A New Project

I write a lot more than Steve does. But he does write. He has two blogs plus a favorite Facebook site he contributes to frequently. After 81 years, he still has stories to tell.

What he needs more of is organization. I'm better at that. So he asked me for a favor. Could I find a way to work with him to organize his stories into a single unit? After some discussion, we agreed that what he really wants is hard copies, collated, which he can give out to the people he cares about. It starts with his kids, and spreads out to younger generations and friends. In a nutshell, self-publishing, home computer style.

There are a few issues, so far mostly surmountable. Let's start with the fact that we have different computer systems with different software and terminology. He can't work with mine. I can't work with his. When I try to explain a concept in my computer, it comes in different terminology in his. We did figure out that "copy-paste" works for both of us. I'm just way more familiar, not to mention I'm not fighting the back pain that sends him back to bed frequently.

A few years ago he was trying to do something with his blog and wound up losing (he thought) most or all of his previous writings.  So "High Empire" became "High Empire 2", some things got transferred, and some, miracle of miracles, were still on the first blog. Neither is fully collated with the other, so if you choose to read both, there will be a few repetitions, and some new on each. Or you can hope you're on "his list" and hope to read them all in some kind of order.

The title "High Empire" is named after his late father's first novel, in tribute to him. That's another story he tells but needs to write.  "You Know You Grew Up In Greeley When..." is the Facebook site, and "The Old Man Says" is what he writes under. It tells of long ago days when Greeley, CO was a much smaller town, a far cry from the Denver contiguous suburb it's becoming. The Colorado front range is fast connecting-into another version of the Eastern Seaboard Extended City, except with prairie instead of ocean on the east, and 14,000 foot tall Rockies at its back. Judging by Steve, nostalgia is the soul of the site.

During Steve's early nap, I organized the stories from his two blogs into a single unit to go to my printer. I recognized titles which were on both blogs, scanned them to be sure they were in fact identical, and created one many-page document. Each entry had a date, and they were in the order written, but in the format blogs use where the latest one is on top.The whole thing became a pdf file, then printed. Once he woke, he read them all, finding a few he'd not seen for years. Praise was effusive though the work hadn't been onerous.

I had questions, however, after printing them out. Did he want them in that order, or in the order in which he'd written them, i.e., earliest one first instead of last? And with all those pages, did he want page numbers? I know the computer program can do that. I just have to dig to find out where I saw that possibility in all the toolbars full of software I ignore, and figure out how to use it. Plus, of course, does that extra character per page have to fit in the same size of printed space, thus kicking everything one extra line down off each page? Or can it go, say, in a very bottom corner? There are places where I added space lines in order for a final sentence or the title to be on the same page as its story. Paragraphs carrying over I didn't worry about. But would I need to reformat? "Yes" in the sense of earliest written becoming first read. "Unknown" in terms of page numbering.

Then there was Facebook. I simply don't go there. (Nor Twitter /X either, among many popular sites. I could spend half my life online and then some if I hit those sites. After all, I already have 9 weather / climate sites bookmarked in one single folder which I check in on daily, and over a dozen in a financial folder. I've lost track of how many blogs I follow, or medical sites, or....

 So Steve would have to go in and scour his stuff on the Greeley site, do a copy-paste from FB to an email to me for each, from which I could transfer all that into something I could print off for him as well. Before he retired to his bed again, he transferred two over, mostly as a test to see whether FB had some prohibition against copying material from their site. He'd only be after his own, but we wouldn't know until we tried.

It worked. 

So now it's just a matter of him finding his time and comfort level (literally) to ferret out his writings there and scoot them to me. Plus there's the matter of one of his blog stories being "One of Two" without the "Two of Two" being written. 

That's the simple stuff. Then there's fastening each full unit together. Steve suggested staples before he felt how thick the first bit of printing is. I'm not even considering a cover set yet. Note I did this with poetry in the 80s. My choices of book binding were - I'll be kind to myself here - semi-effective. At best. Were I to repeat that with the same content, that was back in floppy-disc time, and I'd be retyping every single keystroke. There is no copy-paste, no electronic file, just hard copies. I'm trying to get Steve to understand his project is going to be EASY! Just maybe not the covers.