You can't go home again...

Okay, so occasionally I like to get paid for my writing. Money is nice, and even better is the sense that someone thinks what I produce is worth something. (Can you tell I've had a few rejections in the past month? Serendipity is so hard to achieve.) Anyway, I'd finished a couple of short biographies for my most regular employer and thought I'd get back to my novel, but I got an e-mail from a former co-worker. They'd turned up short-staffed for a project, and were looking for reliable freelancers to fill in, and would I be interested? It would be writing entries for a project I used to manage. Easy peasy! I used to turn those out in my sleep, practically, so I said lay some of those entries on me.

Well. Things have changed a bit since I first starting working in publishing, some 20 years ago. (20 years! Ack! I can't be that old!) My first year, we compiled entries by cutting and pasting the old ones on a blue sheet of paper and marking them up with updates. Occasionally we used the computer, but there were only three computers for more than 20 people, so we were big on typewriters and proofreaders' marks.

After a couple of years, we all got computers. As we got scanners, we phased out the blue sheets and compiled entries completely on the computer. Great! It's much easier to write an essay on a computer than on a typewriter, even with corrective tape. At first, we'd print out the entries and send them to the typesetter; then we discovered we could save money by sending them electronic files. We used a few codes to indicate italics and subheads, and it was easy to insert them using a find-and-replace program.

Now, by the time I left the company 10 years ago, they had discovered the joys of "leveraging data"—ie, reusing and repackaging it in various products. That meant getting stuff into a database. That meant standardizing formats between products, and giving every single bit of information a coded tag, so we knew what was a birthdate, what was an address, what was a career title, what was a book titles, and so on and so on and so on. When I left, I had actually moved out of the editorial side of the company into technical training, helping editors make the adjustment into using new programs and database structures.

Fun. So what does this have to do with me now? Well, 10 years ago we had freelancers compile the data, but the company did most of the coding. Today, the freelancers (ie, Me), do the coding, too. So in making a list of books, what used to be as simple as:

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Hamish Hamilton, 1994.
Tennyson's Gift, Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
Going Loco, Review, 1999.

now looks like this:

[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed,[/emphasis][/title] Hamish Hamilton (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1994"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]
[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]Tennyson's Gift,[/emphasis][/title] Hamish Hamilton (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1996"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]
[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]Going Loco,[/emphasis][/title] Review (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1999"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]

So much for doing these in my sleep, unless it's a state of unconsciousness brought about by continually banging my head on my desk. It might be a while before I get back to my novel.

The Word Nerd Sez: D is for ...

disoriented

Okay, I know this isn't really a weird word. And no, I'm not inspired by enduring a whole month of short sleep, which does leave me feeling a bit blurry in the morning. No, I picked "disoriented" because I feel like ranting. Maybe it's the nonstop political ads, which make me feel like shouting at the TV. Or it could be the aforementioned short sleep, which makes me grumpy. (I started writing this before 8:30, and I've already been awake for over two hours. That's just not right.)

Anyway: ranting about disoriented. Or rather, ranting about the variant that drives me crazy: disorientated. It may be in Webster's, and it may be the preferred variant in Britain, but to me it sounds pretentious, sticking an extra syllable in there to make the word sound longer and thus fancier. Really now, five syllables wasn't enough for you? You think six will make you sound more intellectual? That must mean "societal" is a smarter word than "social," because it has two more syllables. (Never mind that if you look up "societal" in Webster's, its definition is "social.") There are those people who think that adding extra syllables to words makes them sound smarter. Politicians are particularly guilty of this*, bulking up their words in order to sound more knowledgeable (or to hide their meaning). Our esteemed president is one such example, which is how he ends up with ten pages of results when you Google "Bush malaprop."

I believe people who use extra syllables to try to sound smarter are taking the wrong approach. If you refer to that essential classic on writing, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, you'll see one of their rules is "omit needless words." This doesn't mean sentences have to be short, the authors argue, only that "every word should tell." Extra words obscure meaning; so can extra syllables, I would suggest.

So please, D is for "disoriented," not "disorientated" or "disorientationed" or any such nonsense.

*One exception: someone please please please give Sarah Palin a "g" to stick on the end of her gerunds. I haven't heard someone drop so many "g"s since the last time I heard John Madden call a football game, with all its runnin' and passin' and tacklin'.

Photo of the Week--9/29/08

Seriously, how could you look at this picture and not want to visit Scotland? Okay, maybe the picture is a little misleading, because it's not raining. Still, Scotland is such a beautiful place: just as green as Ireland, but a little more windy and hilly. And the ruins! These were umpteenth set we visited, of Melrose Abbey in the Scottish Borders (ie, the southeast part, near the English border). Many British abbeys were scavenged after Henry VIII began dissolving monasteries in the mid-16th century, leaving picturesque ruins like this one. It's quite something to behold, the beauty of the countryside showing through the faded grandeur of mere human construction.

The Quilt Files, Family Edition

I first started quilting about eight years ago, after having seen my (maternal) grandma do it for the past twenty or so. It seemed only natural to try it myself; I like to sew, and making a quilt means I get to play with color and patterns that I would never be able to wear myself. (Even better, I don't have to worry about fit, or put in any zippers!) So my grandma helped me get started; after a couple years, my mom joined in as well. She just got too jealous of all the pretty fabrics we were working with, and started quilting as an excuse to buy some of her own.

So a few weeks ago my mom called and asked if I wanted to display a quilt at the Ypsilanti Historical Society's annual quilt show, along with her and Grandma. I thought, why not? She said they would submit their first quilts, and my first quilt was almost finished ... so I buckled down, finished the hand quilting on that sucker in time for the show, and voila! Our entries look like this:



Grandma's "Star Spin" pattern is featured on the table in the middle; she finished this first quilt around 1988, after she'd been retired from teaching for a few years. She has since made quilts for each of her 11 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren; I inherited the Star Spin, since I got married before she began quilting. My mom's quilt is the one to the left, with the dark blue borders. It's a fairly simple pattern, just squares and posts, but you can tell she has an eye for color. Mine is the log cabin pattern on on the right with the turquoise borders. Log Cabin is also quite easy to do, although you can arrange the squares in many different ways to make interesting patterns. It was the first quilt project I ever started, but the most recent I've finished, due to the hand quilting taking so long. (Okay, due to me being lazy about the hand quilting.)

I'll get into the details of the Log Cabin in another episode of the Quilt Files, once it's back from the show and I can get more pictures of it. In the meantime, if you're ever in the Ypsilanti era, you can check out our quilts—plus dozens more, including some incredible handmade ones from the 19th century and some amazing machine quilting work—at the Ypsilanti Historical Society through October 12.

Change is afoot!

No, I'm not going to be talking about politics. I mean, the election is historic and important and all that, but if you're anything like me, you're on political overload. Too many ads, political talking heads, and unimportant "stories" produced by the endless news cycle. (I liked Jon Stewart's observation that the media covering the election are like six year olds playing soccer. "Who's got the ball! Who's got the ball! Sarah Palin's got the ball! Let's chase her!")

No, I'm going to take a moment to talk about my feet, and how they're mourning the end of summer. I know just last week I blogged about how I love fall and the cooler weather, but my feet think it's gone too far. I have an expression when it comes to my lower extremitites: Happy Naked Feet. I love going barefoot. My feet are extra wide, and kind of flat, so it's never been easy to find shoes that are entirely comfortable. By now my baby toes look rather twisted and monstrous after all these years being squished up against the others. I'm sure they've been broken a couple of times (due to my natural grace), and the right one points in the wrong direction. I have to tape it every time I train, or I can easily dislocate it by making a wrong turn.

Then there's the whole sock thing. Sure, socks are warm and soft and keep my toes from turning white, but they never ever fit. It's frustrating. Because of my wide, large feet, I wear a size 9½ shoe. (Honestly, I should be at least 5'10" with my huge feet, but I barely hit 5'6".) Twenty years ago, I had to buy fancy brands to get that size, but women's shoe manufacturers realized that women's feet are getting larger and now I can find a 9½ anywhere I shop. Unfortunately, sock manufacturers haven't kept up at all. Their "9 to 11" sock size does not correspond to those shoe sizes. I put them on my feet, and the sock heel always stops short of my heel. I have to stretch the sock to fit, so it feels tight on my toes and wears out quickly. So I (and, I assume, many other women) really need a larger sock size. Good luck finding it, because I can't—unless I turn to "Queen Size" socks, which end up bagging around my ankles because my legs are relatively small, at least compared to my gargantuan feet.

So although I'd rather run around outside in sandals, letting my toes hang free, the changing weather means my Happy Naked Feet must become Sad Sock-Clad Feet. Luckily they can still be happy on the taekwondo training floor—at least, until winter sets in and the freezing temps turn my toes white. Sigh.

Hello, Goodbye!

I attended a writers' conference this past weekend. Now I've been to quite a few of these, and I can leave feeling one of two ways: slightly disappointed and discouraged, because I realize I've heard editors say all these things before and I'm still not published; or energized and inspired, because I've heard something new and exciting and I want to get back to work.

This past weekend was one of the latter kind. So this is a short post because I need to get back to some real writing!

Photo of the Week--9/22/08

I think I've mentioned I have a weakness for beautiful buildings set against clear blue skies.... In February 2000 we visited Tunisia, the North African country located between Algeria and Libya. The country has Roman ruins (Carthage is in Tunisia, although we didn't visit the city), Mediterranean beaches, salt lakes and the Sahara, and holy cities and mosques. This photo is of the rabat of the Grand Mosque of Kairouan. Kairouan is the fourth-holiest city in Islam (behind Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem), where the Muslim religion found its first foothold in Africa. This photo is of the Mosque's rabat, from which they call people to worship. In this photo you can't see how hugely tall the building is, but I couldn't resist looking up to photograph the way the clouds just seemed to stream out of the building. There's a quality to Mediterranean skies that produces the most beautiful blues, and with the sunlight reflecting off the buildings ... sigh. It's a warmth and contrast I don't often see at home, especially not in the winter.