The Great Critic has sat in patient judgement over the thoughts, opinions, and art of countless generations of thinkers and artists. He observes everything ever produced, and renders his judgement in a universal language that has always been understood, and will always be understood.
The Great Critic is nothing less, and nothing more, than Silence. (If you add a comma to the title of the post, you will see it is "Silence, the Great Critic.")
When we create and share our work and receive no reaction, none whatsoever, that is the sound of the Great Critic, and it is not easy criticism to hear. When the Great Critic has passed judgement, over and over again, on your life's work, it is hard not to think that he is also passing judgement on your life.
But, life itself is loud, and The Great Critic cannot pass judgement on life itself. There is never a moment when his stinging judgement can be heard. There is always, at least, the breath. The beating of your heart. So, even if the Great Critic has been harsh about your writing or your work, take heart and listen to the resounding non-silence which is your life, and rejoice.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Silence The Great Critic
Publishing an ebook on Amazon - 2010 edition
A friend asked me to publish an ebook for him. I agreed.
In initial Google search turned up a lot of (expensive, in terms of wasted time) dead-ends:
The manuscript was in a combination of (custom) InDesign and EPS - which I (imperfectly, I'm sure) converted to PDF. I dutifully added some meta data, generated the file, and then tried to publish via the Creator interface. I waited expectantly...
...to find out that mobi-pocket accounts are deprecated, and the entire process has been stream-lined and simplified.
It's called the Amazon Digital Text Platform and you don't need an ISBN (it's optional), you don't need to download conversion software, and you can use your existing Amazon user account. (Granted you have to add some data, like your Social Security number and a mailing address for royalty checks, but still...)
I had to fill out some metadata again, but it only took about 15 minutes to setup the account and upload the PDF of the manuscript. Amazon now says that the book is "in review" and theoretically you'll be able to buy it on Kindle any time now.
[Update: the book is published]
In initial Google search turned up a lot of (expensive, in terms of wasted time) dead-ends:
- Askville - where Steve Weber (who writes books and a blog on self-publishing) tells you you need an ISBN block, a mobi-pocket account, and the mobi-pocket software. circa 2006? NO LONGER ACCURATE
- Fonerbooks - where someone very nicely lays out the ISBN landscape, and how to deal with the Bowker monopoly, and the connection to "Books in Print". crica 2005 (but apparently still valid). Bowker reminds me strongly of ARIN!
- LighteningSource - which is really a dead-end for me because I don't want print-on-demand.
The manuscript was in a combination of (custom) InDesign and EPS - which I (imperfectly, I'm sure) converted to PDF. I dutifully added some meta data, generated the file, and then tried to publish via the Creator interface. I waited expectantly...
...to find out that mobi-pocket accounts are deprecated, and the entire process has been stream-lined and simplified.
It's called the Amazon Digital Text Platform and you don't need an ISBN (it's optional), you don't need to download conversion software, and you can use your existing Amazon user account. (Granted you have to add some data, like your Social Security number and a mailing address for royalty checks, but still...)
I had to fill out some metadata again, but it only took about 15 minutes to setup the account and upload the PDF of the manuscript. Amazon now says that the book is "in review" and theoretically you'll be able to buy it on Kindle any time now.
[Update: the book is published]
A drawback to writing your own word-processor
So I wanted to write a word-processor whose native format was plaintext or close to it. This was to support version control, portability, and tool unification. I hacked something together in an evening and have used it for a couple of stories. To get a PDF you do this:
The big drawback is that, after printing, it's almost impossible to integrate edits made in pen back into the plaintext. It's a drawback I just didn't expect, which makes it interesting! With an ordinary word-processor you have 1-1 page correspondence, and you locate the edit spatially. This is totally lost with my method, and it's a deal breaker.
The only way is to scan the text for the nearest heading and then for paragraph breaks and then keywords. It's slow and difficult.
Interestingly, this is also something of a problem with Google Docs, which also does not render page breaks.
One work-around is to render the textile text in the same shape as the printed page. I haven't tried this and I don't want to talk myself out of it as a solution, but it seems like this would be pretty difficult to do correctly. Another work-around would be to actually do the editing within the browser. Of course, there the problem is that I'm no longer using friendly tools.
For now the roll-your-own open technology wordprocessor for stories is on the backburner. But who knows? I might resurrect it.
- Write the story in Textile. Eclipse has an almost nice WYSIWYG editor for this.
- Load the story into my Viewer, which is a simple Ajax application that renders textile, applies CSS and generally gets it ready for printing.
- Print to PDF
The big drawback is that, after printing, it's almost impossible to integrate edits made in pen back into the plaintext. It's a drawback I just didn't expect, which makes it interesting! With an ordinary word-processor you have 1-1 page correspondence, and you locate the edit spatially. This is totally lost with my method, and it's a deal breaker.
The only way is to scan the text for the nearest heading and then for paragraph breaks and then keywords. It's slow and difficult.
Interestingly, this is also something of a problem with Google Docs, which also does not render page breaks.
One work-around is to render the textile text in the same shape as the printed page. I haven't tried this and I don't want to talk myself out of it as a solution, but it seems like this would be pretty difficult to do correctly. Another work-around would be to actually do the editing within the browser. Of course, there the problem is that I'm no longer using friendly tools.
For now the roll-your-own open technology wordprocessor for stories is on the backburner. But who knows? I might resurrect it.
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