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What Jane Has Been Up To:
Highlights of 2010
Click here for all blog links
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Requiem for a friend (full article)
2009 Blog: January through April, May through Dec
Jan. 21, 2010
Requiem for a friend
We had to say goodbye to an old friend two days ago. I started writing about it here and just kept going, clearly processing what was a painful (if absolutely appropriate) decision. I decided to create a separate page for the photos and this special entry about a very special friend. To see more, click here.
Happy (or at least Timely) Endings
I mentioned in my last entry that I’ve spent the past two months also dealing with editorial demands for the new book, Becoming a Win-Win Teacher. This part of the process involved not only reviewing edits and answering questions regarding the material I’d written during the past year but also updating information on the hundreds of resources and endnotes and—something I didn’t know I’d need when I started this project—writing for permission to use the majority of the stand-alone quotes I have introducing each chapter.
This is a tedious process, finding and tracking down the copyright holder, requesting permission (and explaining what it’s for), following up as needed, and making and forwarding copies of responses. Then it turns out that a bunch of quotes I thought were OK actually needed permission and I didn’t find out about any of this until hours before it was due—in an email I received in the airport in Atlanta as I’m about to pick up my car to drive the hundred miles to my hotel in Columbus.
Let’s skip over the details of my stressed-out response or the time I spent over the weekend splitting my time between the dog and the computer and get to the good part which is, at least according to our last correspondence, that all the necessary permissions are in and the manuscript has cleared legal for typesetting.
I’m home for another week and grateful for the break in traveling, not just to collect myself emotionally, but to go through the piles, pack up the stuff that’s officially done, and move on with my life, whatever that looks like or means.
My next trip out will be my last for BER (Bureau of Education and Research). I’ve had a great run with them, starting in 1999, I believe, and now it’s just feeling like I need a break, especially from the five-cities-in-five-days routine. I know that there are many people who thrive on the repetition, but I’ve never managed to really grasp the rhythm of doing the same presentation and then having to travel to another city and set up to do it again, especially if it meant flying in between, and often getting in late. I always thought I would, but it’s gotten harder and harder each year.
So I’ve got five days all over Illinois, starting and ending in different parts of Chicago, and then another chapter closes.
I’m not in a big hurry to start in on another big project, and in fact, hope to squeeze in some time off or time to play (including any work I leisurely do on work-related ideas I might pursue). Maybe no deadlines for a while.
I’m inviting fun, creative, interesting, and lucrative stuff into my life and creating the vacuum to allow this to happen. A little scary right now, though I’m curious to see what this space may attract.
Jan. 14, 2010
Leveled off at 34,000 feet
Heading toward Atlanta where I pick up a rental car and drive a couple of hours to my hotel in Columbus, GA. This is my second job of the year so far, with a quick trip to an elementary school in Anniston, AL to kick off the semester right after New Year’s.
I’m starting to feel as if more than this airplane is leveling off. After close to two intense years of working on Becoming a Win-Win Teacher, the book is now into the next stage of production.
From copy editor to proofreader
I’ve spent the past two months passing chapters back and forth with the copy editor, watching nearly all of my commas and hyphens disappear, occasionally arguing for the apparent misuse of words like “hopefully” and “additionally,” and thanking God (and Corwin, and the editor herself) for the more significant errors she caught and corrected.
This in itself has been a pretty intense process and I found myself dropping whatever else I was trying to do (mostly catch up on everything I’ve been ignoring while I was writing this book) to read and respond to questions, changes, suggestions, and revisions.
The only part that felt kind of excruciatingly tedious involved questions about references I used. At the time I was working on the book and collecting materials and interviews and survey responses, I was unaware that I would be asked for the paragraph number of an online article or for the date I retrieved a fact or item online.
Even my dissertation committee was satisfied with the amount of information I included in my endnotes and bibliography—the last time, by the way, that I used APA style for formatting (which I was unaware that the publisher wanted to use for this particular book as my others stuck with Chicago style) and long before the Internet posed some of the challenges it currently does. (Hey, where’d that URL go? It was here YESTERDAY!)
So I’m real glad to be done with that phase. There are still stages of the editorial process to which I will be called for input, feedback, and answers, but for now, the big guns are put away—along with my files, copies of the articles I used, copies of contributors’ input, copies of permission forms, and everything I’ve got on disk.
In the meantime, here’s a preview of the cover (above) and a link to the page in the bookstore describing the book.
A long day ahead
We’re starting our descent into Atlanta. I still have the traveler’s checklist ahead: Pick up luggage, get the rental car, get the address and map into my iPhone, and head about 100 miles down the road to my hotel so I can get ready for my keynote and two sessions at the Muscogee County Parent University tomorrow morning.
Something to look forward to
I just found out about another MacMania “Geek Cruise,” number 11 to be exact and leaving on Feb. 4, 2011 from Buenos Aires, around the horn to Santiago Chile, with various stops along the way. Still waiting for details about an excursion to Antarctica, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, click here to see the itinerary and map of where we’re going.
From the hotel
It’s several hours later and tired as I am, it’s hard to convince my body that it’s not 9:15 pm (which it is back home) so I can fall asleep right now, which I need to do.
2009 Blog: January through April, May through Dec
Other “Highlights” pages: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. For an index to all blogs, photos, and other personal information, click here.
Jane’s current Blog.
About Jane home page (bio, intro, other professional information).
