Enjoying the fruits of my labor

My newest book arrived today. I’ve seen the book in proof form and as a pdf, but there’s something about getting the finished product and holding it in your hands that gets my heart racing. It’s the culmination of a year or more of work.

I know it’s only the beginning of the work that I need to do to make the book successful, but still, it’s nice to step back, take a deep breath and appreciate my own work. Usually, I keep myself so busy with multiple projects that I don’t get to do that often. I’m currently working on a new e-book about Babe Ruth, formatting a trade paperback about a coal town and working on outlines for other future project.

But for today, I’ll put those aside, flip through Looking Back II: More True Stories of Mountain Maryland, and enjoy it. I’d also like to thank Stephanie E. Long for doing a great job  designing the cover and preparing the photographs for publication.

 

I’ve been flirting with e-publishing for a couple months now. I published a couple small novellas to see how easy it was to get a manuscript ready to upload. While relatively easy, it did present some challenges that could be frustrating. For instance e-publishing software doesn’t like the comma in my name “James Rada, Jr.” I discovered that sometimes it winds up publishing my name as “Jr. James Rada.”

I just finished uploading my first full-length novel to Smashwords. I like this site because it publishes in multiple formats and offers free ISBN numbers. The book still needs to be reviewed for any uploading errors, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that things will go smoothly. Sometimes its the smallest problems that seem to take the most time to resolve, at least judging by my experience.

I have to say that the overall experience has been enjoyable. I like having more control over my projects and how they are presented.

Here’s a peek at the cover for this e-book. I’ll write more about the book later, but what do you think about the cover?

 

Word Profiling

I am always surprised when I see a book proof. No matter how many times I or someone else has gone over the book so that it is error free, I always find errors when I look at the proof. And I’m not just talking about formatting errors (those shouldn’t happen either since I send press-ready files).

I just finished going over a proof for Looking Back II and I’m wondering what I was doing when I did a final check on certain sections because I certainly wasn’t reading the manuscript. Some of the errors are piddly and don’t bother me too much like straight quotes versus smart quotes, but other sentences are missing words. Some words are misspelled so that even spell check should have caught them and I know I ran spell check on the manuscript. Yet, there’s the errors.

So what is the cause? Gremlins?

No it’s just that the brain acts like the auto-fill feature on your computer. The more you read something, the quicker you tend to read it because your reads a few words that it recognizes and fills in a phrase in your mind.

Here’s an extreme example I found:

“Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.”

While this is great for the brain, it’s not so hot when you’re proofreading or editing. In essence, your brain is profiling words and sometimes the profiles aren’t accurate.

Read more about some of the studies that have been conducted here.

 

Reading the only real non-E-book

As a writer, I found this little tidbit very interesting. You might think a non-E-book is a print book, but those aren’t true non-E-books. As far as I know, there was only one true non-E-book. Ernest Vincent Wright wrote Gadsby in 1937.

So why is it the only true non-E-book?

Because in this 50,110-word novel, you won’t find a single word containing the letter E. For instance, here’s the first sentence: “If Youth, throughout all history, had had a champion to stand up for it; to show a doubting world that a child can think; and, possibly, do it practically; you would constantly run across folks today who claim that ‘a child don’t know anything.’”

Just try writing a 44-word yourself without using a word that contains the letter E. You probably can’t write in the past tense since most of the words end with –ed. You can’t use the popular article “the” or pronouns.

Wright supposedly wrote the book as a personal challenge after he read a four-stanza poem that didn’t contain the letter E. He tied down the E key on his typewriter so that it couldn’t be used and immersed himself in his writing for the next 165 days.

Wright never got to talk about his reasons for writing the book or see how the public received it. He died at age 66 on the day Gadsby was published.

Never stop researching

I took a trip out to Western Maryland on Friday to do some research for Saving Shallmar. I’ve finished the first draft, but I tracked down someone else who lived in the town and took the opportunity to talk to her about what she remembered.

I didn’t expect to hear much new at this point given how much I’ve researched the subject. I guess that’s vanity on my part because I did get some new information and a very different perspective on things from this lady. I’ve got plenty of information to weave into my first draft and some interesting and hilarious stories I’ll have to research for possible articles.

I don’t know why I’m always surprised (happily) when I interview someone and get a lot of new information for a story. That’s why I do the interviews.  Part of me is always looking for more information and part of me seems to think that there isn’t anything new to say.

I’m glad I’m able to fight off that lazy side of myself because my books and articles are much richer because of the research I do and the people who I can speak with. My hope is that people will have a real sense of life in a dying coal mining town in Western Maryland when the book is done.

I just looked at the bibliography for Saving Shallmar. So far, it includes 110 newspaper articles, 11 people who were interviewed, 16 books, 2 journal articles, 28 reports and 12 web sites for 50,000-word book. Those numbers will increase because I’ve still got some loose threads I’m investigating.

Writer’s “Trivial Pursuit”

I came across this writing-related trivia in an old issue of Writer’s Journal and thought it was interesting.

• The average person’s left hand does 56 percent of the typing. “Stewardess” is the longest word typed with the left hand only. “Lollipop” is the longest word typed with the right hand only.
• “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters M-T.
• Four words in the English language end with D-O-U-S: stupendous, tremendous, horrendous and hazardous.
• Only two words in the English language use all five vowels in order: abstemious and facetious.

Catholic News Service reviews “Battlefield Angels”

I knew that the Catholic News Service had requested a copy of Battlefield Angels to review, but I didn’t know if they would actually review it or when it would be published. I stumbled across this review quite by accident this past weekend when I looking through some Gettysburg news.

It is a respectable review for my first book-length non-fiction. The reviewer seemed to like the things that I was worried about so I’m pretty happy with that.  She wrote, “Rada describes women religious who selflessly performed life-saving work in often miserable conditions and thereby gained the admiration and respect of countless contemporaries. In so doing, Rada offers an appealing narrative and an entry point into the wealth of sources kept by the sisters.”

Now she took issue with the fact that I didn’t explore some broader issues about the role of women in society and opportunities that becoming a sister offered and also the role of Catholics in society. My read on it was that she was hoping that it would be more scholarly in its presentation and explore these themes.

That wasn’t quite what I was aiming for. I wanted to tell a story about the work that these sister-nurses did and the fruits that it bore. I think I accomplished that. The reviewer noted, “Rada writes poignantly of the initial distrust accorded to the sisters by a population imbued with anti-Catholic sentiments and the eventual respect that they won from both citizens and soldiers for their work.”

So, all in all, I’m pleased. Read the entire review for yourself here.

Managing chaos

Working as a freelance writer can be like trying to herd cats, as the saying goes. In this case, the cats are the projects and other jobs you have to do because you do it all as a freelancer. Right now, I’ve got 8 articles I’m working, 2 more that I need to do some planning for, a manuscript I’m formatting, a manuscript I’m editing and a manuscript that I’m writing. This also doesn’t include the forum posts, invoicing, queries and job estimates that I need to do. Instead of freelance writer, the job should be freelance writer-editor-designer-marketer-CPA-purchaser-CEO.

Most days, I find myself working my way through my to-do list doing a little bit of everything. This keeps all my project up-to-date, but it takes longer to get them finished. This means my to-do list gets longer as more things go on the list than come off of it.

My solution to this came about more from instinct than any great insight on my part. As a deadline draws near, I focus more on that project and at some point, I’ll drop a lot of other work for the day and just  finish a project that is probably 75 percent done.

I feel such a nice sense of relief to be able to cross it off my to-do list, which in actuality is really no shorter. But it feels like it is because it’s one less project I’ve got bouncing around in my head trying to get my attention.

Planning for 2012

Happy New Year! A new year means another chance to make your dreams come true. It also means having to pull all of my paperwork together for taxes, but that’s a different story.

It’s a time for me to lay out a plan for the upcoming year and then see how close I can come to hitting those targets. This falls under that business side of the writing business that most writers don’t like doing. I don’t like doing it either because it takes away from my work, but it’s one of those necessary evils.

I look at goal setting for the year like creating an outline for my business. It gives me a way to focus on specifics rather than running off in dozens of different directions with ideas. The helps me be more efficient so I don’t have to work the business side of things as much.

• In 2011, in addition to the regular magazines that I enjoy working with, I sold articles to nine new magazines that I hadn’t worked with before. I want to continue that momentum and sell to 12 new magazines this year.
• I cracked the $1/word article market with a sale to History Channel Magazine in 2011. I’d like to do that at least three times this year.
• Having experimented with e-publishing last year, I want to get at least six more electronic projects up this year. This is a big undertaking, but the beauty of e-books is that they don’t need to be novels. These projects can be short stories, articles and novella, too.
• I also want to publish two books; one non-fiction and one collection.

That should keep me plenty busy. Now, if my focus starts to wander, I can always review my goals to set myself straight. I’ve got big hopes for 2012.

The Joy of Vacations

A good vacation can give you enough ideas to fill even this meteor crater near Flagstaff, AZ, which is large enough on the floor to fit 20 football fields. By the way, I got quite a few ideas when I visited here.

I just got back from vacation in Arizona. I have been there before and I saw some of the same things this time. However, this time, I found myself pulling out my notepad a couple times a time and scribbling down notes – things about places I visited, people involved in things I saw and connections between those things and markets I commonly write for.

It was only after I got home and flipped through my notes that I realized I had a lot of new ideas. Some might pan out; others not, but I’ve got plenty to work with.  It also taught me that if you are in the right frame of mind, you can find ideas all around you and vacations put me in the right frame of mind.

That frame of mind is to be curious about the world around you. I guess nothing makes me more curious than when I get a change of scenery, such as when I’m on vacation. Visiting those new places usually means just about everything about the place is new to me so I try to take it all in. With no pre-conceived filters on how I take in information, everything becomes a potential idea for me.

So when people talk about how going on vacation allows them to come back refreshed for work, this is one way I think that happens. Vacations make the holes in my idea net a lot smaller so I catch more ideas and it’s an effect that lasts for a while after a vacation.

I think that’s a good excuse to take more vacations.