Checking Your Book for the Time

Art Spiegelman was probably ahead of his time when his publisher produced a CD-ROM of The Complete Maus in the early ’90s, and he’s still combining media to create and publish his comics, but as for switching to all digital, he says,

“It’s too soon. Right now anything made for the iPad is like performance art. I’m not interested in performance art. Comics are too hard to make to be done for such a passing blip. When it stabilizes, I’ll look at it. Right now, I’m very happy to download a comic from the digital comics museum and put it on my iPad to read.

 

“I always have been and will remain someone who loves real, 3D, substantial books. And I don’t believe that it’s a wistful, nostalgic interest like vinyl collectors. It’s not the same thing.”

He’s clear that digital is ideal for keeping textbooks up to date, and at the same time, he isn’t surprised that graphic novels are thriving in print. (Yes, we now have print, as we have acoustic guitar or piano for their originals.) Art Spiegelman is also interested in the way our immersion in various media changes our reading experience, as when he checks the corner of his print book for a clock.  You can read Brian Heater’s interview at Publishers Weekly.

(Sidenote: Spiegel is German for mirror. Don’t you love it when the name fits?) And Art is looking forward to those who will rediscover the physical book in a few hundred years and be amazed by its possibilities. Me too!

I do recommend a print version for journals, other personal and family artifacts, timeless wisdom, and creative writing. Our racing technology is indispensable in creation and performance, but in high tech products, there is both more security (you can store copies of manuscript securely online) and more risk. Acid free paper will last a few hundred years, while that elementary school project from the son who’s now in college? Well, it’s on VHS. I wonder if we’ll have technology wills, where we list our endangered artifacts so descendants will know what to transfer to the next medium. And more importantly, which of our artifacts will they cherish enough to preserve?

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All rights reserved. WritersResort.com

Brian Heater. “Art Spiegelman on the Future of the Book.” Publishers Weekly. Web. 11 October 2011. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/comics/article/49046-art-spiegelman-on-the-future-of-the-book.html

“The Power of Your Past”

My birthday present from Berrett-Koehler

The week of my birthday, I won a book! (The Berrett-Kohler newsletter I’ve recommended to you has a challenge, and I entered.) And because I was in transition, stepping from one year into my next, and even from one job toward another, I chose John P. Schuster’s The Power of Your Past. I’m still enjoying it, savoring its reflective exercises.

While many are preaching at us to live only in the present, John warns against amnesia. He agrees that we should live in today, but not without learning from yesterday and claiming its gifts. He says, “It is about gathering important insights, and the wisdom that comes before informed action.” He advocates that we not misuse the past, either romanticizing/ minimizing the past, nor getting stuck in victimization, but instead, that we reflect on our past experiences and mine them to refine our identity, remember our dreams, and clarify our choices.

John outlines a process to “Recall, Reclaim, and Recast” the past. He recognizes that not all minds work alike, so he offers graphic organizers for several approaches. He has us identify the settings of our lives and consider the places where we did get stuck (what he calls compressions) and where we found encouragement or achievement (his evocations). That alone is a great start toward understanding where we have healthy relationships with our pasts and where there’s more treasure to be found.

And another gift for me: the book is well-edited and well-designed. Too often I get distracted by my own editing brain. So far, I’ve found only two suggestions. (1) I would left justify epigrams, instead of right. (2) I’d simplify some of John’s compound, complex questions. For example, here’s the first question: “How well do I integrate the gifts of my body, my mind, my will, my feelings, my sense of play, my enthusiasm for learning, in a way that helps me to be a well-balanced person?” (Say what?) So I wrote out the question, realized the point was whether I’m well balanced, and felt relief that I wouldn’t need a week to answer it.

This book is the perfect length–just enough examples for memories to bubble up, accompanied by simple processes to inspire reflection and insightful writing. It’s warm, wise, and welcoming.

Don’t skip the footnotes. I always read them–academic editor training is forever present–and I like to read notes all at once, after I’m well into a book. John’s footnotes are the perfect blend of citations, additional readings, and conversation.

The Power of Your Past made a fabulous birthday gift. And yes, I’m already beginning the new job, the new editing projects, and one of my favorite years so far.

Thanks, B-K!

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011

Handwritten E-mail

Handwritten E-mail–what a lovely idea! Pilot, maker of traditional pens, is working on it. It isn’t perfected yet–this is still beta testing–but they have a beautiful goal. I suggest you watch the demo video first:

The demo shows cursive handwriting easily edited and masterfully connected. Not so. I’m known for my calligraphy and its influence on my everyday handwriting. You wouldn’t guess that from this sample:

My Pilot handwriting sample 1. Translation: "This is the first draft--and it looks nothing like the connected, smooth, and polished version in the demo!

So I tried printing.

My Pilot handwriting sample 2: Translation: This is a new scan, of my italic rather than cursive. You can see that precision sizing is important and that an accidental space is appearing before each lower case o.

It took four scans to get this much clarity and to realize that the adjustment feature does exist. You click on each letter before you save the font.

"Here's the fourth attempt, printing with a thick pen, then adjusting every letter a little thinner. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Naturally, though, it hardly resembles my actual handwriting."

My attempt to write larger and more clearly improved the spacing between letters, but the lines overlapped because the leading (space between lines) doesn’t change. My “y” was missing, so that one was especially awkward and it turned out too thin.

It was time-consuming and not satisfying in its results, but it was fun to try on a lazy Saturday morning. I made it an artist’s date. If you want to try it, go ahead and read their instructions, then follow my additional tips for you:

1. Print several copies of the template. Sure, you’re more likely to get it right the first time because you have these tips–and if you nail it, you’ll have extra ones to share with a friend.
2. Use a thick marker.
3. Print neatly, with large open spaces wherever spaces should be.
4. Be as consistent in size and pen stroke as possible.
5. Be consistent in your letter placement baseline. If I tried this again, I’d mark baselines on one copy of the template and place that under the one I’m writing on.
6. Skip the Webcam upload. Use a scanner. (I would have tried the digital camera method as well if I could find my camera’s USB cord.)
7. Adjust each letter by clicking on it, and move the slider bar to the left, making each letter slightly thinner.
8. If a letter appears to be missing, use the slider bar to find it. It’s usually there, only hiding.
9. Use the eraser for any extra marks that mysteriously appear. That’s what happened with my lower case O in sample 2.
10. Fill sparingly. Maybe a stylus or an Etch-a-Sketch artist could manage this, but on a trackpad, I got only ugly pixelated lines, especially on diagonals.
11. Starting over a couple of times isn’t a bad strategy.

After you send your handwritten e-mail, this message appears:

This project is ingenious. By the time you fail to duplicate your handwriting, you’re downright eager to grasp a real pen and paper and write something beautiful. And you’ve just seen that Pilot name how many times? If you know me well, you know I often encourage pen and paper. It’s a personal touch when you send it to another, and it touches your own subconscious, intuitive, creative, receiving soul.

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Images from Pilot Handwriting and samples of my own experiments.

Disclosure: I have no relationship with Pilot, but only discovered this through my usual online serendipity.