I've been stuck in bed with a horrible, exhausting cold for two weeks now, so the work goes slowly. I had the good fortune to aquire an iPad before the cold struck, so I've been fiddling with that. If you don't want to work, there's not much of a learning curve and everything is almost seamless, but if you're like me and try to make things do what they were not intended to do, it can be quite a curve. I LOVE my iPad. It does many, many things, is light weight and pretty, but it's not a laptop. I had to learn a lot more than the basics (while sniffling and coughing) to do actual work along with playing games, listening to music, and making some notes. What I learned was how to make eBooks that can be read in an iBook reader. Big smiles here! In the end, it's easy, and they look fantastic. I had to figure out what I could and couldn't reasonably do so I would know what direction my project might be taking and whether I should be focused on scanning to PDF, making Word files, or whatever. Meanwhile, the mid-project results are less elegant, but are fully functional.
The shelf in my photo shows one set of the Chapters I published from 1992 to 1995. I got a smidgen of the way into the project before it got derailed. That's OK. It was huge and I was no longer clear how I could get it where I wanted it to go. Meanwhile, I had transcribed a lot of information, researched the references, filled in the blanks, and presented it in readable form. A glitch came a number of years ago when I found that my old WordPerfect 5.1 files would not convert completely intact to Word, but I've now scanned the printed copies of the chapters, and anyone interested can find downloadable PDFs on this page of my web site. The Word files remain for me to do something with as the project progresses.
The notebooks you see to the right of the chapters in the photo are filled with pages of chronological project data - research, synopses of material, etc. These notebooks are labelled by year(s). Some of the notebooks are alphabetical files of people, places, historic events, etc. And there are more notebooks in the other room.
I'm getting a certain amount of clarity about the path I want to walk through this mountain of fascinating information, and even some clarity on the results I want to achieve. It's a process, and, I'm really excited to be getting back to it. I'll keep you posted. (By the way, if you have an eBook reader (or at least it works with some brands), you can import the PDF files. They don't work as perfectly as a real eBook, but the graphics, captions and footnotes are intact, which is perfect for this stage of the game.
4 comments:
It must be hugely satisfying to feel the clarity of direction, Sheryl. You have a historically interesting and significant project here with countless hours of work done and still to be done. Are you also exploring ways to monetize this material? Write a shorter form of the narrative? Apply for a grant? Publish? Hope you're on your way to wellness again.
I certainly hope you've recovered from that terrible cold by now!
You are a fascinating person. What project, I asked, and then went back and read a previous post. This could be a PhD dissertation! What a project it is.
I give you credit for your iPad work, too. I got one just before my surgery so after surgery I sat back in my easy chair and fooled around with it, but I'm not nearly so ambitious as you are. I read magazines, newspapers, watch TV shows, play games, etc. :-)
But I think I will check out the link to that page on your web site and see what gives.
Kudos to you. I can't imagine taking on such a project. Of course, I'm older than you and don't have that many years left! Heh, heh!
Best wishes!
I've been in bed sick almost the whole time I've been in Guatemala, and every day I thank God for the internet and for our laptops, and now iPads! I don't have an iPad, but it was so interesting reading about yours.
You wrote: "I'm getting a certain amount of clarity about the path I want to walk through this mountain of fascinating information, and even some clarity on the results I want to achieve. It's a process, and, I'm really excited to be getting back to it. I'll keep you posted."
Great! This is really exciting to read about! Thanks for posting. Your friend Catherine
I like what Francisca wrote:
"Are you also exploring ways to monetize this material?"
And Lowell: "This could be a PhD dissertation!"
Excellent way to put it!
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