This week I learned how to work with some of my Kindle books. Some of the Kindle books didn't have a table of contents, some didn't have indexes, some didn't have useful links at all. 

So I found that if I book mark a page, and then click on the book with the bookmark, it opens up a page similar to the list you get when you do a search, but in the list, you have sentences from the page that was bookmarked.

In my Side by Side Chinese and English Grammar by C. Frederick Farell etal, published by MacGraw-Hill, I found that I bookmarked pages where the way the Chinese language differed from English as well as some pages useful for constructing my novel I'm writing. Also, in the MacGraw-Hill Chinese Dictionary and Guide, I found I had to book mark the English-Chinese dictionary by each page of the alphabet for ease of finding things. You'd think that they would want the online version to be as useful or more useful than the paper copy. This same version could use each of the broken mark page to be findable on the search, but this doesn't occur. I would recommend that each of these have a chapter mark. Sure, that is a lot of work since the broken marks count goes up to 25 marks and the number of words up to 2000, but I would find having both there very helpful. Some of the note making I used here will show up in my essay.

I also marked notes on the story I'm using primarily in my essay, "One Thousand Years of Good Prayers" by Yiyun Li. I found that when you copy and paste from a Kindle book that the Kindle reader automatically builds the reference for you, this is wonderful help. I also worked with paper, collecting references from "The Geography of Thought" by Richard E. Nesbitt, who writes on how attention, perception, language, and correlation by people from Asian countries differ than from Western cultures. He also talks about how the mind set of bilingual and people familiar with both countries could be set by using cultural prompts. He also talks about the errors one makes given one mindset or the other. For data and process analysts the differences between the two are akin to object-oriented programming versus process-oriented programming, which I think would probably alter the results for those people with training in these areas.

The essay is about 1500 words at the moment and Evelyn Conlon, my mentor for the semester, has said that I needn't turn it in until the last packet goes in. I have two other topic areas I want to cover as a contrast and compare that will help connect my notes from memoir authors Brian Leyden who wrote "The Home Place", Ross Skelton who wrote "Eden Halt", and some others and some of the political data I have. I think I'll turn in the start of the essay anyway just so I don't get thrown out for breaking rules or something.

I worked on finalizing the golf book, the index is a much more timely task than I supposed, but the good news was for me, that I could code the marks on each chapter then merge into a single document, then create the index and test it for completeness.

This week my reading mostly consisted of rereading previously read books, but I did start "The Wandering Earth" by Cixin Liu, a classic of science fiction. 

Art Jonak had an Empire Avenue mission today, to tweet a quote. I also had an enquiry about doing some freelance work that I responded to with some reservations. I like the quote and then started worrying, am I being focused enough? Are my mentors worried that I'm not paying enough attention to my novel I've outlined? Here's the quote:

I have to admit, that I usually work one item through until completion, depending on what I think has the highest pay off. In this case, I've worked on my golf book to near completion and so when I have a break, where I can feel in the proper happy, kooky golfer attitude the book demands, I go back and work to finish it.

My illustrator provided me a first sample illustration that made me more motivated to complete it. I spent yesterday, putting all the chapter in one document, and formatting it to submission standard. I also cleaned up some of my other stories and I'm working on cleaning up an essay I wrote in my memoir class to be more consistent overall and to meet up with two potential markets.

I guess I am putting off until tomorrow what I could be doing today, related to my novel. But writing is really a moody business. You need to go with the flow of how you feel. This is one reason that I keep lists of scenes I plan to write, because to be able to write every day, you need to have enough emotional variety to match your mood of the day. 

Many people think that because I have my husband help me edit, that I don't edit my work, not so. I miss things because I don't tend to be a detail-oriented person, which is why a second pair of eyes is essential. Editing tasks I'm working on with the golf book include:

1. checking for a consistent set of features that I use in all the illustrations
2. examining paging so that I don't have two sentences on one page before a page break
3. checking for consistent POV--I've written half the chapters in present tense and half in past tense
4. checking that my check list of content has been included in the text
5. matching my plan to the content (chapter names, character names, locales)
6. spell check and grammar check
7. making sure the reader knows who is speaking
8. keeping track of pages and trying to keep chapters fairly consistent
9. putting in a table of contents
10. starting to outline what I think belongs in an index. 

Just one comment I have about Kindle books--I detest Kindle books without an index or table of contents. I'm reading one with a set of chapters and a set of subchapters and the latter were not marked and anytime I flip off page accidently, I have to page through many, many pages to get back to where I was which is very, very annoying. 

The teary days are best saved for those scenes where your character is hurting for some day, for instance.

Writer's are also supposed to push themselves to send poems, articles, and short stories out on a regular schedule. I feel pretty pushed because I am challenging myself to write longer, more researched essays and it is taking up more of my time that I could be putting into five article a day or three poems a day or something like that. I think that if I persist with the essay orientation that in the long term it will pay off for a more mature market for my writing. And every time a writer takes on a new writing study to boost their skills, they are slower than normal at first until it becomes easier and easier to do.

I wouldn't be working on these for a few days if I wasn't sure that I could pull together a packet for my mentor, Evelyn Conlon next week.

So I worry about what others may be worried about. But I have worked large, complex projects now for thirty years. I still underestimate my time but I have fourteen pages of a possible twenty ready to go. 

Writers that are unable to multitask will have a difficult time if they can't write the next novel while editing previous novels per publisher demands, etc.