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What's Geoff been doing for a month?
Mar. 12th, 2010 08:43 amI see to my horror that it's been more than a month since my last post. That's longer than I like, and I'll try to do better in future. What's been keeping me away?
First and foremost, a ton of work. January and February always seem unusually busy for some reason. Possibly it's just back-pressure built up over the holidays?
Second, and by no means to be neglected, I've been revising Effective Onscreen Editing. That's been a huge undertaking: it's a 700-page book, after all, and on top of that, I had to reconcile the differences between three different versions of Word, which isn't trivial. I think I finally succeeded. The eBook is now available, and I'm just starting to proofread the print version. That should go faster, but probably still not fast. I'm soooo ready to be done now.
Taken all together, that's meant some awfully long days (8 AM to 8 PM more often than I like). By the end of the day, there were only enough neurons left to deal with TV. (I used to joke that "sitcom" is short for "sit comatose". The past few months, that's been less of a joke than one might wish.)
In addition, and in keeping with my hope to get more involved in fiction, I've resolved to critically review all the short stories I've been reading—both to tell the authors that at least one person is reading their work critically, and to gain practice at disassembling stories to see what makes them tick. The hope is that doing so will make me a better writer too.
These days, I mostly read Asimov's and F&SF. My reviews of stories in the previous and current issues of Asimov's appear in the magazine's forum, and I'll eventually add them to my own Web site so they all appear in one place, one issue at a time. For F&SF, I'll be starting with the current issue in a week or so, once I finish the current Asimov's.
And, of course, there are other commitments: my quarterly information design column for STC, the quarterly newsletter I publish for them, the opportunity to teach in Beijing this fall, and on and on anon.
That's the scoop, and I'm hoping to finish revising my editing book soon enough that I can return to fiction (there's that YA novel waiting to be revised, and many short stories calling my name). Stay tuned!
First and foremost, a ton of work. January and February always seem unusually busy for some reason. Possibly it's just back-pressure built up over the holidays?
Second, and by no means to be neglected, I've been revising Effective Onscreen Editing. That's been a huge undertaking: it's a 700-page book, after all, and on top of that, I had to reconcile the differences between three different versions of Word, which isn't trivial. I think I finally succeeded. The eBook is now available, and I'm just starting to proofread the print version. That should go faster, but probably still not fast. I'm soooo ready to be done now.
Taken all together, that's meant some awfully long days (8 AM to 8 PM more often than I like). By the end of the day, there were only enough neurons left to deal with TV. (I used to joke that "sitcom" is short for "sit comatose". The past few months, that's been less of a joke than one might wish.)
In addition, and in keeping with my hope to get more involved in fiction, I've resolved to critically review all the short stories I've been reading—both to tell the authors that at least one person is reading their work critically, and to gain practice at disassembling stories to see what makes them tick. The hope is that doing so will make me a better writer too.
These days, I mostly read Asimov's and F&SF. My reviews of stories in the previous and current issues of Asimov's appear in the magazine's forum, and I'll eventually add them to my own Web site so they all appear in one place, one issue at a time. For F&SF, I'll be starting with the current issue in a week or so, once I finish the current Asimov's.
And, of course, there are other commitments: my quarterly information design column for STC, the quarterly newsletter I publish for them, the opportunity to teach in Beijing this fall, and on and on anon.
That's the scoop, and I'm hoping to finish revising my editing book soon enough that I can return to fiction (there's that YA novel waiting to be revised, and many short stories calling my name). Stay tuned!