Diving Back In

I get to work on my second book revision of the summer.

One of the drawbacks of being a freelancer is that you spend part of your time lining up work but have very little control over when that work needs to get done. As a result, your life can be a mixture of large blocks of time off with large blocks of time working your butt off.

This summer is a perfect storm of work. Not only did I manage to get nine weeks of contracted cherry drying work in Central Washington State, but three of my books came up for revision at almost the same time.

Fortunately, cherry drying is mostly a waiting game. Although I’d like to see more rain (and, hence, more work) in the area, the waiting time can be easily turned into working time for my book projects. Once I get motivated, that is.

I spent much of July working on the biggest of those three projects and got it off my plate right after starting my last contract of the season. When it was over, I was burned out. I couldn’t start the next project until I had beta software to write about anyway, so I took five days off.

Then the software came and I took another five days off.

I am a procrastination expert. I can find anything to do other than work when there’s work to do. Yesterday, I even paid my bills — that’s something I usually put off doing. You know you’re grasping when you start using the things you don’t want to do as procrastination tools.

But today, I get back to work.

Writer's Keyboard One of the tools of my trade.

While I’m not at liberty to discuss the software I’m writing about, I can say that the software revisions should make the project a bit more difficult than a straightforward revision. I’m expecting about a 25% change in the content of my book. I’m not doing layout, which is a good thing. But I do have to come up with plenty of fresh examples and hope I can get all features working properly in my limited setup here at the motel.

So I’m diving back in today and will keep myself productive by turning off Twitter and my e-mail client and my Web browser. I’ll set achievable goals for each day’s work and knock off chapters, one after the other. The book has 23 chapters. I’m here for the next 10 days. Two or three chapters a day and I’ll have the book done before I leave.

I probably won’t be blogging much while I’m on this crazed schedule. I’ve found that if I blog in the morning, it sucks away some of my best working time. (I’m a morning person.) And by afternoon, I’m too burned out from the day’s work to write any more. But we’ll see. This revision might just go better than I expect.

On Censoring Dictionaries

Why?

This morning, one of my Twitter friends @mjvalente linked to an article on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog, “Ninjawords: iPhone Dictionary, Censored by Apple.”

As a writer, I’m bothered by most forms of censorship, so I read what Gruber had to say. He described Ninjawords, an iPhone dictionary application, and had all kinds of glowing praise for it, followed by the meat of the problem:

It’s a terrific app — pretty much exactly what I’ve always wanted in an iPhone dictionary, and, yes, with both a better user experience and better dictionary content than the other low-cost dictionaries in the App Store.

But Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

Gruber goes on to point out just how idiotic this is and, frankly, I can’t disagree with anything he has to say. Dictionaries should include all words in common usage; the words that were removed — words like shit and fuck — can be heard daily on cable television and in schoolyards.

My question is this: By removing them, are they trying to pretend that these words don’t exist?

Whatever.

This morning, I used the Dictionary widget, that’s part of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on my Mac. I use this tool often throughout my work day to make sure the words I’m using in my work are the right words or to look up words I’ve heard but am unclear on meaning. With Gruber’s post fresh in my mind, I decided to see what would happen if I looked up shit.

Shit in the Dictionary WidgetGuess what? As you can see in this screen shot, it was there.

So was fuck.

So Apple makes a dictionary with “objectionable content” available as part of its operating system, which can be used by anyone — including school children! — but will not allow an iPhone (and iPod Touch?) app with the same content?

You might argue that the Dictionary widget and application in Mac OS X are protected by Parental Controls. But how many kids who are unfamiliar with these words are likely to be buying dictionary apps? And with these words in common usage throughout the U.S., how many kids do you think have never heard them? And isn’t there some educational value to understanding the true meaning of a word and its usage? I don’t know about you, but I find the Dictionary Widget information shown here quite illuminating. I especially enjoy the “unobjectionable” explanations of the phrases.

This all goes back to George Carlin’s routine “The Seven Words.” The whole routine — not just the words. (If you follow that link and watch the clip on YouTube, watch the whole thing, including his reasoning. George Carlin was a genius.) They’re just words, people. They’re not going to bite you or make you immoral or cause you to want to kill someone. They’re individual words — not even used in sentences to communicate a message. Just plain words.

Sorry, but it just doesn’t make sense to cut them out of the dictionary.

And removing other words with perfectly acceptable meanings — words that even appear in the Bible! — just because they also have “objectionable” meanings only makes matters worse. A cock is a bird. An ass is a donkey. (Gruber’s post lists more of them.) Should kids be kept in the dark about these meanings, too?

Apple, you know I love you — I’ve been using Macs and writing about them since 1989 — but you’re being silly. Cut it out. You’re embarrassing us.

When is an Ebook Not an Ebook?

When it’s printed.

I just got back from a trip to the office “superstore,” Staples. I needed a printout of the next book I’m supposed to revise.

Huh?

When I write books that are printed — and most of them are books that are printed — I get a bunch of author copies. I keep at least one copy for my archives. Then, when it’s time to revise the book, I have a handy reference to the current edition, which I use as my starting point, keeping it at my side as I work, paging through it to see how or where I covered topics I’ve written about in the past.

But when I write books that are destined not to be printed — in other words, ebooks — I don’t get a copy of the book in print because it’s never printed. Instead, I get the same thing as everyone else: a PDF file containing the laid out pages in ebook format. As a result, the only current edition I have to refer to when working on the new edition is a PDF.

I can’t work with PDFs this way. I need to have a book, on paper, that I can leave open to a particular page and consult while I’m working. I can’t be switching back and forth from Microsoft Word (which I’ll use to revise the book) to Adobe Reader (which I’d use to see the book onscreen). That just doesn’t work for me.

So I had to get the book printed. All 605 pages of it.

I took the PDF to Staples on a CD that contained only the PDF. I told them to print it on 3-hole punch paper. I wanted them to print it double-sided, but since the book starts on an odd page — as all books do — I knew they’d screw it up and put the odd numbered pages on the right side when the book lay open. I couldn’t deal with that. So I had them print it single-sided.

It cost me $49.

The 3-inch binder I had to buy to fit it in cost another $15.

Oh, the Irony!

This is ironic on so many levels.

First is the cost: I spent $64 for a printed copy of my own book. A book that all users of the software it’s about get for free on the software disc. (At this point, I’m thinking I should be calling it a software manual, but my name is on the cover and there aren’t many software manuals you can say that about.) I’m willing to bet that I’m the only person idiotic enough to have printed the whole damn thing and stuck it in a binder.

Next is the fact that the book’s been out for a whole year and I never bothered to print it. Hell, I’ve got enough books on my shelf. Yet when it’s time to revise it — in other words, make it obsolete — that’s when I print it.

But the kicker is this: just the other day, I wrote a blog post rejoicing the fact that, for the first time, I’d finished a book without an exchange of any paper between me and my editors. No printouts, no inked markups, no printed galleys. Electronic all the way.

And now this.

This is so ironic that it could be given as an example of irony in a dictionary.

I Had to Do It

Now those of you who are ebook lovers and paper book haters — and you know who you are — might get the idea that I really didn’t have to print the book. I could have worked with the PDF. It would have saved so much paper. It would have been worth it.

I have three things to say to that:

  • I didn’t use any paper on my last book, so the paper monitors owe me some.
  • The book wasn’t printed for its readers. Think how much paper that saved.
  • It’s definitely worth it to me not to have to switch applications and lose my train of thought while working. The printout will enable me to work more efficiently and effectively. I’ll get the job done quicker. (And then I can turn off my computer and save some energy.)

But no, the irony is not lost on me. Guess I’ll get some more scratch pads made when the new book is done.

Writing in the 21st Century

A look back at the evolution of writing for publication.

Yesterday, my 72nd printed book went to the printer. For the first time ever, not a single sheet of paper was printed, mailed, or marked up during the writing and editing process for one of my books.

I’ve been a freelance writer since 1990. Most of my work — all of my books and 95% of my articles — has been about using computers. Yet for the first few years I wrote books about using computers, the manuscript files I created weren’t even used for the production of the book.

In the “Old Days”…

Back in the old days, my manuscripts had to be submitted in standard manuscript format. That means I wrote them in Microsoft Works (in the beginning) or Word using a plain font like Courier with double-spacing. What came out of my [$2,000] laser printer printer was a document that looked as if it had been typed on a typewriter by a very careful typist. Hundreds of pages. I was required to submit two printed copies of the manuscript to my editor.

In those days, Staples sold “manuscript boxes.” These were cardboard boxes designed to hold stacks of paper that were 8-1/2 x 11 inches. I’d print two copies of the manuscript, stack them one atop the other in this manuscript box, and mail them to my editor.

One time, in order to make a deadline, I sent the manuscript copies to Manhattan with my next door neighbor, who worked there. She then called a courier company to deliver the manuscript to the publisher’s offices in the Columbus Circle area.

In all honesty, I can’t remember how edits were handled. I don’t even recall getting any marked up copies of that early work. I think I got the galleys, though. They were printed (of course) and I wasn’t allowed to make many changes to them.

The Rise of E-Mail

Around the time of my fourth book (third solo book) in 1992 or 1993, e-mail was starting to get big. I still recall my shock and surprise when I sent an e-mail message to someone and got a response within an hour. Whoa!

That’s the book I started sending manuscript chapters via e-mail to my editor. The idea was that she’d review the chapters as they came in. This really saved my ass when my hard disk crashed and I lost everything on it. I was able to recover all those files from my editor and keep working. But when it came time to final submission, it had to be printed and mailed in: 2 copies, double-spaced.

Database Publishing with FileMaker Pro on the Web

This is one of the few books I wrote and laid out using FrameMaker. Its cross-referencing tools couldn’t be beat back in 1998.

When I started writing Visual QuickStart Guides for Peachpit Press in 1995, I also began doing layout. In the beginning, I used QuarkXPress, but I soon switched to PageMaker and finally to InDesign. I did a number of other books for Peachpit and for AP Professional (Claris Press, FileMaker Press) using FrameMaker, which I still think was the best layout tool out there. (InDesign is getting closer; thank heaven it finally added cross-referencing tools in CS4.)

For the early books, I’d create the chapter files, print them out, and mail them to my editor. Marked up copies would be FedExed back. I’d make the changes in the files. When the project was done, I’d send them a Zip disk or, later, burn a CD on my [$700] CD burner with all the files. That disk would travel by mail or FedEx on top of a stack of printed pages. In the beginning, they wanted 2 copies, but later they began using their own copier to make the copies they needed.

Word Files from Templates

Quicken 99: The Official Guide

This was the first book I wrote that made extensive use of Word templates.

Time went on. For the books I didn’t lay out, Microsoft Word became the standard. At first, I submitted files with the usual double-spaced, plain vanilla formatting. But some of my publishers got fancy and started sending templates with styles and macros and buttons built in. Although these files were always created on a Windows PC, they worked fine on my Mac. They usually came with detailed instructions for use; by applying the styles and submitting the files, my formatting would ease the task of getting it typeset on their system. Some of my publishers had terribly antiquated systems that required a lot of effort on the part of the production staff.

The use of Microsoft Word meant that my manuscript could go through a series of editors — copy, technical, and proofreader — with all edits clearly identified using the revision feature. I’d get edits back, review them, and either accept or reject them. Then I’d send them on to the next editor. The process was long and tedious, with lots of editing and a manuscript file that looked like a colorful mess of type. Often one editor’s changes would be changed back by another editor. Whatever.

I was required to send printed manuscript pages for most of the 1990s, but the files were transferred by e-mail, with a backup copy of all files on CD sent along with the printouts. I also got all galleys printed. That was often a lot of paper — hundreds of pages. In the mid 2000s, I started bringing the one-sided pages to my local copy shop to have them cut and padded; I’d use the back side of each page as scratch paper.

The Rise of PDFs

In the mid 2000s, I started seeing galleys as PDFs. I’d review them onscreen — no easy task when you have a smallish monitor and can’t read an entire page at once — then print out the pages with problems, mark them up, and send them into my editor. One of the reasons I bought a 20″ monitor a while back was to be able to proofread page by page.

Around the same time, Peachpit wanted to send me markups of my laid out book pages as PDFs. I resisted for quite a while because reviewing edits and making changes to the laid out page files with just one monitor was such a pain in the ass. My office now has a pair of 24″ monitors connected to one computer so I can review corrections on one screen while making corrections to manuscript pages on the other.

The End of Paper

200907212014.jpg

My most recent book was written and edited without an exchange of paper.

The book I finished yesterday (Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide) was the first one that had absolutely no exchange of paper. I’d create book pages using InDesign and turn chapters into PDFs. I’d upload the PDFs and a zipped folder full of chapter files to Peachpit’s secure and private FTP server. The chapter files were my offsite backup — I did all of my work on this book from a camper or hotel and did not have a spare hard drive to back up to. My production and tech/copy editor would review the PDFs, mark them up with Acrobat — they use the full version, which I don’t have — and put them in a different folder on the FTP site. I’d download them, review them, and make manuscript page changes. Then I’d upload new PDFs to yet another folder and send fresh zipped files. My indexer got her own set of PDFs with accurate page numbers as we finalized pagination from one chapter to the next. When all editing was done, I updated the InDesign book file and its individual chapter files to finalize cross-references. (This is also the first Visual QuickStart Guide I’ve written that has cross-references to actual book pages rather than chapters.) I generated my table of contents and laid out the index when it arrived from my Indexer yesterday morning. Although I was still handling edits on Wednesday morning, by 10 AM yesterday (the next day), my editors at Peachpit had all the final files. By 5 PM the same day, the printer had those files.

I expect to see printed books within 3 weeks.

There are a lot of folks who see printed books as a terrible waste of paper. Although print publishing is definitely on the decline, there are many people — myself included — who prefer reference work in printed format. I don’t think print publishing will ever completely die.

I’m very pleased, however, that the production process didn’t add any more paper waste to landfills or recycling centers. I, for one, don’t need any more scratchpads.

Anyway, I thought some writers out there might be interested in the evolution of the writing/production process as seen by an “old timer” like me.

I’m just glad I never had to use a typewriter for my writing work. Using one in college was bad enough.

My Cherry Drying Season Extended

A pleasant surprise; but my book work continues.

Last week, I was very surprised to get a phone call from a grower I’d contacted back in May and June about late season drying. I’d called him several times to leave messages and managed to connect with him sometime in June. At that time, he said he was interested in hiring me for about 10 days starting at the end of July. Then nothing from him at all for weeks. I assumed he’d either changed his mind — we had a long dry spell here — or that he’d found someone else. So you can imagine my surprise when he called last week and said he’d like to sign me up for three weeks starting August 1.

Yesterday morning was overcast here in Washington. My phone rang at 6:55 AM. It was the grower. He was certain it would be raining over his orchard within an hour. Could I start that day?

I could. Technically, my other contracts in Quincy had all finished. The last one had ended the day before, although that grower was still picking. I wanted to keep myself available for him that day, but I’d go where I was needed. I was thrilled by the idea of my contract starting a week earlier.

So I suited up, grabbed my paperwork, GPS, and a book to read during downtime, and headed out to Wenatchee airport in the helicopter. I landed by the fuel pumps, topped off the tanks, and looked out toward the hills where the orchard was. No rain. I called the grower to let him know where I was. Then I grabbed the airport courtesy car, drove down to McDonalds, and grabbed some breakfast at the drive-thru. (I don’t eat much fast food, but I do like those damn bacon, egg, cheese biscuits.) By the time I got up to the airport, there was sun out toward my orchard. I checked the radar. The big cell that had worried the grower so much had drifted due south, missing his orchard by about 2 miles.

I waited while the weather cleared even more. Back at my trailer in Quincy, my computers were cued up with the software and files I needed to complete my work on Chapter 19 of my Snow Leopard book. At the Wenatchee Airport, I was completely unproductive. And a deadline clock was ticking.

When it became clear that no rain was likely fall within the next two hours, I called my grower and left him a message, telling him I was flying back to Quincy. I told him I could be back within 20 minutes if he needed me. Then I took off, overflew his orchard to get a GPS fix on it — I’d forgotten to bring my GPS when I got an orchard tour during the week — and returned to Quincy.

I spent the entire day working on Chapter 19 and watching the weather radar. My new orchard dodged the bullet (so to speak) at least five times. I can’t tell you how many times I almost suited up or called the grower. A storm cell would approach and then either go around or dissipate before reaching the orchard. This happens to me all the time. I joke with my growers that putting me on contract is better than getting cherries dried — it virtually ensures that it won’t rain on the trees.

OrchardThe orchard is 86 acres in the hills. This GoogleMaps satellite image doesn’t clearly show the hilliness of the area. The two red outlines indicate the blocks of trees. There’s a small one to the southwest but most of the trees are in a series of blocks all bunched together around roads, buildings, and irrigation ponds on the sides of hills. This is not the easy rectangular blocks of uniformly sized trees I dried in Quincy. This would be more challenging. Not only would I have to come up with a dry pattern that was efficient, but I had to make sure I didn’t miss any of the blocks.

The red X in the image is where I’ll be parking the helicopter. After about seven weeks living in my trailer at the golf course, I’ll be relocating to a motel in East Wenatchee, not far from the bridge I’ll need to cross to get to the orchard. It would take roughly the same amount of time to get to the airport as it would to get to the orchard, so I decided to base the helicopter at the orchard. There was a nice, flat grassy area that would make a perfect landing zone. It was far enough away from the packing area, trees, and roads to ensure that heavy equipment wouldn’t be a threat. The grower agreed to let me park there. In fact, I think he was glad I’d have the helicopter on-site.

I’ll also be bringing my trailer up there, parking it nearby. I have to park it somewhere and I rather like the idea of using it as a base near the helicopter. On a day when rain is very possible, I can drive up there and settle into the camper for the day, getting work done on my book projects while waiting to be launched. I’ll stay warm and dry if it rains. I can be airborne within 5 minutes of the launch call. But what’s more important to me is that I won’t have to wait around in my truck, bored out of my mind, while waiting for rain to come or stop. I can be productive, listen to music, even watch DVDs from Netflix on a laptop if there’s no writing work to do. I won’t extend the camper’s beds, but I will put out the slide-out to make room. I’ll have access to a clean bathroom, refrigerator, and stove if I need it. The microwave and A/C won’t work without an electric hookup, but the solar panel on the roof should keep the batteries charged enough to power my computer(s) with an inverter.

Meanwhile, Alex the Bird and I will move into a motel in East Wenatchee. I’m really looking forward to a shower that lasts longer than 5 minutes. I got a great rate on a room at a nice place. There’s WiFi and a pool. Free breakfast, too. I’ll be there for three to four weeks.

In the meantime, today’s goal is to knock off Chapter 20 on my book. I’ll finish the remaining chapters — Chapter 25, Appendix A, and the Introduction — on Monday or Tuesday. The book is scheduled to go to the printer on Wednesday. Talk about taking it right to the wire!