The Fiction Garage (2): Laying the Groundwork
Sorting out the wheat, the near-wheat, and the chaff from decades of storytelling
Before diving into the actual writerly-type project outlined in my previous post, I had some kinda dull, mechanical gruntwork to get out of the way. To wit: (a) finding the Webster stories to include; and (b) making their formats consistent for inclusion in a single anthology.
Here’s what’s been involved so far.
Simply finding the damn stories
Nearly all the stories featuring my Webster character were written starting in the late 1980s, and on through the ’90s. This spanned a range of computers, running a range of operating systems: often, sometimes only, MS-DOS, various Windows versions (3.1 through 95, etc., on up to Windows 10/111, and also various Linux versions.
On top of this, unsurprisingly, I’ve also swum around in the waters of multiple word-processing software packages and versions of same: WordPerfect, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, LibreOffice.
Finally, of course, as with most writers, a given “story” for me has never been a single identifiable thing; instead, each exists in multiple versions… their filenames not always readily suggesting which is the most recent (and presumably, uh, “done”).
I’ve been a decent steward of my writing over the years: backing it up, transferring it all to the new computers as I needed to…
The downside of all this, just like that of a hoarder of household items who relocates numerous times over the years, can be summarized: Where the hell did I put [that thing, that thing, you know: that thing I absolutely must have right now]…?
Well, the bottom line is that I think I’ve found all the Webster stories — and partial stories (like the one I featured at the top of that previous post). I’ve copied them all into the same folder on my computer. I’ve refreshed my memory of all the complete stories, and come up with something like a sequence for them. (This won’t be strictly chronological, for various reasons.)
…and then I moved on to the next tedious phase:
Making them all “look alike”
It’s well-nigh unbelievable the variety of “standard” looks-and-feels I employed over two-three decades. Consider:
Some publications to which I submitted the stories required only a fixed-font typeface (like Courier) or only Times New Roman (once upon a time: CG Times), or only one or the other, with all other fonts forbidden. Over time, thank the gods, they all seemed to relax a bit. And eventually, I got sick of everything but a font called Georgia…
…on top of which, some stories temporarily demanded a separate font for one reason or another. I might want to include an excerpt from an email message, say, so in order to make that text stand out from the surroundings, in whatever font, I’d create a paragraph — or individual word! or character! — in something bland and generic like Arial.
Straight quotes! Smart quotes! Double hyphens vs. em dashes! (And, especially in early stories: double spaces at the end of every sentence!)
Breaks between sections were marked via a crazy assortment of techniques: double hyphens, triple and quadruple hyphens, double em dashes, a string of asterisks…
Some documents were single-spaced, some double-spaced, some 1.5-spaces; some had one-inch margins, some 1.25-inch margins, and so on.
Some documents had page headers, some had page footers. (Mercifully, none had both.)
I could go on, but I won’t. (You’re welcome.) And I wouldn’t have to stress out about any of this, except for one consideration…
Aiming for “print”
The quotation marks there may alert you to my goal: the ultimate Webster, Unabridged anthology will be formatted like a book — specifically an e-book, to start. I’ll probably be using a software package called Calibre to do this: it’s been around for over fifteen years, runs on multiple kinds of computers and operating systems… and, most importantly, I’ve used it before for a few smaller projects.2
Preparing a document for publication as an e-book imposes different formatting constraints than, say, prepping to submit it to a traditional publisher— Well let me rephrase that: it removes a lot of constraints, and replaces them with new ones.
A principal issue: the e-book’s appearance is controlled by the person reading it, at least as much as by the book designer. You can adjust the font size and typeface of an e-book when you read it, you can tinker with the margins and line spacing, and so on. There are no “pages” in a true e-book.3
And I’m also, confess, a bit of a fuss-budget when it comes to how I want “my product” to look. I don’t want the reader to get used to seeing double hyphens in one chapter but em dashes in another. I want all my chapters to start on the same line onscreen as every other chapter does. And while I may not have access in designing an e-book to every font I might want to use, at least I can decide that this paragraph goes in a serif typeface, that chapter in a sans-serif. So yeah: I’m a proud fuss-budget.
But this time around, I’m setting forth into unfamiliar terrain, too: not just to produce an e-book, but to produce one which a reader may, if they choose, read as a book-book. This will eventually force me to deal with other questions, like paperback and/or hardback? what physical page size? make available only through Amazon, or via other booksellers?
But I’ll postpone those decisions. Now I’m eager to dive back into the important stuff, the stories themselves: the narratives, and the writing-as-written. I think — hope! — I came to know more about storytelling than I did when most of these stories were written… and I think (hope!) I may know more about assembling words into phrases and sentences.
I’ll soon know!
I’m sure I’m omitting a version or two; Microsoft’s never been shy about changing versioning systems.
By “a true e-book” I mean I’m not considering a PDF (say) as such, no matter what some may think. Just because you can open a file to read it on a computer doesn’t make it an “e-book”; you constantly have to fiddle with fitting the thing onscreen, for example. The convenience to the book designer, in other words, is offset by the inconvenience to the reader.
I relate.