Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items for you. The Minnesota Retreat was wonderful. Blank journals are in hand. I'm excited to get back to organizing the warehouse and putting finishing touches on this book. You get Chapter 16 to read. Your next update will be the week of July 14-18. 

Being in person with other writers is always a joy. I'm very pleased that my role as safety officer was not used or needed very much. No one got sick in a way that needed more than mild management, and the support people needed emotionally was not burdensome. Being a featured instructor was a new experience. I've taught at retreats before, but usually as a small bonus class. This time I got to teach the first and last classes. Making sure I was fully prepared to teach and critique occupied a large portion of my time. I was still able to turn my focus to SLSC at various points during the retreat. In fact I referenced SLSC frequently while preparing my classes.

I had an enlightening moment during the final Q&A of the retreat. DongWon Song (who is a literary agent) was answering a question about the timeline for a book and mentioned that books spend 8 months in editorial. I realized that it has been about 8 months that I've been working on edits. This made me feel much better about my progress. Perhaps it is not that I'm slow, but that I was expecting too much?  I've been trying to push faster than was reasonable, in part because I want to get the project to all of you, but also because I need to see what financial support this book can give to my family once it is done. I'm letting financial anxiety affect my project timelines and that isn't ideal.

Related to that thought, I was listening to Mary Robinette Kowal talk about the novel she was working to edit, and I had another realization. When Mary Robinette finishes her edit, she will hand it off to someone else who will do another pass on it. During that time the project continues to move forward, but her brain is free to refresh and explore other projects. When I finish an edit pass, I hand off the project to ... me.  This means I don't get breathers between edits. Not only that, but I keep starting the next pass before I've fully finished the previous one. At the time it seemed like a way to make things go faster, but I think it just fragmented my focus and made things feel messy.

In order to clean up the mess, I need to bring everything into alignment on the same edit pass. I'll be creating a few pre-press copies that I hope to have at Gen Con, and I'll be hiring out the copy-edit pass on final text. (Yes I attempted to do a copy edit earlier, but my latest edit had some significant revision, so the copy edit needs to be done again.) During that copy edit pass I'll be able to take a breather and then come back with fresh eyes for the final layout.

I have definitely learned a lot about how to build good processes for this sort of nonfiction book. I will be applying my learnings to future projects in a way that hopefully helps me do better at not breaking my brain.

I have most of July before I leave for Gen Con. I plan to get a lot done. I'll give you all an update the week of July 14-18.

Thank you for following along with this project. Below are some photos from my retreat in Minnesota and another chapter for you to read.

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items for you. I've given you another chapter to read. Journals have arrived. I've made progress on warehouse clean up. And I finally got a handle on edits for the grief chapter. Your next update will be the week of June 23-27.

I'm happy to say that both the blank page and dot grid journals have arrived. The Lined page journals are on their way to me. I was quietly worried that these would be heavily impacted by tariffs, but the company which makes these has decided to handle the tariffs on their end instead of passing them on to me. That inevitably means higher prices on future purchases from them, but these orders were placed months ago and aren't affected. My project budget is intact. Here they are:

That shelf they're sitting on is a newly cleared space where I'll be storing all of the items that will ship out as part of this project.  The fact that I have a cleared shelf is a triumph. This unit sits in the jumble of a room which I showed you last time. It is still pretty jumbled, but progress is visible:

(The shelf with the journals is just out of frame on the left of the second picture.) And because I showed you the nook before, here is the current state of that as well:

Those deep shelves from the jumble room are perfect for storing boxes. These boxes will be used in shipping out orders. We have piles of boxes ready to go on that empty shelf, we just need to think through which boxes go where.

"Thinking through" has been the sticking point on so many projects lately, because in order to decide whether or not I need to keep an item I have to remember why I first acquired it and decide whether that use is still relevant. If I want to keep something I have to decide where it belongs instead of the weird spot it has been sitting. If I want to get rid of something I have to decide whether it is to be trashed or donated. Taking trips to actually trash or donate is yet another step. This week I finally did some hauling away of piles that had accumulated. I can finally see that I'm making progress rather than just moving stuff around to different piles.

Thinking through has also been the trouble with making progress on editing Structuring Life to Support Creativity. I've been working on the chapter about how Grief is a Creative Process. Most of the ideas I wanted were in there, but they lacked an organization that made sense. The chapter was as jumbled with ideas as the spaces of my warehouse. Then this past weekend the Locus fundraiser switched to fulfillment and suddenly I didn't have to pay as much attention to it. In that new brain space, I was able to see that I should pick one or two grief experiences to connect all of the thoughts to instead of throwing in fragments of every grief I've ever had. With that new framework, the chapter is coming together really nicely. I expect to have it in layout by the end of the week.   I particularly liked this paragraph:

Grief is the transformative gift that none of us want to receive, but if we grow with it, learn from it, and incorporate its lessons into our lives, we become stronger and better than we could otherwise be. Each time I encounter grief, I think “Ah yes, I really understand this now.” But the next grief always hits differently, and I must learn again.

After the Grief chapter I only have one more full chapter and then the conclusion. I am so close to being done with this edit. Of course then I put these chapters into layout and do another edit on paper. I'm scrambling to get to the part where everything is on paper because I can carry that with me when I leave for the Writing Excuses retreat in Minnesota on June 13. During the week I am teaching, I don't expect to get much done on SLSC, but the week after that, I am on site as support staff while the Writing Excuses hosts record episodes. While they're recording, I can be writing. I'm hoping I can push SLSC all the way through to where it is ready for print.

My next update to you is planned for the week of June 23-27 which is when I'm at the Minnesota retreat center. That might be an update full of reporting on what I got done, or it might just be full of pictures of birds and waterlilies. 

Thank you so much for your patience as I'm sorting through my jumble and getting this book done to deliver to you.
All the best,
Sandra Tayler

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items for you. I've given you another chapter to read. I'm still working through the last edits and layout. The blank, dot grid, and lined journals are on their way to me. Your next update will be the week of June 2-6.

I really wanted to arrive at this update being able to say that everything was off to print. Instead I am mired in too many projects all at once and all of the projects are stealing time from each other. The project with the largest footprint in May is the fundraiser for Locus Magazine. I'm deep in admin tasks to keep that running smoothly and help them raise the funds they need. (If you like gorgeous limited editions, you should definitely go look. They've got a pile of them listed.)

Another of my projects is shipping packages for a Kickstarter out of my warehouse space. A third is ordering merchandise which I need to make space for in my warehouse. Both of those lead to my fourth project which is making sense out of the terrible jumble which has rendered my warehouse difficult to use. Here is one room of the warehouse jumble:

There is merchandise stacked on top of convention signage. Scratch and Dent books on the shelf and the floor. Old art, old prototypes, random stacks. It is several layers deep in things that I needed to get out of the way so that I could have space to work on something else. I've been using this same warehouse for twelve years now and the accumulation of unconsidered objects is... impressive. I've reached the point where I have to consider them. Everything needs official homes. Or it needs to be banished. In order to do that I have to stop making use of the random shelving I already have on hand and instead scour the spaces bare so that I can begin planning a set up that make sense. Today we took this complete mess of a nook:

And ripped out the weird, constructed-from-scrap-wood shelving on both sides. We now have this bare space:

Next we'll instill some of that deep shelving from the first photo and actually organize the random piles of shipping boxes that are currently stacked in random spots all over the warehouse.

What does this warehouse project have to do with Structuring Life to Support Creativity? One of the things I need to make space to receive are the books, notebooks, and journals associated with this project. On a more meta level, the process I'm going through with my jumble of a warehouse feels important and useful. Because it is so easy for my life (and yours) to accumulate patterns and habits that made sense at one time, but no longer serve me. It happens so slowly that I don't realize how convoluted my process has become until the day that shipping a single package requires walking to one room for the box, a different room for the keychain, a third location for the books, and a fourth location for the packing paper. Oh, and all of those locations require either walking a narrow path between other stuff, or literally stepping over other stuff. 

Sometimes I have to clean up, even though I'm already over booked. Which is where I'm at right now. I'm in the middle of book edits, and warehouse clean up, and fundraiser support, and shipping, and project management, all at once. 

It makes sense that I haven't gotten as much done on SLSC as I wanted to. But I still feel guilty about it. And I'm making plans to shuffle the priorities a bit so that SLSC lands list first thing in the morning every day. 

I'll report back on my progress in a few weeks. I'll have another update and another chapter for you the week of June 2-6. 
Thank you so much for your patience while I wrestle my way out of being so jumbled.
All the best,
Sandra

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items for you. I've given you another chapter to read. (It is on time scheduling and project management, which feels very relevant to me right now!) Your next update will be the week of May 12-16.

I need to keep my update today very short because I'm surrounded by urgent deadlines. One of those deadlines is trying to get SLSC off to print in time so that I can have physical books to sell at Gen Con in August.  I'm pushing to get it done as fast as I can.

I'm a little more than a month out from the Writing Excuses Retreat in Minnesota. (You can still get tickets here.) I'm really looking forward to attending this again, particularly since I get to be an instructor this year.   I'll be teaching Learning to Believe in the Value of Your Own Work and Maintaining Creative Momentum. Those classes join several Worldbuilding sessions, a short story practicum, and Finding the Path from Idea to Story. Class time also includes small group break out sessions where you can get critiques, but also lots of free time for people to wander the trails and do their own writing.  I loved the location last year.

I even got to design some self-led activities for writers that help people not just get word count, but also rest and store up creative energy to take home with them. Retreats are a wonderful way to reset, but my class on Momentum is placed last because at home is where the real creative work has to happen.
If this retreat sounds good to you, we could use a few more ticket sales to reach the optimum group size to build community.  Get more details and buy tickets here.

By the time I get to June I'm really going to need a breather. In the next few weeks I've got some urgent home repairs, helping launch the Locus Magazine annual fundraiser, shipping packages for one Kickstarter, placing merchandise orders for another, and a smattering of other tasks.  Life does not stop and I've still got to finish editing SLSC, so I'm trying to make sure I spend at least 30 minutes on the book in the morning before I get tangled up in all of the other things. Hopefully I also get a work session it later in the day, but at least I'm getting something.
Life feels a lot like this gif. (Hopefully Backerkit lets you see it move.)

There is so much more I want to tell you, about the book, the process, the joys of making this book, the stresses. Instead I think I need to get back to spinning plates. The one on the end is about to fall.
I'll send you another update in two weeks when I'll be past some of these urgent deadlines.

Thank you so much for being part of this project!
Sandra

Greetings Backers,

TL;DR: No action items for you.  I've been testing pens on paper and I've got some preliminary layout to show you.  If you have questions or concerns about anything relating to your order please email [email protected]. I'm giving you all another chapter to read. The chapter can be accessed by clicking over to Backerkit and logging in.   Your next update will be the week of April 28 - May 1. Details below.

Details:

It has been a very stressful few weeks for people (like me) who work with Chinese based companies to get products manufactured.  One of the reasons I love working with my printer in China is how proactive they are about solving problems and how precise they are with producing products. I want to continue to work with them. They've saved my projects from huge errors and delivered top quality items.  The chaotic announcements of tariffs, changing of tariffs, and rescinding of tariffs has played havoc with business planning. It is very difficult to budget a project if the cost you'll have to pay doubles while the product is in transit. This is the situation for anyone who put a shipment on a boat anytime in the past month.  I know of people who are choosing to warehouse their projects in China until there is a stable set of costs and they can do math about whether they can afford them. If the margins are slim, some projects will end up being pulped because that is the easiest way to cut losses. 

Here is the good news for this project: Bound paper goods (like books) are exempt from the new tariffs. This is because the US President has invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the tariffs and country based reciprocal tariffs by declaring a “national emergency”. The IEEPA includes a specific exemption clause in the Berman Amendment that protects publications, both commercial and otherwise, from its regulations, ensuring U.S. citizens' right to access information. As a result, even if tariffs increase, printed books will remain exempt as long as the IEEPA is used as the legal basis.
(I have learned a LOT more about tariffs and exemptions this week than I really wanted to have to know.)

I still get to work with my preferred printer to produce this book for you. The Custom Designed Notebooks will be shifted to their Maylasia plant because Journals are not exempted.  I'll keep you posted about whether that shift will create a change in the delivery timeline.

I tested various types of pens on the paper that will be used for the custom notebooks. I wanted to make sure that it will be nice to write on and will support various inks without smearing. The paper does really well!  The only pen which had a smearing problem past 30 seconds was the dip pen, which is due to the nature of dip pens and not a flaw of the paper.

I'm also working on layout for the book this week. I use InDesign as my layout tool. In this

Immediately after grabbing that screenshot I realized I did not have the section title on the left hand page, so I updated that. I also realized that InDesign had the wrong "workspace" selected. So you can see a difference in available tools between the first screenshot and the second.

I tend to work in only the Typography workspace because I've learned exactly where all the tools are located. In the other workspaces I feel lost.

Here is a different page spread in InDesign

One thing that is very important when working layout is to recognize that the blue and red guidelines affect how you view the page and they won't be in the final. So I always export to make sure I'm seeing what the reader will see.

The pages look different without the guides. I can already see some problems I want to fix.

1. The top of page titles are much too close to the body text. This is visually confusing. I need to create separation here.
2. This header needs editing to be more like a header and less like a question.
3. I need to make sure that the page number placement isn't too close to the edges of the page. 
4. This is two lines of a paragraph floated onto the next page. If it were only one line that would be an "orphan" line and I would definitely have to move it. You never want a single line of a paragraph floating by itself at the bottom or top of a page. In this case I still might want to consolidate so that this bullet list paragraph stays together. 

There are lots of small decisions that can really affect the look and feel of a book. I get to make lots of those decisions in the next few weeks. 

That's my update for today. I'll update you again the week of April 28-May 1 after I've returned from a family trip. Thank you for being part of my project!
Sandra