At work I have been editing… not sure if that’s the right term… a few of the books my boss has written. This started out when I noticed one of the books he wrote is no longer available on Amazon. It was done back around 2011 through Amazon’s self-publishing arm, then called CreateSpace. The other two books in his series were transferred over to the new arm, Kindle Digital Publishing, but one is just listed as unavailable. I reached out to Amazon’s tech support, but since I had no access to what the original password was, and nobody here seemed to even know who set it up, or who I might contact to see if I could get it, they were less than helpful. I had the same issue with our webhosting, but they helped me out by verifying my credentials with the company, and just resetting the password. The helpful fellows at Amazon suggested that if I could give them the password, they could certainly get me in. Well, yes, I’m sure that’s true, but the issue is, you see… I don’t HAVE the password…well in that case, there was nothing they could do.

I was able to transfer the two books that were online to a new KDP account, but the dead book, I apparently had no access to.

Well, this struck me as a really good opportunity to learn some new skills. Adobe’s creative suite contains a program called InDesign, and it is the industry standard for putting books together. I’d been through some tutorials, but never had the opportunity to really use it. And here was an opportunity presenting itself nicely. So I decided to just recreate the book that we no longer had access to, and load that up.

So as I was going through the book, there were a lot of ten-year old links and references. I updated all those. So there was some light actual editing that I did. I also checked text and found some typos, etc. Then I spent time just recreating the book; flowing text, linking graphics, adding footnotes and the index. I also recreated the cover because… well, I’m an artist and I’m just compelled by my nature to want to add my own design to the work.  

Once that was done, I had an updated book with a new cover, and that of course meant that the other two books needed the same treatment. So I did the second book, which I just finished up.  

And here’s where I come to the point of all this…. The second book is about writing good patent applications. And in the section on writing style, my boss mentioned a book called The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. I had not heard of this, but I was interested. I looked it up and thought it seemed like something I should get, since I do a lot of writing.

Writing for me, is the way I process through my thoughts on things. It started with my engaging people online in debates. I quickly learned that sloppy thinking would get picked apart by those who were not of my opinions, so I began to put a lot of thought into what I was writing, and how I would express it.

At this point, it’s not so much to convince people of something, or defend a position, though that is a part of what I do at times; I write things out so I can work through the issues for myself. As I write, I have to articulate my thoughts. Most of us have an intuitive understanding of the things we believe. An inability to articulate those beliefs doesn’t necessarily mean they’re wrong, but it can make us sound muddled when we try to express why we believe what we believe.

I’ve always appreciated the people in my life who were able to articulate things to me. I grasp that they can do so because they understand what they are talking about at a more organized level. They have processed through the things they know, and can articulate them in a coherent manner. That’s what I want to be able to do, and the way I work at it is through writing things out. As I write, I’ll often see holes in my thinking (I’m certain I miss some too), or I see other issues that need to be addressed.

As much as I enjoy writing, and hope that I’m reasonable at it, I read the things some other write, and I think: I want to write that well! So… accordingly, I bought the little book, and I’ll have to go through it and see if I can clean up my style.