Had a great time today visiting with the writers at Laurel Elementary School in Junction City, Oregon. A special treat, indeed, as this was once the school where I taught. Lots of memories in those halls, many colleague friends, and still a place of learning excitement. Best of luck to the students who are journeying with the Corps of Discovery. Ask lots of questions, and seek the answers.
Questions: Why did the Corps build their saltworks so far from Fort Clatsop?
Gum as art?!? Really.
Yah, I know, this is getting a bit weary, this CreateSpace stuff. Imagine what it’s like for me. Everytime I change one thing – one thing – I have to review every single page to make sure the words lay out correctly. To date I have done this more than 20 times.
After receiving the latest proofs, I’m happy to report the gutter situation is solved. However, the bottom margin changed and there’s too much space down there, making the text look unbalanced. The strange thing is that when I resubmitted the file, the only thing I changed was the gutter settings. I didn’t touch the top or bottom margins. Go figure that!
As usual, the folks at CreateSpace were patient and helpful when I called them once again. My phone file there is getting pretty full as evidenced by the amount of time it takes the phone consultant to review it before proceeding with me.
None of this matters, though. Not the lengthy phone file, nor the hassles of making small changes and having to review the whole book each time. What matters is getting it right. It’s one thing, getting the story right as the author; it’s another totally different thing getting the story onto the pages in an engaging and professional context.
Guess which I like better?
Happy April to all! Baseball has started, so all is good with the world. This is going to be a busy month for me, with five author visits scheduled. I’ll be visiting with kids at four schools as well as the regional chapter of the state librarian association.
So, what does it take to prepare for author visits? It takes time and it takes thought. I’ve been doing author visits for more than 20 years to countless schools in many states, and each time I make changes. Usually, I start with what I did previously, evaluate it critically, and make revisions. This makes my presentations always different, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. While some of the changes I make are truly to make the presentation better, some are made so that I don’t have to repeat things. Saying the same thing time and time again can be tiresome.
A lot of authors focus on what it’s like to be an author, extolling the virtues a career in writing. This approach seems self-serving and unrealistic. After all, how many of the kids listening will become professional writers? Uhh…not very many. A better approach, I believe, is to focus on the value of writing in daily life, how writing is a valuable tool for everyone, and the power of writing to help you understand yourself better.
Today I am fine-tuning my message, revising examples, and updating the images I use along the way. Tomorrow, it’s school time…
Monte Becket is an author with a big-hit on his hands, but he can’t follow it up. The year: 1915. The place: Minnesota, where Becket lives with his wife and son. This is the story of how Becket attempts to move beyond his failures by traveling with his neighbor, a former train robber who is on a quest to reconcile his past while being pursued relentlessly by a man who wants to bring him to justice.
If words have failed you, if books have been left unwritten, or if you have lost confidence in your ability as a writer, this book would be a good read.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger
On this day, surrounded by foolishness, it is appropriate to ask an important question: Is it foolish to write? The answer is simple. No! Absolutely not!!
Writing is an essential means of communication. It’s a way to share thoughts, interests, knowledge, and ideas with others. It’s a way of arguing persuading, and getting what you want. Best of all, it’s a way of learning about yourself.
Not sure what you think or feel about something? Start writing. As your words are committed to screen or paper, your truths will emerge. It won’t always be a straightforward process (write and learn); often times it will be a circuitous adventure (write, write, write, learn).
Self-discovery through writing
A related question bears considering: Is writing for publication foolish? This one is harder to answer. I think it depends on your purpose. If your purpose if fame and fortune, I think the answer is yes. After all, the chance of you achieving either is very remote. Sure, you see the successful writers all around you, the ones with six-figure deals and best-selling books. What you don’t see are the others, the millions who labor at their projects, hoping one day to be recognized and published.
If your purpose is to share a story or some knowledge you have, my answer would be different. In that case I’d say no, it’s not foolish to write. But the odds, aren’t they still against you? Isn’t it still a long-shot that you will be published? Well, yes and no. Yes, the odds of being published by a traditional publisher are still a long-shot. Today, however, there are other options. These include small, independent publishers, and they also include print-on-demand services, where you become the publisher.
In the past, becoming your own publisher meant big upfront costs to have your book printed. With on-demand publishing (e.g. CreateSpace, Virturalbookworm, Smashwords, Lulu, etc.) the costs are very reasonable.
Despite the ease of having your work published these days, the most important question is this: Do you enjoy the process of writing? This should be the question that guides you. Writing is too hard and life is too short to spend your energies at something that does not bring you joy.
Good luck in whatever path you choose!
According to National Geographic, the equivalent of a raindrop falling on a mosquito would be a car falling on a human. A single drop of rain pushes the mosquito down at 100-200 times the force of gravity, enough to crush one of us. So, how do those pesky creatures survive a rainstorm? They don’t resist the raindrops, thus enabling them to easily slide free of the them.
Can mosquitoes teach us something?
Only if we’re willing to learn…
So, I had the book right where I wanted it: text balanced, pages looking good, no widows or other weird-named things. Then, I looked at the author page at the end of the book. It’s a brief paragraph about the about the author, what I do, where I live, what I like. All good there, but at the bottom of the page was a page number. DOH!
There shouldn’t be a page number there. I don’t want one there. I just don’t know how to get rid of it. Page numbering in Word takes a graduate degree to navigate. Still, I try, supported by the handy little Help menu. I try what it tells me, only to erase all the pages. Nope, don’t want that. Maybe I can just live with the author page being numbered. No one will notice, right?
But I’ll know. So, I keep at it and end up finding out about page breaks and section breaks. Ah ha! Section breaks, that’s it. Create a new section about the main text, which then starts the page numbering form 1. Delete that, which does not delete the rest of the text, only that section. Done. No mess, no blood.
Just time.
Coming soon…Moving Targets.
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Please see the January 25 post about using children’s books to help teach writing
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Trait: Ideas/Content
Focus: Presenting information in an original way
Book/Author: Barefoot: Escape on the Underground Railroad by Pamela Duncan Edwards
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-06-443519-9
Summary: Animals observe as an escaped slave eludes his pursuers.
What You Need: Unlined paper, lined paper, pencils
What You Do: Read the book aloud without showing the pictures. Have students illustrate something that happens during the course of the narrative. Talk with students about the perspective of the book, then share the illustrations of the book and the students. Ask students to describe a simple event in their lives, then write about the event through the eyes of an animal observing.
Okay, so I got the hard copy version of my novel proof and my suspicions were well-founded. The gutters are too big, making the text on the page look unbalanced. When you look at pages in the middle of the book, it’s not too noticeable; when you look at either the front or back sections, Whoa! Makes me nearly fall off my chair it’s so lopsided.
After a call to CreateSpace, I learned that they could/would fix it for me, for a fee, or I could readjust the margins. Given my mission to avoid fees in this process, I decided to try it myself. So I did, with the assistance of a kind young gent from CS. Thank you! The margins seem better now, the gutter doesn’t look so wide, the text looks better centered.
That assessment is made by looking at the online proof, but I’m going to order another hard copy proof. Just to make sure. What’s great about this process is that if you find errors or things you don’t like in your book, you can make changes and print more. The key is to not order a truckload until you are completely satisfied. Which, for some of us, may be never. I’m working on that, though…
Educational toys – toys that encourage play and learning – are a mainstay in our stores today, but it wasn’t always that way. In the early 1900s, most children’s toys were mere playthings and were either homemade or imported from Europe. And then along came Alfred Carlton (A.C.) Gilbert.
Born in Salem on this day (February 15) in 1884, Gilbert grew to become an Olympic champion, professional magician, and a Yale-trained physician. But toys, especially toys that taught and engaged kids, were his true love. I learned of this firsthand in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It began with a microscope, a telescope, and an Erector Set all manufactured and sold by The A.C. Gilbert Company and given to me as gifts.
I spent countless hours with these toys that withstood the rough handling of an energetic boy. Using the microscope and telescope, I explored worlds typically hidden from my sight. Constructing models with the Erector Set provided practice building things, completing projects, and patience. All the toys encouraged curiosity, imagination, and problem-solving.
In my zeal to play, I paid little attention to the written materials that come with them (including the directions!). As a result, I missed the personal messages that came from Mr. Gilbert as well as the stories behind the toys.
I had no idea Gilbert got his start in toys during his college years at Yale, where he traded a career in medicine for selling magic kits. When it became clear after graduation magic kits would not support his small but growing family, Gilbert came up with a new idea. Inspired by watching construction crews erecting towers while riding the train from New York City to Connecticut, he decided to make and sell construction kits. Gilbert named them Erector Sets.
Gilbert introduced his kits to the world one hundred years ago at the Toy Fair in New York City. The world loved them, and the A.C. Gilbert Company was well on its way to transforming the toy industry: American-made toys, advertising directly at children, and playthings that encouraged thinking and doing.
When I played with the Gilbert toys, I didn’t know how I lucky I was that the company that made them was still in business. During World War I, the government threatened to divert all manufacturing (even toys) to the war effort. This would have crippled the toy industry, and some toy companies permanently. But A.C. Gilbert didn’t allow that to happen. He traveled to Washington DC, persuaded The National Council of Defense to allow toymakers to continue manufacturing toys, and was heralded as “The Man Who Saved Christmas.”
As a kid, I didn’t know any of this. It would take me forty years to find out. In the meantime, I grew up, became a teacher, began writing for children, and moved to Oregon from my home on the east coat. The Gilbert toys came with me.
I finally discovered A.C. Gilbert in 1995 when I took my classroom of fourth graders to the A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village in Salem. There, tucked away in a small area separated from rooms of interactive displays, was a modest exhibit that told about A.C. Gilbert and his life. I was instantly intrigued, my curiosity piqued. Research followed, and then a children’s book about the most famous American toymaker.
So, why don’t we hear of A.C. Gilbert and his company today? The answer is simple. By the 1950s, America’s children were more interested in hula hoops and Silly Putty than construction sets and science kits. Gilbert retired in 1954, and turned the company over to his son. In 1961, Gilbert died. Three years later, his son died unexpectedly. By 1967, the A.C. Gilbert Company was bankrupt. The Erector name was eventually sold to the Meccano Company, a longtime competitor, and they continue to produce Erector construction kits of their own design today.
Toys made by The A.C. Gilbert Company remain today, a testament to their quality and to the childhood memories they invoke. I still have mine. So do many others. Collectors organized the A.C. Gilbert Heritage Society, with chapters throughout the country. Gilbert toys can be found at antique stores, auctions, and on e-Bay, some selling for as much as $8,000.
The true legacy of Alfred Carlton Gilbert goes beyond the toys he created and to the reason for those toys: to inspire, engage, and challenge children. This legacy will continue for all as long as there are manufacturers producing playthings that encourage children to think and learn.
