that my writer’s block problem centers around my avoidance of the plot issue? I am.) So I put it aside about 1/3 finished.

Next, I read a Tony Hillerman mystery and a Dick Francis mystery. I liked the Hillerman mystery a lot. The Dick Francis book was good, but his main character did a few stupid things that nearly got him killed. It’s hard to believe someone smart enough to solve a mystery would be dumb enough to put himself in danger like he did. I’d taken a second Dick Francis mystery from the library with that batch and found myself wishing that I’d taken two Hillermans instead. So I returned all three books without reading the second Francis book. It’ll still be there when I’m ready for it.

I started The First Five Pages, another writing book by the author of The Plot Thickens. The premise behind this book is that there are 19 factors to consider when writing a book — fiction or nonfiction — and that the editor wading through the slush pile will look for these things when looking for an excuse to reject a book. Noah Lukeman, the author, presents the topics in the order they’re most likely to shoot you down. For example, the first five are presentation, adjectives and adverbs, sound, comparison, and style. According to Lukeman, if you screw one or more of these up, it’ll be easy to spot and the reader won’t get past the first five pages. I have to say that I agree with him. His 19 factors are what makes a book work. A writer must be proficient at all 19 of them to produce a publishable book. In reading this book (I got about 4/5 finished before putting it aside), I was able to objectively look at my own work and decide where my biggest problems are: adjectives and adverbs, focus, and pacing and progression. That’s not to say that I’ve got the other 16 factors licked. I’ll probably reread most of this book — perhaps with a highlighter or notebook nearby — to make sure I fully understand the problems and solutions I need to tackle. The only thing I didn’t like about the book were the author’s examples of bad writing. The examples were so bad, they weren’t good examples. After all, does anyone write that bad? (Well, maybe the author of Seven Floors High.)

One interesting thing in that book: plot is not one of the 19 factors. (Perhaps there’s hope for me after all? Nah, you can’t avoid plot in a mystery.)

A friend of mine loaned me a copy of Michael Crichton’s book, State of Fear. I read it. I found the book enjoyable in that it had a plot that moved and it was just far enough from reality to be a good escape. It was full of facts and figures about global warming and, if that information is real, I appreciate having my eyes opened. Now I know Mr. Crichton is a bestselling author and he obviously knows a lot more about writing than I do. But I just can’t stand the way he breaks up scenes with spacing between paragraphs. It’s customary to use additional space between paragraphs to indicate a scene change within a chapter. But he continues the same scene — sometimes the same conversation within a scene — after that additional space! It drives me bonkers. My brain is not prepared for that and I simply can’t get used to it. The other thing he does — which other bestselling authors who’ve had their work turned into movies often do — is to constantly switch back and forth between character pairs or groups within a chapter. This is writing for the movies or television. Although it works well with visuals in the movies — a dinosaur is sniffing around the car where the kids are trapped; switch to rapter pen — it’s pretty annoying when done to the same extent in writing. Maybe it seems like I’m being nit-picky, but this is personal preference. I just don’t like to read books that pick up and drop scenes like they’re hot potatoes — especially when they’re not. One thing I will swear by — and this is after reading so many books about writing in a short period of time — Mr. Crichton has a lot to learn about showing vs. telling. He tells us everything, not giving his reader much opportunity to figure stuff out for himself. But what disappointed me most about this book was the loose ends he left behind: What ever happened to the cell phone the guy in Hong Kong put in his pocket? It seemed so important when I read about it, but it was never mentioned again. What ever happened to the French girl and her American boyfriend? They seemed like important bad guys, but they were never identified and never caught. What happened to the two NERF guys who were so obviously bad guys? Were they arrested? Was NERF brought down? Were they punished for what they did? Which girl did the lame-o lawyer hero wind up with? I suspect it was Sarah, but I can’t be sure. But I guess none of that matters. He’s proven himself as a bestselling author and can write whatever he damn pleases, whatever way he damn pleases. People will continue to buy his work and overlook any shortcomings. Personally, I’m going to re-read Jurassic Park, just to see how it compares with this latest work. I’m willing to bet that JP is a lot better written.

Which brings up another pet peeve of mine: bestselling authors lending their names to series that they don’t even write. I’m talking about Tom Clancy’s Net Force and Op Center books. I got fooled by one of the Net Force books. I thought I was buying a Tom Clancy book, something equivalent in quality to Hunt for Red October. I got a book that read like a made-for-TV-movie, full of side stories that had nothing to do with the plot (who cares about the main character’s son’s soccer game?) and may have been added to increase page count, and a narrative that obviously suspected the reader of having an IQ below 50 (remember: show, don’t tell!). I knew after 20 pages that Clancy hadn’t written what I was reading, but it took a moment for “created by Tom Clancy” on the cover to explain it to me. I guess a bestselling author gets to a certain point when he doesn’t have to write his own books anymore and can still make a ton of money on them. I hope I don’t get to that point — at least not until arthritis makes it impossible for me to write.

Writer’s block, she says? How can she possible have writer’s block. Look at all she’s written in this entry alone! It might be the work of a raving lunatic, but it’s not the work of someone with writer’s block!

Plot. That’s the problem. I need an outline. I need to get motivated. I need to shut myself up in a room without access to the Internet or other work I’ve written or any other distractions and write the outline. I need to stay at it until I’m done.

I use outlines for my computer books. Frankly, I can’t imagine writing one without an outline. It keeps me on track, it tells me where to go next. It also reminds me that I shouldn’t talk about this now because I’m going to talk about it in Chapter 12. Or I already did in Chapter 2. This is no different. It will definitely help me with that focus problem Mr. Lukeman so kindly pointed out.

I just finished another book yesterday. It’s called Eats, Shoots & Leaves and it’s about punctuation. Oddly, it is a bestselling book in the U.K. I’d seen it more than a few times on Amazon.com, while searching for books to help me get over this block, but have always disregarded it. After all, I know punctuation pretty well. I’m not saying I’m perfect, but I’m certainly above average. I don’t consider it one of my writing problems. But last week, when I stumbled into the library, looking for something new to read, I saw it on the shelf of new books. It’s a small volume with a Panda joke on the cover. (Unfortunately, my library stuck a library address sticker over the first two lines of the joke, making it difficult to read.) I decided to give it a try. I’m glad I did. It turns out that I qualify as a stickler for punctuation, since I get all hot and bothered when people use apostrophes and quotes incorrectly in signs and headlines. The book was full of information about the history of punctuation, as well as lots of examples of how misused punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. For example, compare “The convict said the judge is crazy” to “The convict, said the judge, is crazy.” Ouch! Unfortunately, the Brits have different punctuation rules than we do, so the book is of limited use to Americans who need to learn about it. But the author’s sense of humor is great. I didn’t think it was possible to laugh out loud when reading a book about punctuation, but it certainly is. I liked the book so much, I bought an audio edition of it to listen to on long drives (or flights) and a copy in print to send to one of my editors, Cliff, the comma king.

What’s currently on my reading list? Writing Down the Bones is another book about writing that has gotten lots of praise. I’m a bit worried that it’ll be another Bird by Bird, so I’m not rushing into it. Today, I picked up Writing Mysteries (a Writer’s Digest book edited by Sue Grafton) and Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman’s Guide to Igniting the Writer Within. I don’t know why I picked up this second book. The inclusion of words like woman and igniting in a book’s title normally raises red flags. I may be a woman, but I don’t see why a woman needs different advice about writing than a man. I have a sneaking suspicion that there will be instructions in here for balancing my family and career or finding time away from the kids to write. I don’t have kids. I don’t really have a family, either. And my career is as a writer — that’s my day job. As for igniting — that’s a stupid marketing word that someone at the publisher obviously wanted to use to punch up the title. (You wouldn’t believe how a publisher’s marketing department gets involved in cover copy when they obviously haven’t even read the book.) Actually, in paging through this book, I realize that I’d better take it back. It’s really not for me.

(Thinking back on this, I realize that I’d picked up this book in the store right before my cell phone rang. It was Rod on the phone and I hadn’t spoken to him in two months, so I found a comfy chair in a quiet corner of Barnes and Nobel and chatted with him for about 15 minutes. Mike came in from Best Buys and read a magazine in a nearby chair while I talked. Then I hung up and we decided to go. I didn’t review the books I was carrying. If I did, I would have noticed the illustration on one cover, which showed a laundry basket, a child’s toys, and a stressed-out looking woman with a pen in her hand. Not a book for me. So I’ll blame it on Rod.)

But Writing Mysteries shows promise. I think I’ll tackle that one next. Or at least after I finish The First Five Pages and The Plot Thickens. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

And about that outline…

I’m sure I’ll get to it soon.

Getting Even Closer

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I take (and pass) my Part 135 check ride

I spent most of yesterday with an FAA inspector named Bill. Bill is my POI for Part 135 operations. Frankly, I can’t remember what those letters stand for. But what they mean is that he’s my main man at the FAA in all Part 135 matters.

Yesterday was the second day this week I spent time with Bill. On Wednesday, I’d gone down to Scottsdale (again) to set up my Operating Specifications document on the FAA’s computer system. The FAA has been using this system for years for the airlines and decided to make it mandatory for the smaller operators, including Part 135 operators like me. Rather than put me on the old system and convert me over to the new one, they just set me up on the new one. That’s what we did Wednesday. It took about two hours that morning. Then Bill and I spend another hour reviewing my Statement of Compliance, which still needed a little work, and my MEL, which needed a lot of work.

I had lunch with Paul, my very first flight instructor, and headed back up to Wickenburg, stopping at a mall in a vain attempt to purchase a quality handbag. (Too much junk in stores these days, but I’ll whine about that in another entry.) I stopped at my office and my hangar to pick up a few things, then went home. By 4:00 PM, I was washing Alex the Bird’s cage and my car. (I figured that if I had the hose out for one, I may as well use it on both.) After dinner with Mike, I hit the keyboard to update my Statement of Compliance so it would be ready for Bill in the morning. I added about eight pages in four hours.

A word here about the Statement of Compliance. This required document explains, in detail, how my company, Flying M Air, LLC, will comply with all of the requirements of FARs part 119 and 135. In order to write this, I had to read every single paragraph in each of those parts, make a heading for it, and write up how I’d comply or, if it didn’t apply to my operation, why it didn’t apply. (I wrote “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not operate multi-engine aircraft” or “Not applicable: Flying M Air, LLC does not provide scheduled service under Part 121” more times than I’d like to count.) Wednesday evening was my third pass at the document. In each revision, I’d been asked to add more detail. So the document kept getting fatter and fatter. Obviously, writing a document like this isn’t a big deal for me — I write for a living. But I could imagine some people really struggling. And it does take time, something that is extremely precious to me.

I was pretty sure my appointment with Bill was for 10:00 AM yesterday. But I figured I’d better be at the hangar at 9:00 AM, just in case I’d gotten that wrong. That wasn’t a big problem, since nervousness about the impending check ride had me up half the night. By 4:00 AM I was ready to climb out of bed and start my day.

Bill’s trip to Wickenburg would include my base inspection as well as my check ride. That means I had to get certain documents required to be at my base of operations, all filed neatly in my hangar. Since none of them were currently there, I had some paperwork to do at the office. I went there first and spent some time photocopying documents and filing the originals in a nice file box I’d bought to store in my new storage closet in the hangar. I used hanging folders with tabs. Very neat and orderly.

I also printed out the Statement of Compliance v3.0 and put it in a binder. I got together copies of my LLC organization documents, too. Those would go to Bill.

I stopped at Screamer’s for a breakfast burrito on the way to the airport. Screamer’s makes the best breakfast burrito I’ve ever had.

I was at the airport by 8:45 AM. I pulled open the hangar door so the sun would come in and warm it up a bit, then stood around, eating my burrito, chatting with Chris as he pulled out his Piper Cub and prepared it for a flight. He taxied away while I began organizing the hangar. By 9:00 AM, I’d pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp. At 9:10 AM, when I was about 1/3 through my preflight, Bill rolled up in his government-issued car.

“I thought you were coming at 10,” I told him.

“I’m always early,” he said. “Well, not always,” he amended after a moment.

Fifty minutes early is very early, at least in my book.

He did the base inspection first. He came into the hangar and I showed him where everything was. But because I didn’t have a desk or table or chairs in there (although I have plenty of room, now that the stagecoach is finally gone), we adjourned to his car to review everything. That required me to make more than a few trips from his car to the hangar to retrieve paperwork, books, and other documents. He was parked pretty close to the hangar door on my side, so getting in and out of his car was a bit of a pain, but not a big deal.

“You need a desk in there,” he said to me.

I told him that I had a desk all ready to be put in there but it was in storage and I needed help getting it out. I told him that my husband was procrastinating about it. I also said that I’d have a better chance at getting the desk out of storage now that an FAA official had told me I needed it. (Of course, when I relayed this to Mike that evening, Mike didn’t believe Bill had said I needed the desk.)

Chris returned with the Cub and tucked it away in Ed’s hangar before Bill could get a look at it. Some people are just FAA-shy. I think Chris is one of them.

Bill and I made a list of the things I still needed to get together. He reviewed my Statement of Compliance, spot-checking a few problem areas. We found one typo and one paragraph that needed changing. He said I could probably finalize it for next week.

My ramp check came next. I asked him if it were true that the FAA could only ramp check commercial operators. (This is something that someone had claimed in a comment to one of my blog entries.) He laughed and said an FAA inspector could ramp check anyone he wanted to. And he proceeded to request all kinds of documents to prove airworthiness. The logbook entry for the last inspection was a sticky point, since the helicopter didn’t really have a last “inspection.” It had been inspected for airworthiness at 5.0 hours. It only had 27.4 hours on its Hobbs. Also, for some reason neither of us knew, the airworthiness certificate had an exception for the hydraulic controls.

Then we took a break so he could make some calls about the airworthiness certificate exemption and log book inspection entry. He spent some time returning phone calls while I finished my preflight.

Next came the check ride, oral part first. We sat in his car while he quizzed me about FAA regulations regarding Part 135 operations, FARs in general, aircraft-specific systems, and helicopter aerodynamics. It went on for about an hour and a half. I knew most of what he asked, although I did have some trouble with time-related items. For example, how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft malfunction (3) and how many days you have before you have to report an aircraft accident (10). I asked him why the FAA didn’t make all the times the same so they’d be easier to remember. He agreed (unofficially, of course) that the differences were stupid, but he said it was because the regulations had been drafted by different people.

That done, we went out to fly. I pulled Zero-Mike-Lima out onto the ramp and removed the ground handling gear. Bill did a thorough walk-around, peaking under the hood. He pointed out that my gearbox oil level looked low. I told him that it had been fine when the helicopter was level by the hangar and that it just looked low because it was cold and because it was parked on a slight slope. Every aircraft has its quirks and I was beginning to learn Zero-Mike-Lima’s.

He asked me to do a safety briefing, just like the one I’d do for my passengers. I did my usual, with two Part 135 items added: location and use of the fire extinguisher and location of the first aid kit. When I tried to demonstrate the door, he said he was familiar with it. “I’m going to show you anyway,” I said. “This is a check ride.” I wasn’t about to get fooled into skipping something I wasn’t supposed to skip.

We climbed in and buckled up. I started it up in two tries — it seems to take a lot of priming on cold mornings — and we settled down to warm it up. Bill started playing with my GPS. The plan had been to fly to Bagdad (a mining town about 50 miles northwest of Wickenburg not to be confused with a Middle East hot spot), but when he realized that neither Wickenburg nor Bagdad had instrument approaches, he decided we should fly to Prescott. I told him that I’d never flown an instrument approach and he assured me it would be easy, especially with the GPS to guide me. So we took off to the north.

It had become a windy day while we were taking care of business in my hangar and the car. The winds on the ground were about 10 to 12 knots and the winds aloft were at least 20 knots. This did not bother me in the least and I have my time at Papillon at the Grand Canyon to thank for that. I’d always been wind-shy — flying that little R22 in windy conditions was too much like piloting a cork on stormy seas. But last spring at the Grand Canyon, flying Bell 206L1s in winds that often gusted to 40 mph or more, turned me into a wind lover. “The wind is your friend,” someone had once told me. And they were right — a good, steady headwind is exactly what you need to get off the ground at high density altitude with a heavy load. But even though gusty and shifting winds could be challenging, when you deal with them enough, flying in them becomes second nature. You come to expect all the little things that could screw you up and this anticipation enables you to react quickly when they do. Frankly, I think flying in an environment like the Grand Canyon should be required for all professional helicopter pilots.

Bill and I chatted a bit about this during part of the flight and he pretty much agreed. But when he told me to deviate around a mountaintop I’d planned to fly right over, I realized that he wasn’t comfortable about the wind. Perhaps he’d spent too much time flying with pilots with less wind experience. Or perhaps he’d had a bit of bad wind experience himself. So we flew south past Peeples Valley and Wilhoit before getting close enough to Prescott to pick up the ATIS at 7000 feet.

Bill made the radio calls, requesting an ILS approach. Prescott tower gave us a squawk code and Bill punched it in for me before I could reach for the buttons. Then Prescott told us to call outbound from Drake. That meant they wanted us on the localizer approach (at least according to Bill; I knew nothing about this stuff since I didn’t have more than the required amount of instrument training to get my commercial ticket). I think Bill realized that they weren’t going to give us vectors — Prescott is a very busy tower — so he punched the localizer approach into the GPS and I turned to the northwest toward the Drake VOR, following the vectors in the GPS. All the time, the GPS mapped our progress on its moving map, which really impressed Bill. At Drake, I turned toward Humpty and Bill called the tower. When they asked how we would terminate the approach, he told them we’d do a low pass over Runway 21L. I just followed the vectors on the GPS toward some unmarked spot in the high desert. We did a procedure turn and started inbound. Five miles out, the tower told us to break off the approach before reaching the runway and turn to a heading of 120. Traffic was using Runway 12, with winds 100 at 15 knots and the tower didn’t want us in the way. So I descended as if I was going to land, then turned to the left just before reaching the wash (which was running). Once we cleared Prescott’s airspace, we headed south, back toward Wickenburg.

We did some hood work over Wagoner. I hate hood work. It makes me sick. I did okay, but not great. Fortunately, I didn’t get sick. But I did need to open the vent a little.

Then we crossed over the Weavers, did a low rotor RPM recovery, and began our search for a confined space landing zone. Personally, I think the spot he picked was way too easy — I routinely land in tougher off-airport locations than that. Then we did an approach to a pinnacle. No problem. On the way back to the airport, we overflew the hospital because he wanted to see LifeNet’s new helipad there. He agreed with me that it was a pretty confined space.

Back at the airport I did an autorotation to a power recovery on Runway 5. It was a non-event. With a 15-knot quartering headwind, only two people on board, and light fuel, Zero-Mike-Lima floated to the ground. I did a hovering autorotation on the taxiway, then hover-taxied back to the ramp with an impressive tailwind and parked.

“Good check ride,” Bill said.

Whew.

After I shut down, we went back to his car, which we were now referring to as his mobile office, and he filled out all the official FAA forms he had to fill out to document that I’d passed the check ride. Then he endorsed my logbook. Then he left. It was 2:30 PM.

I fueled up Zero-Mike-Lima, topping it off in preparation for flying on Saturday, and put it away. I took the rest of the day off. I’d earned it.

Tiger: The Saga Continues

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I continue work on my Tiger book.

The other day, I got a new Tiger build from Apple. I’d been waiting anxiously for it. My editor, Cliff, who’d been at the Keynote address at Macworld Expo had reported that the build Steve Jobs was using for his demo looked different from what we had. Although most authors wouldn’t mind a few appearance differences, my book has over 2,000 screenshots in it and every minor difference will affect at least one page. So after having some difficulties with Font Book and not being motivated enough to revise the Classic chapter, I put the book aside to wait for new software.

The differences, it turns out, are not major. Sure, some screenshots will change, but not many. The New Burnable Folder command has become the New Burn Folder command — that little change will force me to revise every single screenshot of the File menu. But hey, I expect stuff like that. It goes with the territory. It’s one of the drawbacks of writing about software that hasn’t been completed yet.

Interestingly, I’ll work with the software right up to the Gold Master and still get the book out on time. That’s because of the “system” Peachpit and I have for getting these books done. No other publisher works the way we do. As a result, if another book comes out on time, it’s likely based on something other than the Gold Master. That means it’ll have errors in it. But more likely, other books will be delayed and will appear on shelves a month or more after Mac OS X 10.4 has gone to the Apple Stores and is available in new computers.

Yesterday, I worked on the Applications chapter, the one where I go into some detail on how to use the applications that come with Mac OS X. We’ve decided to folk the i-Apps chapter into this one, so it’s likely to be a very long chapter. I got about 20 pages done yesterday and I hope to finish it up today. I found two surprises in the Applications folder: a brand new application that I’m looking forward to using every day and the return of an old application that disappeared when Mac OS X was first released. I’m not sure if I can talk about them — Apple is notoriously secretive about pre-release software and I don’t want to get sued — so I won’t. But I think Mac users will be pleasantly surprised (as I was) to find at least one of these new tools.

The book is over 600 pages long so I have a lot of work to do. It’s my biggest book, both in size and sales, and the one I’m proudest of. Mac OS has grown quite a bit since I first wrote about it for Mac OS 8. It has far more features and is a bit more complex than the Mac OS of the old days. The book makes the complex features simple and the simple features even simpler. It also has tons of tips and tricks for using Mac OS X.

Writing about Tiger

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I begin work on my Mac OS X book revision.

I started working on my Tiger book this week.

So far, I have three of the 21 chapters done. I skipped Chapter 1, which is about installation and configuration. I always do that one last. Instead, I dove right into the Finder chapters: Finder Basics, File Management, Advanced Finder Techniques.

I added some new information to the File Management chapter about a new and undocumented feature called burnable folders. This was a challenge. Although I could figure out how to use this feature and write sufficiently about it, there wasn’t a single mention of it anywhere in online help or Apple’s Tiger Web pages.

What burns me up about this is that although I couldn’t find any official documentation about the feature, there was an article, with screen shots, on someone else’s Web site. Why does that burn me up? Because I had to sign a nondisclosure and swear up and down that I wouldn’t share anything about Tiger — especially screen shots — with anyone until the software was released. Technically, if my husband looks over my shoulder while I’m writing, I’d be in violation of this agreement. So that prevents me from giving my readers a sneak preview of the software and getting them all fired up for what’s to come. Yet someone else can publish articles on the Web, for the world to see, without getting in trouble. Does that sound fair?

Anyway, about burnable folders, to make matters worse, since I’m working with pre-release software, the feature isn’t perfected yet and is a bit buggy. Or perhaps it just set up conflicts with my screen shot software. In any case, my eMac was acting up and had to be restarted periodically. So it took me the better part of an afternoon to write two new pages and rewrite two others.

The Advanced Finder Techniques chapter was completely reworked. I pulled a lot of material out of this chapter to make a new chapter (Chapter 6) about customizing the Finder. This required complete renumbering of all figures throughout the chapter. A tedious task, but someone has to do it.

Next week, I continue writing with a brand new chapter about Apple’s new Spotlight and Smart Folders features. I hope to be able to knock that one off in two days.

Do It Yourself Layout

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How and why I lay out my own books.

I do layout for most of my books. That means I submit finished pages to my editors. What they see on the page is what the book will look like when printed.

I write the book as I lay it out, in Adobe InDesign CS. InDesign is an incredibly powerful page layout program, but I use only a fraction of its features. I start with a template that has all the elements of page design. I use text boxes to position text in the appropriate place. I actually type the text right into the text box — I don’t use InDesign’s separate text editing window. I use styles for paragraphs and characters. I’ve even taken advantage of InDesign’s nested styles to automatically format text like numbers in numbered steps and bullets in bulleted lists. That saves a lot of time and ensures consistent formatting.

I create figures using screenshot software on my “test mule” computer. That’s the computer I run the software on while I write about it on my production computer. My Macintosh test mule is an eMac; my Windows test mule is a Dell Dimension PC. Both are networked to my production computer, a dual processor Macintosh G5. I pull the screenshots over to the G5, open them with Photoshop, and run an action on them to convert them to grayscale (or CMYK, depending on the book) and save them as uncompressed Macintosh-format TIFF files with 72 dpi resolution. Then I literally drag the image icons from a Finder window to the InDesign document. I downsize them to fit, which also enhances resolution, and drag them into position. Then I use InDesign’s library feature to insert a pre-formatted caption, which I fill in for each screen shot. This is probably the most time-consuming part of layout. No, that’s not true. Callouts — those little lines that run from labels to exact positions on a screen shot — take far more time to do. I have InDesign library elements for other items, too, like thumbtabs (for my Visual QuickStart Guides) and callout lines (for my Visual QuickPro Guides).

I write each book a chapter at a time. When a chapter is finished, I create a PDF format file of its pages that includes printers marks such as registration marks and cut marks. (Can’t remember the exact names of these things.) I then upload the PDF file to an FTP site where my copy editor and production editor can download them. There’s a workflow over at my publisher’s place that varies depending on the editors assigned. What I see at the end of the process is printed pages that have been marked up by both editors. I get them a few chapters at a time via UPS. I normally take care of the edits in the afternoon, after submitting a chapter for the day. (I try to do a chapter a day for revisions and a chapter every two days for new titles.)

I review the edits and make about 98% of the changes that are requested. Most changes are of a typographical nature — I have a habit of repeating words and leaving characters out of words — but some are of a layout nature — rewrapping text to prevent widows, moving a callout up two points to improve spacing, etc. And of course, there are always a few grammatical errors that need fixing. (I wasn’t an English major!) Any time I don’t make a requested change, I note the reason why on the marked up pages. I don’t ignore a change without good reason. Then I print the manuscript and send it back to the editor with the markups. If the production editor is a freelancer, I usually have to print up a second copy for him or her. It usually takes about 30 minutes to turn around edits for a chapter, so I can knock them off quickly. The final InDesign and TIFF files get FTPed to the production editor or, if he or she requests it, put on a CD. The production editor sometimes puts a few finishing touches on the final files.

When I finalize a chapter, I also create a finalized PDF and upload it to the FTP site for the indexer. Sometimes, if the book is on a tight deadline, the indexer will work on draft pages. This is usually pretty safe, especially for revisions, since pages rarely have significant changes from draft to final. When the indexer has indexed all chapters, she submits a Word or RTF file to me via e-mail. I then pour the index into an Index template and reformat it to fit the number of pages allotted. Sometimes that means making the font size really small — my last book had 7.2/8.2 font for index entries. Other times, that means making font size and leading normal but increasing the spacing between paragraphs or above headings. The book’s total page count has to be evenly divisible by 8, and it’s my job to make sure I submit exactly the right number of pages. Fortunately, Peachpit is not normally page count driven. A book can be as long or as short as it needs to be — as long as the total number of pages is divisible by 8. That’s great for me, because I can write just what I need to.

Generally speaking, it takes about a week from the time I finish all chapters in my first draft to the time the final files and index are ready to send to the printer. It then takes about three weeks from the time the files get to the printer to the time I see a printed copy of the book. Add another week for copies to get to stores and you have a 4-week turnaround from finished manuscript to book available in stores. Obviously, this is the greatest benefit of doing my own layout. Let’s face it, computer how-to books are extremely time sensitive. To get a book out quickly, you have to prepare it quickly. I have a knack for doing my job quickly and since I don’t have to depend on someone else at the publisher to do time-consuming layout, each book can be turned around very quickly.

There are other benefits to doing my own layout. It’s great for me because I have a lot more control over my work and can write in a way that takes advantage of the book’s layout. I also get a bit higher royalty rate to compensate me for my additional work and the cost of labor I’ve saved my publisher. It’s great for my editors because they can see the “final” product as they are editing. So if the layout isn’t quite right — for example, a figure would be better on one page than another or could be improved with a callout — they can tell me and I can fix it as part of the editing process. Otherwise, the book would have to go through multiple editing processes, each of them handled by someone different who may or may not care about the quality of the book. I’m the author of my books and I care about all of them, so I do my absolute best to make sure they’re something I’d be proud to have my name on.

Peachpit, to my knowledge, is the only publisher that allows authors to handle what they call “packaging.” And they won’t let all authors do it. You have to prove that you have the ability to handle layout to their standards. I’ve been doing layout for my own books since 1996 and have produced over 40 titles for them, so I’m proven.

Other publishers don’t work this way at all. In fact, they are completely opposed to the suggestion that an author layout out the book. The reason: they are worried about losing control over the book’s contents. They don’t seem to understand that they do get final possession of the manuscript’s files and can make any changes they like before sending the manuscript to the printer.

One of my other publishers, in fact, has an extremely complex production process. First the author writes the manuscript using a Word template that has macros built in for formatting. Some of the macros work, others don’t. The author is required to insert special codes in the manuscript to signal certain types of styles. Meanwhile, the author creates screenshots, which are supposed to be submitted as full screen images. The author is supposed to print each one and mark where the image should be cropped. (I refuse to do that because it wastes time and paper and relies on a production person to get the cropping right. I send cropped images and I don’t even bother printing them anymore. Nobody complains. Frankly, I think they’re relieved that I’ve spared them this extra work.) From the author, the Word file and images go to a copy editor and a technical editor. The copy editor uses Word’s change tracking feature to mark up the manuscript and insert all the codes the author has either neglected to insert or inserted wrong. The Word file then goes back to the author for review. The author further messes up the file by using the change tracking feature to accept or reject changes. The author also gets comments from the technical editor and changes the Word file to make necessary corrections. A production editor gets it next and incorporates the copy editor and author changes to finalize the file. Then it goes into production, where it’s converted into a Ventura Publishing file (I kid you not) with the images inserted. The images are usually in-line images, meaning that text doesn’t wrap around them. It also means that the images might not appear where the author thinks they should. (But that doesn’t seem to matter much.) The author gets “proofs” of these pages, in print, and is required to mark them up and send them back to the publisher. About 10% of the author’s suggestions are incorporated into the final pages. To be fair, any change that corrects an error goes in but any change that tweaks the layout is basically ignored. The book eventually makes it to the printer where it is printed and sent out. Time elapsed from completion of first draft to printed copies: 8 to 12 weeks.

Is the quality of a book better when a professional publishing staff takes it from manuscript draft to printed book than when an author takes it most of the way? I don’t think so. But I also think that quality isn’t the most important aspect of book production to some publishers. But that’s a topic for another blog entry.