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Bookmaking Part One: Editing

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Kristen Weber, Editor, and her loyal assistant, Sampson. It's a dog-eat-dog world for writers without editors, and I'm pretty grateful for the "leg up" they give me.

Since Bonjour 40 was released, I’ve had some inquiries about the process of taking my story from blog to EBook. Aside from writing it, the process included working with two editors. Why two, you ask? Editors do different things.

The first editor I worked with, Kristen Weber, is a developmental editor. As Kristen says, she “addresses the overall structure and organization of a manuscript.” She ensures the story is going somewhere and all the author’s decisions are getting it there. Kristen helped me keep Bonjour 40 both personal and insightful about Paris, without sounding like a travel guide.

The other editor, April Michelle Davis of Editorial Inspirations, was my copy editor. She looked at the grammar, spelling, appropriate use of writing standards, and formatted it for publication.

Now I know t0 bring in Kristen when I have a partial manuscript. I wrote a whole manuscript a few years ago, and with issues on page ten, overhauling it became too daunting. It resides on a shelf in my office, crying. Also, April’s copy editing comes after the work with Kristen, so I don’t pay for it twice.

Many writers fear the editor, afraid their story will be changed rather than bettered. That’s not how editors work, and changes are ultimately the author’s decision. In the end, I feel I’ve become a better writer because of what I’ve learned from them, and isn’t that an end to which writers aspire? Yes (exclamation point)!

First Friday: Gregory C. Randall

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This month’s featured artist is an urban designer, graphic designer, illustrator and  prolific writer. Gregory C. Randall shared some insights about his writing and his latest book, Elk River which was just selected by the Independent Book Publishers Association and its Benjamin Franklin Awards as one of the three best books in the LGBT category.

How much do you write, and what’s your process?
I try to work two hours a day, up at 5:30, 12 cup coffee maker bubbling, fingers poised. A thousand words is my goal, but when I’m hot I can get 1500. My blogs help sharpen my pen and my style, they go about 1800 words every week. That’s about 7000 words a week, and I have published five of my own books so far. I have been a practicing landscape architect and urban designer for forty years, and designed hundreds of communities and projects from housing to high tech. Each is a process with a beginning, middle and conclusion. It’s easy to look at writing as the same process.

What is it about each story that compels you to write it?
I’m not a stylistic writer like Pat Conroy or others, but the idea of crafting a story that engages a reader intrigues me and to be honest, is a lot of fun. If I can entertain that’s my goal.

What do you hope readers take away from Elk River?
A sense of timelessness. Howie’s story is not unique, families are faced with huge troubles and for the young it can come at them hard. Also a sense of wonder. City kids miss a lot of the softness and hardness of nature. It’s also the times (1950s) and the migrants, the medical care, the lack of anti-depressants, the issue of culture and smoking, and of course homosexuality. Some are verboten now, others were then, but times do change and the reader begins to understand the complexities of even simple societies. I hope.

Trying to do Gregory’s work justice in 250 words is darn near impossible (and I failed). So you’ll have to flip over to one of his many sites, blogs or buy Elk River and find out just how prolific and talented he is.

Greg C. Randall Website
Writing4Death Blog
Elk River Blog

 

Gregory also created the illustrations, like this one of a muskrat, for the book Elk River. Of course he did!

Bonjour Paris Maintenant (Now)

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The restaurant in Montmarte where Amélie was filmed. I had dinner here.

Wouldn’t you love to dine in this Paris café right now? Yes, but… I understand. You have work, family and other commitments. I have them, too. So in place of encouraging you to make a trip as I did last year, instead I’ll share with you a few things Parisienne that are more affordable (both in time and money) to help transport us there maintenant (now).

Music:
• Pandora – I have a station called “Pink Martini Radio” (here’s a little video of one of my favorite Pink Martini songs)
• Soundtracks from French Kiss and Amélie
• Soundtrack from La Vie En Rose, about Édith Piaf

Language:
• For just a coupe hundred dollars you can learn French on your own with the Fluenz DVDs. The owner, Sonia Gil,  also has a fun series of travel videos online, some of which are set in Paris.

Movies:
• French Kiss (see above under music)
• Midnight in Paris
• Amélie

Online:
• GirlsGuidetoParis.com
• BonjourParis.com
• LonelyPlanet.com

Words:
• A Moveable Feast – Hemingway’s last book about living in Paris in his 20s
• The Sweet Life in Paris – David Lebovitz’ book about food and the city
• Markets of Paris – a small, well-designed book filled with a list of all the best markets (food, antique, books & more) in Paris
• (Shamelessly) Bonjour 40, my own book. Now just 99¢.

Please share your favorite travel books, music, movies and more. Bon voyage!

The Louvre says Bonjour GPS

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For anyone who has visit the Louvre in Paris, you know how easy it is to become completely and utterly lost. While there are tricks to maintaining your bearings within the Louvre (look out the window to see the Seine or the courtyard), massive crowds, overwhelming exhibits and interior rooms don’t help the matter. Despite the fact I had rented an old audio guide with maps, within about fifteen minutes of entering the Louvre I got lost. I couldn’t help but think, “if I just had a GPS I’d know where I was and how to find the works I want to see.” (FYI: mobile phones and GPS don’t function inside the Louvre.)

Now, however, a better GPS-style guide exists. No, it’s not by Google Maps, it’s by Nintendo. Using their 3DS handheld gaming devices, Nintendo teamed up with the Louvre to build a guide that not only helps navigate the 35,000 artworks, but provides commentary on over 700 of them. It even includes high-definition photos of the pieces from angles you can’t reach (unless you are like the dumb tourist I saw trying to climb the Winged Victory statue).

Within the next few months, the Louvre will have nearly 5000 of these devices in play. So next time you want to go all Mario Brothers on your family for getting lost in the Louvre, you can rent the device and focus on the artwork instead.

Below, are the reasons why the Louvre is daunting. Big looking in, big looking out, large galleries, and artworks like Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

 

 

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Bonjour Bread Festival

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Bread. In Paris. Mais oui! Especially the baguette. Yummy, crunchy-exterior, and soft air-filled morsels of yeasty goodness made by artisans using only four ingredients–flour, yeast, salt, and water. Now, imagine a whole pile of artisans together, under one giant tent filled with ovens, surrounded by flour, linens, rising dough and free samples of bread (and cheese).

Each year in Paris, beginning the Monday before May 16th and lasting for a full week, they celebrate Fête du Pain. May 16th is the day of Saint-Honoré, the patron saint of bakers. I just happened upon the celebration while I was there last year. My nose found the massive tent near Notre Dame before my eyes did. Drifting from it was the rich smell of fresh baked bread like my mother baked until I was sixteen. That same delicious scent would greet me coming up the walk from school, so my nose knows what it’s doing when it comes to eeking out fresh baked bread.

The festival, however is more than just a collection of officially designated artisans. It’s in part, a competition. So in addition to baguettes you see them forming the most remarkable feats with dough. Faces. Brie baked inside. Flowers formed with it. And you can witness the whole process. Oh la la. It’s so decadent.

There were so many great pictures from the festival last year, I’ve put in the gallery below – just click to enlarge. There’s also this little YouTube video so you can feel like you are there. Sans smells, of course.

First Fridays: Bonjour “Paris in Color”

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This month’s First Friday artist sticks with the Bonjour Paris theme: Nichole Robertson is another writer, photographer and Parisian-lover. She has a delightful book out called Paris in Color. Yes, Paris is definitely photograph-able. But Nichole takes it to a lovely work of art level by gathering her images together by color.

Before she moved to Paris for a year, she began a site called Little Brown Pen. The name and the site are adorable and it links you to the book, a bit of info about Nichole and the photography collection she dubbed “The Paris Color Project.” After moving to Paris, she would head out with her camera, and when a colorful item grabbed her attention, she’d take photos of that color for the day. As she says in the book, “Nothing sharpens your senses like a new address.”

Upon returning home each night, she’d post the colorful images. Now those images can be found in her book. They can also be found in The Paris Print Shop. It’s a site Nichole and her husband set up to sell the images, postcards and more. And her work has gone on to be featured by Martha Stewart, Real Simple, and The New York Times among others.

Are you green with envy for that little Vespa you saw near the market? Now you can own a collection dedicated to the color. Are your skies gray because you miss Paris terribly. Or perhaps yellow is how you are feeling today. This yellow image is downloadable for your desktop wallpaper from her publisher’s facebook page at Chronicle Books.

Bonjour40 Awards and Anniversary

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Ahhh Paris. Can it be? Yes. It was a year ago today that I was looking out my apartment over Paris having just arrived. A year ago, I spent a month of wandering the streets not feeling 40. I met Bandit and Dorothée. I fell in love with Ted again. And that lovely trip became my first published book, Bonjour 40: A Paris Travel Log (40 years. 40 days. 40 seconds.)

A year later, I am thrilled to announce, Bonjour 40 has won three eLit Awards. A silver medal for best travel essay non-fiction book, silver for the book trailer, and a gold medal for best author website. The eLit Awards is a global awards program, focusing on e-book submissions only, and open to all e-publishers.

To celebrate the one year mark, and the new awards, Bonjour 40 will be just 99¢ for the entire month of May on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes. For those of you who haven’t read it yet, or who would like to share it with others, grab some change from between the couch cushions, and say Bonjour Paris!

Thank you to all of you who read or reviewed the book, found yourselves written into it, or supported the original Bonjour 40 blog. A special thank you to everyone who helped me get the book edited and published, programmed the website and more. These awards aren’t mine, they are ours.

Award Credits:
Book edited by Kristen Weber and April Michelle Davis
Book trailer editing by Steve Hobbs of VPS
Website programming by Niki Sebastino of DesignGeekess, with assistance from Christina Reeser of io studio.

 

This series of three photos captures how Paris feels to me a year later. Antiqued. Magical. Covered with a little dust. These were miniatures I found in the Musée Carvivalet about the history of Paris. Is that me heading to the wine store?

 

Anonymous Quotes

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There are two things I don’t understand about anonymous quotes. It’s not the sayings that stump me, but I simply don’t know why it is that they are considered quotes at all. If no one knows who wrote or said them, then aren’t they merely phrases? The other aspect I find curious is why no one claims them. If the words are attributed to no one, why can’t anyone step up and say it was their phrase in the first place. Who would know? There is no “Claim an Anonymous Quote Bureau.” (Go ahead and Google that, I’ll wait…)

Case in point, I was with Ted, my partner and a psychotherapist, when we saw a quote magnet (pictured below). He said, “It’s not unknown. That’s mine! I’ve been using it with patients for more than twenty years.”

Well Ted, I have decided, it’s yours. If no one steps up in the next 24-48 hours to fight it, then finders, keepers. Ted could also claim these as well, as I’m sure they’ve come up:

“All easy problems have already been solved.”
“Be kind to unkind people – they need it the most.”
“Don’t have a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.”
“Just because your doctor has a name for your condition doesn’t mean he knows what it is.”
“Madness takes its toll. Please have exact change.”

As a writer, I’ll claim these two myself, thank you very much:
“A metaphor is like a simile.”
“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.”

Do you have a favorite anonymous quote you’d like to claim? Please share.

 

No longer by "unknown," this quote is now by Ted Petrocci.

 

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Expanding a Brand

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Last week on Compositions, I featured my new Church Hill Association (CHA) and neighborhood brand and website. Today, let’s chat about expanding a brand.

On April 22nd, my neighborhood is hosting a lovely springtime event called the Secret Garden Symphony Tour–visitors can tour private gardens and listen to Richmond Symphony ensembles all over The Hill.  I’ve been helping with the design of materials to support the event. Having just completed the neighborhood brand, I went back to the new CHA brand standards. We have fonts. We have colors. We try to include color photography when possible. So when it came to building the Secret Garden materials, I had only to build an event-specific logo, and then simply apply the graphic standards.

I viewed the  standards not as restrictive, but as a springboard to give me a starting point for the creative for this event. As a result, my probono job was simplified because I wasn’t having to make basic font, color or layout decisions all over again. For Church Hill, the Secret Garden materials look consistent with the CHA website and other collateral, enabling viewers to more easily recognize who we are. They’ll see our brand expanded on our website and now through the collateral for this event collateral: in publications, on banner ads, posters, flyers, tickets, and of course on the CHA site where you can purchase tickets.

As a designer, how do you view brand standards? As a help or a hindrance?

The poster for the event using a percentage of the CHA green, the font Bodoni book, and the CHA logo.

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Branding a Neighborhood

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Building comprehensive brands for organizations is never easy. So imagine doing it pro bono for an entirely volunteer non-profit organization who never had a brand before. Such was the two-year project I recently completed for the Church Hill Association (CHA) with my own neighborhood in Richmond.

The project began with the understanding that a full-blown brand was missing not only for the CHA, but for the neighborhood itself. Church Hill is a very historic, gorgeous neighborhood and we weren’t showing it. It was here that Patrick Henry gave his famous “Liberty or Death” speech in 1775, and Richmond’s first streets appeared. So it felt right to start the brand with the tagline “Where Richmond began.”

From there we developed a brand positioning statement, updated the CHA logo, chose specific colors and fonts, worked with photographers, built communication materials, and most recently completed the website.

Ultimately the main reason for the new website was to give the CHA a place to put all their information–meeting dates, bylaws, programs and events–and ask residents to “Join the CHA.”

The website is now also a major resource for tourists and businesses wanting to come to Church Hill. It provides homeowners with details about caring for historic houses, and provides crucial city and CHA board contacts.

Thank you to Worthington Photography who donated a year’s worth of seasonal images for the gallery, to the volunteer CHA committee who researched and proofed things like crazy, and to Christina Reeser of io studio who programmed the site. You were a gracious and lovely team.

Click to visit the new ChurchHill.org website here.

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