Back to the Copyeditor

Got a handful of things done today: Inbox Ideas done, Inbox Announcements done, Work on Feb 08 calendar done, South Park character made (don’t I look cool?), Hallmark ornaments mom needed purchased, trip to the bookstore completed.

But the important thing was finishing the notes on the manuscript and leaving it on the copy editor’s desk before I left the office this evening. One more step completed. :) Supposed to have page proofs back after Thanksgiving. This part seems to be flying compared to actually writing the draft.

Still things to do, like get an author photo, do all the related lesson plans, get the companion website set up. Looks like it’s going to be a busy time for a while. And that’s without thinking about the ReadWriteThink and Inbox work I need to do.

Sam’s

Took a trip to Sam’s this afternoon. I hate going to Sam’s. It’s such a struggle not to come home with super-sized packages of things that I don’t have any place to store and get deathly tired of before they run out (or they spoil).

I managed reasonably well against the challenge. Got bags of candy for the office, which was the goal, peanut butter for the squirrels, and only 3 food items for me. I’ve decided to try the all protein diet, no carbs again. I simply have to do something before the season of eating descends and things get even worse. So I got prosciutto (which turned out to be very, um, questionable when I tried it tonight), smoked pork chops (mmm), and some sausage.

Unfortunately this evening the Carbonara that I tried to make with the proscuitto (diet starts tomorrow) is really sitting poorly. It’s burning. I added some Emeril Parmesan Italian thing from the frig and the garlic and spices set the acid reflux aflame. I’ve gulped down extra Prilosec and a double dose of Pepcid AC. I ate some chicken soup, bread, and milk. They settled things down for a few minutes, but it catches fire again not long after.

Heaven help me if this is like that sickness after the Gaming Forum at Purdue last month. I can’t afford to be down tomorrow. I have to finish editing the book and write all the text for the Ideas, Announcements, and Blog for INBOX. Besides the Honey Nut Cheerios and chicken soup diet I end up on when acid reflux is bad is wholly incompatible with the all protein, no carbs diet. Hoping for an overnight miracle.

Copyediting Day

Today has been completely about going through the copyeditor’s markup of my manuscript. I managed to read through the manuscript twice, adding and deleting and responding to the different notes that the copyeditor made. It wasn’t too bad. She cut and rearranged some things for clarity, but she also made some mistakes (e.g., changing a “further” to “farther” incorrectly).

What’s left is checking two details on writing assignments described as examples and going through the bibliography. I used a lot of Web sites, and the copyeditor didn’t understand how I got some of the information. I do have a bibliographic query I need to get advice on as well. Will post to techrhet tomorrow to figure out that issue.

It all felt “real” today. I’m not sure that I will believe I have written a book till I have it in my hands. Still, I have an NCTE stock number (10850) and everything. I even have the books team getting a testimonial for the back of the book for me. Only problem now is that I really yearn to be at CCCC for when it comes out. Vain I guess to want to be there, but I wish I could get there. Oh well. Need to get back to figuring out tomorrow’s Hallmark trip (November ornament open house).

WANT: write once, post often tool

Okay, here’s what I want: go to one page, write a blog entry/update, click “Post,” and the info merrily zings off to all the sites I want it to—Blogger, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Sort of the opposite of Plaxo. Here’s a reasonable explanation of Plaxo in the An Unmanageable Circle of Friends article from the Washington Post:

On Aug. 6, online address book Plaxo introduced Pulse, its solution to the walled garden syndrome (i.e., if you wants to see a pal’s Facebook entry, you too must belong to Facebook; to gawk at his Flickr photos, you too must Flick). Pulse users can stream everything from Amazon wish lists to del.icio.us Web markers directly into Pulse accounts. To Wellman’s point, they can also separate which groups of people receive which types of information.

I want to go to a single site and be able to cross post to all my different (and appropriate) places. I know such a thing could lead to abuse. Would be the dream tool for spammers. The problem is that I have different people who follow me in different places, and it’s beyond annoying to have to post to each site separately. So c’mon, someone come up with my dream blogging tool.

Searching for Miracle Tools

I’ve finally got goals written out for FY08, and they call for a lot of tracking and logging and scheduling. My head is swimming as I try to figure out what tools will work for which part. I think that I need three different things:

• A system to track different content for ReadWriteThink (RWT) and Inbox that lets me apply tags or index the content. I need to be able to report on a quarterly basis that X lesson plans addressed NCTE’s strategic goals focus on (as an example)
  multimodal literacy. Mostly I think I’ll need numbers and percentages. I may need intersections (e.g., X lesson plans addressed (1) multimodal literacy and (2) elementary students). But in addition to numbers, I’m probably going to need to point to the related lesson titles or Inbox columns. A running tally wouldn’t be enough. It’s more complex than that. So, do I need a spreadsheet? a database? something else?

• A system to schedule and track Inbox topics and promotions for all the staff involved to use. Each week, I write the Ideas and blog and search for news. Some other folks on staff choose the final news stories. Once I know the focus, I pass that info along to the marketing staff, and in return, they send me details on the announcements for each week. I need to create some kind of schedule that allows for longer-range planning. Right now, most of this happens on Monday. I think I need a giant table with columns for strategic governance focus, likely current events, ideas focus, blog focus, and related announcements. Possibly breaking out the announcements by the different areas (conventions, books, journals, professional development, membership). Is it a giant, shared spreadsheet?
• A system for a learning log that documents info on publications, positions, policies, etc. that is used to inform RWT and Inbox work. As an example, what I need to do is read an article, position statement, or similar document and then log the details on that piece, noting how it might connect to specific issues. I think some kind of tagging or indexing is paramount. A sample note might be something like this:
  

  “article name: rest of article name” from Journal Name explains how a teacher used small-group reading activities to explore the way dialects are represented in Huck Finn. Topics include literature, dialect, small groups, secondary, adolescent literacy, reading, Journal Name.

  At first I thought I might need something like a hopped up and branded del.icio.us system that pointed to the Web pages for these things (they’ll all be on the Web in some way, though the public might only be able to get to abstracts). Now I’m wondering if it’s just a super blog with tags. Ideally, though, I’d need to be able to find intersections of tags (e.g., resources on secondary + literature). I don’t know that there’s any blog tool that does that. Hmm. I think it’s far more than a spreadsheet, and I think tracking all this on paper would be counter-productive. Maybe there’s some other tool that would do what I need.

So I need three miracle tools, ideally tools that are very simple to manage and set up. Hmm. Time to incubate for a while. Maybe the answers will come to me. At least I have some freewriting on what I need done.

Restarting Life . . .

Returned to work today after taking sick leave every day but Tuesday last week. I think that I’m about 75% adjusted to the new drugs that I’m on, and I’ve had a good chance to rest and get stress-free.

Today at work went well. Got the ideas for the Comic Creator revision written up and sent out to the designer. Spent time trying to figure out my FY08 goals, but they have to wait till tomorrow. Did some busy work this evening and dug through some more news for this week’s inbox (which is going out Wednesday because some folks who need to work on it are out of the office).

Then there’s what I didn’t get done. Spent some good time last night before I fell asleep trying to think through the plan for the repartitioning and reformatting of my world. Came up with some nice ideas, but haven’t had time to type them up tonight. Got sidetracked with something else, and it’s late now. I’d probably be up another 2 hours trying to think through the ideas for the new things I want to focus on. Disappointing not to get to it. Need to make sure that I get it done tomorrow.

Upgrading . . .

must restart life tomorrow. need to repartition and reformat all aspects of existence. searching for install disks.

This Just In…

In today’s e-mail from NCTE’s Senior Editor on my book manuscript:

“Attached are the reviews of your MS. As you’ll see, they’re all positive (yay!), with varying amounts of suggestions for revision.”

Maybe I really and truly am an author!!! :-)