Talent

For the last month, and sporadically over the next little bit, I'll be going over through the final stages of the production process of writing one red paperclip the book. I grew up around manufacturing. And worked more assembly lines as a kid than you can shake a stick at. (FYI - My parents ran a sweatshop garment factory in the basement of our house and employed more than their fair share of child labor.)(Not kidding.)(Don't worry - it was all legal and safe.) Anyhow, despite thoroughly understanding the production stages of such wonderful products as cable joe or Fiddy's favorite, 1188s, I never knew books had a production process. Proposal, first draft, second draft, copy edit, second copy edit with pictures, pre-production mock ups, galleys (whatever that means) and then some other copy just before they go to "final" production. I always thought books were one of those things that somebody just wrote. Somebody else.

And now I'm that somebody else doing things other people did. Which is fun. And I think the sentence after the next is amusing, if not anecdotal. Here it comes. When I was younger I absolutely hated to write book reports. I'd put it off to the last minute and kick and moan. My favorite book report was for the 1988 Guinness Book of World Records. I just said I'd read "about" 300 pages of the sucker and then listed my favorite facts. I forget what those favorite facts are now, but I'm sure they were awesome. Facts are like that.

So after watching Allan Wills' videos, I've realized I have zero talent for video production. It's one of those things that I think everyone with a blog thinks we should be good at, because with youtube and cameras with video settings, we all easily can. The difference is, Allan actually can. And it's great to see somebody doing something he's obviously good at and has a passion to do. Maybe for most people getting better at stuff is just a patience thing. Take for example my approach to this graphic. No, it's not a dumbed down purposely-childish design developed by an avant garde graphics design collective to unilaterally appeal to the childish yearnings in all of us to play games like bigger and better aka one red paperclip and strike a chord with people in such a way that they're more likely to purchase the book and increase sales and make the writer or and publisher happy and give a guy with a blog to pretend he knows what he's talking about sorta like every single all night paper he wrote in university. Not that at all. I just cracked open photoshop and used the paintbrush to write the letters in with the trackpad mouse on my laptop. It's WAY hack, but I couldn't be bothered to deal with figuring out how to make it look nicer. And it took me five minutes to find the paintbrush button. But somebody else is awesome at that stuff. Being awesome at stuff is sweet. But until one red paperclip the book is read, and enjoyed, I'll still be editing with paranoia and be ultra unsure it's as good as I'd like it to be and will forever be re-writing sentences until somebody says stop. That sentence two sentences ago was great huh? Kyle