writing – Page 2 – kayLorraine

Book formatting fun

My brain has been full of neurology and neurobiology and neuropsychology for quite a while, now. And it’s nice to take a break and focus on something as straightforward and objective as making sure that all the 10.5pt Caslon540BT fonts got changed to 12pt Constantia. I’m sure it doesn’t sound thrilling to everyone out there, but to me, it is. Read on, if you’re of like mind — or at least intrigued about why something so “dull and dry” would invigorate me.

I took a break from reviewing and editing this morning to figure out some formatting issues. The font I had chosen originally for its nice look turned out to be too fine and faint in print. The printing didn’t translate well, and the headings actually got changed to smaller fonts than in my original, so that’s no good.

I’m sure it doesn’t sound thrilling to everyone out there, but to me, it is.

There’s something very fulfilling about coming up with the right font. Setting the right margins. Finding a visually pleasing balance between a chapter heading, a leading quote, and the text. Tracking down all the improperly indented first paragraphs… resetting styles… making the often difficult choice between italics or bold or a combination of both.

Each font handles things differently. And how things look in print is often different from how they look on the laptop screen. So, it’s always important to get a proof copy up front, to make sure your vision carries through to the finished product.

Print-on-demand can be tricky stuff. They can replace your custom fonts with their own. They can trim your pages so they have a different margin than you want. All in all, the technology and techniques have come a long, long way, since I started in it, back around 2000 (or thereabouts). And the improvements have been great. So that’s a relief.

Of course, when you’re putting your own work out there, it adds to the work at the end. Probably the most problematic thing is how distracting it can be, when you start thinking about formatting before you’re done writing. Then again, as you’re writing and choosing your images, you have to keep in mind how the whole book is going to flow, not to mention how it will affect the overall presentation and ultimately cost. My 150 pages in the smaller font has expanded to nearly 200 pages with the larger font. I’ve shrunk the spacing of the text so it’s more compact (but still readable), and I’ve adjusted the page margins a bit. Another 50 pages to print will add another $1 to the production cost, so I have to consider that, as well.

Choices, choices. Tradeoffs galore.

Okay, I’m done thinking about formatting stuff. I need to run to Lowes to buy some home repair supplies. And later, I’ll get back to my reviewing.

It’s good to take a break. And it’s even better to know when to get back to work.

So, this book is coming along…

Beloved Distance proof copy cover — Beloved Distance – the proof copy has arrived – no cover design yet. That’s the last thing to be created.

I’ve been working on my latest book, Beloved Distance : The Separation that Connects Us to All, for the past year or so. Actually, I started it almost two years ago. Time flies. Especially when you get busy.

And yes, I have been busy.

Anyway, I “finished” the book a few weeks back — is a book ever finished? Hard to say. Some authors talk about “abandoning” their books, rather than finishing them. I know, for me, there’s always the temptation to add more… and more… and more. Because I think of a lot more salient details to add.

But that’s really what this blog is for.

Anyway, since I’m publishing the book myself, I needed to get a look at the print quality before I finalized everything. I needed to get a look at how the fonts came out, how the page dimensions look… Get the page numbering together. Table of contents. Sequences from chapter to chapter. Make sure there aren’t numbers on the divider pages. Check the line heights and margins.

Figure out the endnotes.

And of course give more thought to the cover design.

Not to mention, give it one last read — as an actual book — before calling it “done”.

All those last-minute details that make the project feel like it’s dragging on. But they’re very important details, so it’s important to pay attention at the very end. Especially at the end. Because that’s really the beginning of the book.

Fortunately, there’s a long weekend coming up, so I should have a chance to rest up some more and then give it a read. It’s not a terribly long book — about 150 pages, with extra spacing between the lines (which I’ll tighten up in the final version). And I’ve had a few weeks to clear my head, so I can come back to it fresh.

Fresh is good. Especially when an intense project like this is wrapping up… before launching into the world.

All this drama

dumpster fire with fireman — It’s about the most apt metaphor I can think of

So, the 21st century dumpster fire continues. All I have to do is go over to Google News to find out what else we’re doing to ourselves, these days.

And I say “what we’re doing to ourselves” – not “what they’re doing to us”. Last I checked, we’re all here on the planet together.

Last I checked, we were all interconnected in ways that we’re still just beginning to appreciate.

Of course, lots of people have known for a long, long time that we truly are all interconnected. And lots of people have had ideas about how we can more peacefully co-exist, if not combine and collaborate to actually make some cool stuff happen.

But not everybody.

And this is what I wonder about, these days… what makes us do the things we do, what makes us choose the things we choose, what makes us think that we’re doing the right thing, when the results so often turn out completely differently from anticipated (or deliberately planned).

I wonder about a lot of things, and some interesting ideas have occurred to me. They fit together. They work. They actually make sense, in the midst of this nonsensical world we appear to inhabit.

And that’s what I want to think — and write — about. Not the rest of it.

I’m interested in causes, in underlying principles, in the foundations of our drama. Drama in and of itself, not so much. But the mechanics of it… the neurology of it… the biochemistry and philosophical underpinnings of this time… now that interests me.

So, let’s think and talk about that a bit, shall we?

Fecund/Fallow – a #poem of balance

Fecund/Fallow

I am searching for poetics
between jobs.
Like a displaced, untenured professor,
cast adrift by budget cuts
at the local community college, I
languish
amid my books, scanning the want
ads, knowing I can do better,
I must do better (and fearing I’ll never
do better)
than my last job, jealous
as I’ve ever been
of these uncertain moments between
prospect calls
and resume faxes,
when I catch a glimpse of heaven
in a cat fight
below my window.
1994

Depth Perception - Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine — Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems

If no one else did – a #poem of passing through

If no one else did,
I saw you.
Trapped in a car turned on its head, the
hood sucked into itself, the front wheels
hanging crazy like palsied fists
of a punchy, cauliflower-eared worn-out boxer,
with two firemen wedged in
the cockpit, trying to separate you from the
steering wheel’s embrace.
I saw you, your eyes wide
with lazy rainy day disbelief, the pain
taking a backseat to shock, one hand reaching out to clutch, to grab,
to feel, to touch life
you saw flash before your eyes
on the slippery X of an on-off ramp.
You weren’t in any hurry, this afternoon,
but the other driver filling out reports
with the police, was.
I prayed for you and cursed him,
and pulled into the passing lane, checking twice
behind me as I signaled.
1994

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems

Firewater – a #poem of retrospective hope

Firewater

Days of showers,
weeks of rain.
When it first comes, we’re taken by
surprise. Didn’t anyone tell the sky
this is the worst drought in 50 years?

Days of showers, weeks of rain.
the only consolation of running laundry
to the laundry room in pouring-down rain,
is that now we can do extra loads,
and not worry about running up our water tab.
We can take long, hot showers again,
too, now that rationing
has been lifted.
But habits that mix hygiene with fear
can be the hardest to break.
Natural compliments, they still make us think
twice about flushing the toilet
while its contents are still light.

Days of showers,
weeks of rain,
Back East, they think us crazy when we call,
whooping for joy at this should-be-everyday
delight.
Why should it delight us at all?
Days of showers, weeks of rain.
Smoke from wood fires hangs low
in the air, smelling good — a far cry
from the anxious tinge
to wildfire scent. And there are some who live
in the hills who think twice,
I’m sure, about lighting fires in their hearts
after the blazes a few years back…
but now we have days of showers,
and weeks of rain.
Light the match and set it to wood
and bless the warmth the cold wet
necessitates
and will allow.
1994

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems

Steam, not Smoke – a #poem of waking

Steam, not Smoke

Now the rains have come
and there’s’ no threat of wildfire
for another year, at least, provided
they stay.
May the rains stay.

Coffee cup in hand, I linger over the steam
rising from my reflection-in-brown,
and breathe deep —
Now I can greet a sharp bite
in my nostrils
first thing in the hazy morning
without checking on the waist-high tawny grasses
waving from the hills beyond
my kitchen window.

1994

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine

I once had a friend who drew… – a #poem of a different kind of art

I once had a friend who drew
faces for dollar bills for a living.
She said it was more challenging
than most people realized
and more rewarding.
And I wondered if I ever saw her work,
or if she only did 500’s and Thousands.
And I wondered if she made commissions or royalties, or if
she was just a work-for-hire skald
who could only create the big bucks,
not own them.
I think of her often
whenever I pay large bills in cash.
1994

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine

Money Musk – a #poem of rumination and finance

Money Musk

At four in the morning, I might as well
be up and about, leftover mutterings
from my pre-sleep ruminations
six hours ago
rattling between me ears with REM-deprived
self-importance.
At four, this morning, I am
up and about, looking between clock and kitchen
window, for the first faint tinge of dawn,
forgetting
we turned our clocks back last weekend,
and now nothing
feels right
or will
for at least another month.

Television won’t help.
That much I know, so I don’t bother
with the clicker,
The book I started two days ago has lost
my interest halfway through
chapter four.
I’d make some tea, but my lover would love
me less if I woke her with the kettle’s pre-
boil rumble.
One of us awake at this hour is enough.

So, at 4 a.m., I find myself counting
money. The checkbook needs balancing,
my wallet needs cleaned out,
I need to know how tight
and troublesome
or plump and promising a week I can expect.

I once knew a woman who always knew
exactly how much money
she had
on her and in the bank.
I slept with that woman, too, but the only thing
that rubbed off on me was
a vaginal infection and an aversion to burgundy
checkbooks.
She hated blue and green checkbook covers
almost as much as she resented latex —
blue and green were too bourgeois, she said. Besides,
they were the colors of her
abusive father and acquiescing mother.
Her dislike made a true believer out of me.
My checkbook covers are all blue, and I love
the smell of latex in the early Saturday a.m. hours.

I’ve found a fistful of dollar bills tucked
between deposit slips, old
and unused, in my wallet.
Right behind my one-day-at-a-time tattered,
meditation card I picked up along the path
to elusive serenity.
Calm now comes, as I count out — 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, plus a 5-er
makes 11, and one last single makes
12.
The number of the disciples of Jesus
and the Tribes of Israel. The sacred number
of the medieval Church that chased out
the Goddess’s 13.

I find my lover’s wallet in the pocket
of her coat hung by the door,
fish
out another single and make more holy
the haul I’ve got in my hands.

My parents used to frown when I counted
out the stash in my metal globe bank,
the many-sized chunks
of change jamming in the half-dollar-sized hole
in the bottom, as I shook the booty
free
onto my rumpled bedspread.
That bank had been a Christmas present
meant to distract me from the contents with all
the many-colored continents
(half the African and Eastern European country names obsolete)
drawing my attention to Rhodesia, the Red
Sea, the Northwest Territory/Yellowknife,
Greenland
instead of my fiscal net worth/
It was 1972, and maybe it was okay
to collect money,
as long as you brushed up on your geography
whenever you went near it.

But I cared about the contents.

And with eager hands, I’d tug the dollar bills
through the hole, poke the coins
and set them free, sprinkling onto the cloth
before me.
Pennies, pennies, more pennies …
I separated them out, taking pity
on their different shade, paltry value, and counted
them out by date and condition
and where they’d been minted — if they said so.
Arranged before me with Lincolns facing left
like and army of brown eyes
surveying my bedroom from a central perch.
Sorting by chronology, I examined
20-year-old coins in search of traces of fingers
that had counted them, machines
that had swallowed them, sings of the myriad
cash register drawers they’d hopped in
and out of
like promiscuous teenagers making their way
through the drive-ins and lookout points
of America, ever hoping
this time might bring
true love.
Kneading those coppery witnesses to the saving
grace of commerce between 7-year-old
fingers, I needed to know where these
had been, I needed proof there was more
much more
to the world than bell-bottoms, macramé,
Saturday protest marches, and an unending stream
of reasons to mistrust the government,
I needed to believe
if I collected enough of those small, brown
buttons — or, more importantly, the right
kind — I might trade them in someday for something
I wanted
for myself. Just what that might be, was
unimportant. But it had to be
for myself.

And the metal smell that clung to my hands
seemed somehow holy to me.

But that was 1972, and the smell
of money was not holy
beyond the territory of my bedspread
on Saturday afternoons.
I learned
to distrust that scent of past-present-future
hopes and dreams.
I put away my coins.

I spent my pennies, all wrapped in anonymous,
collective tubes.
I stopped examining dates and mint marks.
Pennies stooped being coins
and turned into loose change, yet
still, the sight of a wheat penny
all these years later sends a thrill
through me.
And I make a point to keep it.

At last, there is dawn.
The checkbook is balanced, red tinges the sky,
and I lift my money-musky hand to my nose.

1995

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine

Amplifier of my soul… – a #poem about my cash flow

dollar bills lying on top of each other Amplifier of my soul, you lie there before me
so passive, yet so promising.
My desk is enlivened with the paycheck I just
cashed.
Bills of several denominations grace the cold
surface of this work area
that makes them possible. Bills that sing
countless possibilities
to eyes that gaze and hands that run
over their surfaces in grateful passes.

Amplifier of my soul, what I am
becomes all the more pronounced when you
come into play, the best of my hopes
hoping to withstand the pettiest of my jealousies,
and thrive,
rather than survive.

1994

From Depth Perception – Selected Poems by Kay Lorraine