by jphilo | Aug 15, 2011 | Book Updates
Writers often compare the process of writing and publishing a book to pregnancy and delivery. At least female writers who have given birth do.
Want to know why they do it?
Because, as this past week and a half have demonstrated, it’s the closest thing around to a perfect analogy. That lightbulb switched on for me two years ago, during the writing of A Different Dream for My Child. But as it turns out, my first labor and delivery was a piece of cake.
How do I know that?
Because the labor and delivery of Different Dream Parenting, which is happening even as I type, has been a little trickier than the first time around. The problem with this problem child is paginating the index. Turns out, hunting for random words in a manuscript and recording the page numbers accurately is painstaking work, with emphasis on the pain.
How do I know that?
Because the past few days of index work have been painful. So painful that I’ve developed lamaze technique for writers. The emphasis is more on relaxation and distraction than breathing, since birthing a book doesn’t require the massive intake of oxygen necessary for birthing a baby, and I’m big on hyperventilation. Here’s how I do it:
Stage One Labor:
Work on index until head begins to ache. This is the indication of stage one labor. Put on happy, distracting, soothing music and keep working until your head feels like it will explode. This indicates the beginning of stage two labor.
Stage Two Labor:
Take a deep, cleansing breath and let it out slowly. Turn off the music and walk down the road to the mailbox and back, breathing naturally. Then answer some emails, check FaceBook and Twitter. Or do some light housework – laundry, dishes, food preparation – until your head clears. Go back to indexing until your head feels ready to explode again. When deep cleansing breaths, walks to the mailbox, social networking, and light housework fail to clear your head, you are moving into stage three labor.
Stage Three Labor:
Take two deep, cleansing breaths and exhale slowly. Put in a Monk DVD and watch an episode. Absorb Monk’s persona – the love of order, columns, straight lines, and all things neat and tidy – until you love the thought of spending hours at a detail-oriented job like indexing. Return to indexing, refreshed and motivated.
Warning:
DO NOT give into the urge to push until you reach the letter z. Then have at it and birth your bouncing baby book!
by jphilo | Aug 8, 2011 | Book Updates
Sorry about the brevity of this post, but the guillotine dangling over my head is making it hard to think of something to write about today. See, my editor sent the page proofs for Different Dream Parenting about a week ago, and they have to be completed – along with the index – by August 17.
So my mind is a litany of picky, precise corrections…
- Is that the current, politically correct way of referring to that special need?
- Yikes, another grammatical error!Hmmm…don’t like the placement of that side bar.
- Or that one.
- Or that one.
- Has that been the style for labels throughout the book?
- Does that sentence sound right?
…that continue non-stop for 327 pages, along with a series of indexing conundrums…
- Oh, there’s a term that should be in the index.
- No, it shouldn’t.
- Yes, it should.
- No, it shouldn’t.
- Yes, it should.
…that continue for slightly fewer pages, only because the dedication, table of contents, and appendices don’t make good index fodder.
Come August 17, my personal Bastille Day, my horizons will expand beyond the world of punctuation, grammar, page design, and key words. Until then, forgive the brevity of this post…
- Did I already say something like that?
- Is that correct grammar?
- Did that sentence sound right?
- Should Bastille Day be in the index?
- Yes.
- No.
- Yes.
- No.
- What about guillotine?
Hmmm…
by jphilo | Apr 21, 2011 | Book Updates
Looking for a special a treat to plop in your Easter basket come Sunday morning? Here’s one that’s better than chocolate, better than dyed eggs, better than jelly beans, better than live chicks and bunnies, better than stuffed animals.
Drum roll please…
It’s a sneak peek at my upcoming book, Different Dream Parenting. And it’s not just a page loaded with informative content, chosen willy nilly from any old chapter in the book.
Another drum roll please…
It’s an excerpt from the index. Yes, you heard that right. It’s a sneak peek at the one section packed with features found nowhere else in the book:
alphabetical order,
straight right columns,
key words and concepts,
discriminating capital letters,
commas and semi-colons,
and other goodies that make the hearts of left-brained librarians go pitter pat.
Please keep in mind this is just the first draft. I’ll be adding lots more juicy, tantalizing key words and phrases during the rewrite – you know, the kind of stuff that really grabs the reader so they keep turning pages and coming back for more. Sometime in the future, page numbers will make an appearance, but not quite yet. And the editor just emailed to say the house prefers running outlines over tabbed one. So today, I’ll be adding teeny, tiny feet to each page and shoving them into miniature cross trainers so this index can run like the wind. But not now. Not yet. Now’s the time for your sneak peek at Different Dream Parenting.
A final drum roll please….
Documentation,
computer,
individualized educational plans (IEP),
insurance,
hospital,
medical,
parent,
sample forms,
Dougy Center,
Down Syndrome,
Durable power of attorney,
Early childhood intervention,
Eareckson Tada, Joni,
Easter Seals,
Elks Club,
Emergency preparedness plan,
Employment,
Estate planning. See Financial and estate planning
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR),
Exceptional Parent Magazine,
Extended family,
Facebook
Are you a little breathless? Hankering to hurry on over to Amazon and pre-order the book? Dying for the sequel? Well, stay tuned, ‘cause when the running index revision is done, you’ll get another sneak peek.
Same time.
Same website.
All new content.
All the time.
We aim to please.
