At the time of this writing, there are 40 quotations by YOU in the book. YOU means Wilsonia cabin owners.

Who knew that getting other people to do my writing would be so very difficult?? Look at this list:

1. Ask for quotes
2. Ask again, because not enough people responded.
3. Ask again, because people didn’t understand that I am not looking for history but for details about cabin life. Details, stories, thoughts, stuff about cabin life today.
4. Edit, because people submit paragraphs and pages in response to a request for “a few lines“. (Editing is fun – if I had a career do-over, I might choose to be an editor.)
5. Email the edited quotes, because I need people’s permission to rearrange their words if I plan to put their names on it.
6. Put the quotes in the book, mess with 2 different typestyles and 2 different formats, then scoot and resize and rearrange the page to accommodate the quotes. (This is not fun – if I had a career do-over, I would not choose computer operator.)
7. Decide if there are too many or if the subject matter is too redundant or if I am putting a dumb quote in because I really enjoyed listening to the person tell me about his life at the cabin or because I really like that person.
8. Toughen up a little inside so that when someone gets upset with me at not including his quote after the book is published, then I won’t be crushed by their disappointment.
9. Wonder if I should take all the quotes received that don’t fit and make an extra page at the end of the book. Or the middle. Or the beginning. Or on a hand-out sheet.
10. Decide that #9 is a poor idea, especially the handout sheet.

Anyone recognize this picnic table yet or the cabin behind it??

A picture is worth a thousand words. This means my book will be the equivalent of 265,000 + words. Is that long for a book? Normally they are measured in terms of pages. The Cabins of Wilsonia will be about 168 pages long, perhaps a little less.

Here is what words are being written or have been completed:

1. dedication
2. preface
3. introduction
4. descriptions of some street names
5. editing the quotations (SEND ME YOUR STORIES NOW Time is running out!)
6. acknowledgements
7. conclusion

Sounds simple enough, but look at the things I have to consider:

1. Accuracy of information
2. Accurate interpretation of people’s intentions in telling their stories
3. Good writing skills (I have an editor, a professional who edits for a living.)
4. ZERO tolerance for typos
5. Consistent design within the written parts – Oh My Goodness, Adobe InDesign is the most non-intuitive program ever devised. All those options mean there are zillions of ways to make errors of inconsistency within the design and zillions of opportunities to forget how one did a thing so no idea how to undo the thing.
6. Proper placement in a book. Did you know that one of the marks of a self-published book is improper placement of information?

The Cabins of Wilsonia may be self-published, but any Joe Average looking through it isn’t going to know that “Cabinart Books” is just little ol’ me. 

Perkins tries to sit on my lap when the laptop is there. This hinders my typing. (And this photo was taken last spring – may we PLEASE have some rain NOW, PLEASE??)