I’m one of the few people I know who is on the cusp of two careers.

My second career, as a freelance writer, has kept me busy since 1990, writing books and articles about using computers. It’s a great career for me, mostly because the work seems to come naturally, so it isn’t very difficult, and because I get to buy a lot of cool computer toys to write about. (Of course, it would be better if someone just gave me those toys, but at least I have legitimate writeoffs.) But as printed publishing begins to wane and the computer users throughout the world mature beyond the need for beginner to intermediate books, my writing opportunities fade. I’ve embraced new media like ebooks and digital training via screencasts, but I believe my heydays as a computer how-to author are over. Sure, I can continue to move forward and earn a comfortable living, but it just isn’t the same as it was — for more reasons than I’m willing to discuss here.

My third career, as a helicopter pilot, began to get interesting back in 2001, when I got my commercial rating. That’s when I was allowed to fly for hire. In 2005, when I took delivery of my Robinson R44 Raven II and got my FAA Part 135 Certificate, things really took off — if you’ll pardon the pun. In addition to the tour and air-taxi work I get primarily out of the Phoenix area — if I had to do all my flights from Wickenburg, I’d starve — I also get a great variety of other challenging jobs: aerial photography, search, survey, etc. Not only does this keep the flying work interesting, but it’s enough to cover all the costs of owning and operating the helicopter. Lately, it’s even been earning a tiny profit.

The two careers fit perfectly together. I don’t hang out at an office at the airport, waiting for people to come in. (I almost got an airport office here in town. Fortunately, I had enough brains to turn down that opportunity.) Instead, I go about my writing business until the phone rings. Then, when the flight is scheduled, I put down whatever I was working on, head out to the airport, preflight, pull the helicopter out, fuel up, and take care of business. When I’m done, I put everything away and come back to my office to continue work. Or to take the rest of the day off.

Summer Jobs

I got my first “summer job” as a pilot working at the Grand Canyon in 2004. I wanted a new experience — and I got it. I also got the benefits and drawbacks of working as an employee, which is something I hadn’t experienced since 1989 when I left my last “real” job to go freelance. Benefits: steady paycheck, social interaction, learning new skills with guidance (as opposed to self-teaching). Drawbacks: fixed work day and work week, social interaction, company politics, relatively low pay.

I need to comment here on the low pay aspect of that job, since so many people seem to zero in on it. For me, it was low pay because I could make a lot more doing my other work. In fact, sometimes I did. For example, if I were a “spare” pilot who was not scheduled to fly except perhaps at lunchtime, I’d bring along my laptop and spend the day writing articles for one of my editors. If I knocked off just two articles in a day — which I could easily do — I’d earn just as much as I would flying for an entire week. And since I was accustomed to making more money, I had to keep doing my other work to maintain my standard of living. So on my weeks off from the Canyon, I’d come home and work on a book. Frankly, just about all of my pay from that summer job went to paying my income taxes on my other job.

This year, I’m flying in Washington state, doing some cherry drying. Because I’m operating my own aircraft and have a lot of associated expenses, the pay is much better — as long as I can collect it. So pay is not an issue. The work is challenging — I’ll be getting some special training in advance — and even a bit dangerous — I’ll be wearing a helmet and Nomex flight suit. And I’ll be living in a trailer either with or without a hookup, far from home and family and friends.

At the same time, I’m scheduled to write two books, one of which is a revision. Those two books are likely to earn me the same amount of money that the whole season in Washington earns me.

Why Bother?

So you might wonder: why bother?

These summer flying jobs offer benefits that I couldn’t get any other way: regular work that comes with a paycheck and tasks that challenge me to perform beyond what I normally do. By meeting these challenges, I learn and perfect skills.

The regular work part is a no-brainer. If I stayed here in Wickenburg for the summer, I’d have to deal with the brutal heat. Would you want to fly in an un-airconditioned aircraft when it’s 110°F outside? (That’s about 41°C for you metric folks out there.) I’ve done it and I don’t want to do it any more than I have to. And most potential passengers are smart — they know that summer heat is not just uncomfortable, but it causes turbulence that makes for a rough ride. So not only are you slow-roasting under a plastic magnifying glass-like bubble, but you’re being bounced around enough to make you sick. And it isn’t as if there’s a lot of this work. Last July I only had one paying gig that didn’t even take in enough money to cover my helicopter loan payment.

So if it’s regular work I’m after, leaving the area is the obvious solution. But it’s the challenges that I really want.

Flying at the Grand Canyon in the summer of 2004 taught me more about flying in wind, high density altitude, and poor visibility than any other flying I’d done up to that point. I’ve used those skills numerous times since then to operate in conditions far windier than I would have without that experience and to safely make my way through questionable weather conditions. I also picked up tips about ground safety, passenger briefings, and just dealing with passengers, as well as the entire business of flightseeing.

This year, I’m entering a whole new world of agricultural flying. It’s more precise, more dangerous, more lonely. My first field has 108 acres. Depending on how the grower wants me to fly, it’ll take 2 to 3 hours to dry it all. That’s 2 to 3 hours hovering over the tops of trees, flying a precision pattern at a constant speed and altitude. When this is over, I expect to be able to hover in any direction in almost any condition. That could set me up for other agricultural work, like frost control or possibly even spraying.

This is why I look for summer jobs. To learn more and to develop my flying skills.

Career Pilots Need to Get Serious

And I think this is why I always advise new pilots to include a season at the Grand Canyon or some other challenging environment as part of their career path. Sure, a pilot could build 2,000 hours as CFI working at or near sea level in a place where the weather is close to perfect. But what skills — beyond autorotations and other emergency maneuvers — would that build? It’s the challenging work that pilots should be hunting down. The flying that takes them to the next level.

The flying that makes them better pilots.

I’m listening to NPR (National Public Radio) this morning. They’re reporting on the Pope’s private meetings with sexual abuse “survivors.”

While I certainly don’t mean to take anything away from the situation — children and young people molested or sexually abused by Catholic priests they trusted — the term survivor seems a little extreme as a label for these now grown people. The first definition of survivor in the dictionary that’s part of Mac OS X is:

a person who survives, esp. a person remaining alive after an event in which others have died : the sole survivor of the massacre.

And that’s how I usually think of a survivor. Consider the phrases Hurricane Katrina survivor, cancer survivor, Titanic survivor. Surely you can come up with others.

But the dictionary goes on to offer the following alternative definition for survivor:

the remainder of a group of people or things : a survivor from last year’s team.

or

a person who copes well with difficulties in their life : she is a born survivor.

Indeed: either of these definitions would apply to these unfortunate people.

What do you think? Is the term survivor an appropriate label for these people? Can you come up with a better label? Perhaps one you heard or read in the media? As someone interested in words, I’m curious.

As the print publishing industry suffers the pain of ever-higher costs and competition from other media, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about electronic books or ebooks.

You’re probably familiar with the concept. An ebook is roughly defined as text and image content — like you’d find in a traditional printed book — that’s distributed as a computer-compatible file or series of files. So rather than read the book on paper, you’d read it onscreen.

Recently, Sony and Amazon.com have been pushing their versions of existing titles as ebooks for their Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle. This is the most basic idea of an ebook — take the text found in the original book and reformat it for use in an electronic device to make it portable. Project Gutenberg has been doing this for years, with a huge team of volunteers transcribing out-of-copyright works to plain text format readable by almost any electronic device. (I have a handful of classics on my Treo 700p so I’m never without something interesting to read.)

Pros and Cons of Ebooks

A properly prepared ebook has numerous benefits over a traditional print book:

• Ebooks don’t require paper to produce, so they’re “greener” than paper books.
• Because ebooks don’t require paper, they’re less expensive to produce and ship. (Note that I said less expensive, not cost-free.)
• Ebooks are much more easily corrected for errors or changes in the content.
• Ebooks can be extremely portable, depending on the type of device they are designed for.
• Since ebooks are less expensive to produce, they should be less expensive for readers to buy.

Likewise, print books still have a few benefits over ebooks:

• Print books are generally easier to read, “thumb through,” and refer to, especially for those of us who learned to read with just paper books.
• Print books don’t require a computer (or reader) or the expertise that goes with using such a device.
• Print books can be read almost anywhere.
• Print books are properly formatted for their content and the reader can consult an entire page or two-page spread at once.

So while I think the time has come for ebooks to rise as a serious method for distributing information, I don’t see printed books going away any time soon.

Dawn of the Ebook Revolution?

Although the idea of ebooks has been around for quite a while — and there are several failed ebook readers out there to prove it — a number of technological developments have made ebooks more popular than ever:

• The ever-increasing adoption of the Internet and World Wide Web as a tool for finding information.
• The ever-increasing speed of Internet connections, making it possible to get more information — including information in more advanced media formats such as audio and video — more quickly.
• The ever-decreasing size and cost of computers. Smaller, less expensive computers make computers more attractive as a device for reading ebooks.
• The ever-increasing computer savviness of readers. Not long ago, the “average” computer user didn’t have the technical know-how to download, open, and navigate the pages of an ebook.
• The development of electronic publishing platforms, both local (such as portable document format or PDF) or onscreen (such as Safari) and digital rights management (DRM) to protect copyrights.
• The development of devices such as the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle — both of which are considered “successes” — as well as the improvements to those devices and new competing devices.

As more and more readers adopt ebooks as a medium for reading content, more and more content will be made available in ebook format. Imagine a snowball rolling down a snow-covered slope. The ebook snowball has just started its roll.

Print Publishers Jump On Board — Sometimes in Attack Mode

Not willing to miss out on their piece of the ebook pie — and perhaps glimpsing the demise of print publishing in the distant future — traditional print publishers have begun offering books directly to the public in a variety of ebook formats. They see their competition not only from other ebook publishers, but from the Internet itself.

Interestingly, rather than concentrate on creating an electronically published product that will appeal to readers, some publishers have been concentrating on efforts to discredit their Internet-based competition. For example, one of my publishers cites the ideas set forth and expounded on in Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture by Andrew Keen as a testament for why content published on the Internet should not be trusted or relied upon. Although I have not yet read the book — and frankly, after seeing what a jerk Keen seemed to be during interviews on various talk shows, I’m not anxious to read it — the book apparently claims that “Web 2.0″ has put online publishing in everyone’s hands and too many people are trying to pass themselves off as “experts.” From the book jacket:

In today’s self-broadcasting culture, where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred. When anonymous bloggers and videographers, unconstrained by professional standards or editorial filters, can alter the public debate and manipulate public opinion, truth becomes a commodity to be bought, sold, packaged, and reinvented.

Well, that’s certainly one way to look at it. And while the folks quoted on the back cover of the book tend to agree with this view — as my publisher does — there are quite a few highly respected people who don’t. Author Kevin Keohane wrote “Unpopular opinion: everyone’s an expert on the Internet. Is that such a bad thing?” for Communication World earlier this year. In it, he argues that “Keen ignores the fact that for every recognized expert, there are a dozen other passionate experts who have just as much information and insight.” Other critics all over the Web point out the holes and problems of Keen’s arguments.

To my publisher, it becomes more important to get the work of its professional, highly trained, and well edited authors into the electronic publishing world to compete with the “amateurs” out there than to produce the ebooks that people actually want to buy and read. It doesn’t seem to take into consideration that many of its “expert” authors — including me — are completely self-taught, just like the “amateurs” also providing online content. Even the editors, in many cases, began their careers doing something other than editing books. What makes me an “expert” is the 70 books and hundreds of articles under my belt. But back in 1992, when I hopped on this publishing roller coaster, I was no more an expert than today’s bloggers writing how-to pieces on their Web sites.

So my publishers have jumped into the world of ebook publishing by republishing their printed books both as as PDFs and online-viewable documents. And, in doing so, they’ve made several major errors that are losing readers and sales.

What’s Wrong with Most Ebooks

There are several problems with the way my publishers are republishing my work, but to understand what the problems are, you need to have a good handle on how the work is being republished.

One of my publishers is currently republishing my work in two formats:

Safari, an online content distributor, reproduces each page of a printed book by reassembling smaller images to build the book’s page. Imagine this: take the page of a book and use a paper cutter to cut it into a dozen squares. Now take those squares and shuffle them up, and place them on a grid, in the proper order to rebuild the page. This is what Safari does electronically.

There are multiple problems with this approach:

• You must have an active connection to the Internet to read a book.
• If your connection is slow (512 Kbps or less), you have to wait while each piece of a page is loaded and placed to read the page.
• If you have a monitor less than 20 or 24 inches, you probably will not see the length of an entire page onscreen. That means you need to scroll and you need to wait while the rest of the page is assembled.

This is obviously not the best way to read a book. In fact, I fail to see why anyone would read a book this way. I have a free subscription to Safari and still buy the books I want to read. All Safari does is help me choose the one that’s likely to be best for me.

There are other problems with Safari that authors don’t like, but since they’re related to sales and royalties, I’ll leave them for another article.

My publisher also republishes my books in DRM-protected PDF format. This also provides readers with a page-by-page view of the printed book. And it also introduces multiple problems:

• As I write this, Adobe’s DRM doesn’t work with the latest version of Adobe Reader. It doesn’t work with Preview or any other PDF reader software either. So readers are forced to use a specific version of Adobe Reader software.
• The DRM prevents book buyers from copying the book to another device. So if you bought the book from your desktop computer and started reading it there, you can pretty much forget about copying it to your laptop to read while away from your office.
• Although you can scale the book’s page size to fit your screen, if you don’t have a big screen, the print size might be too small to see. That means a larger scale and vertical scrolling. You can’t see a whole page at once.

Oddly enough, neither of these formats take advantage of electronic publishing features that would enhance the books. Other than hyperlinking table of contents entries on Safari and enabling search features on the DRM-protected PDFs, the ebooks are identical to the printed books — right down to their black and white screenshots — but presented onscreen instead of on paper.

Do the Pirates Have the Right Idea?

For the past two or so years, I’ve been suffering the heartache of having the electronic versions of my books appear as unprotected PDFs or CHM files on pirate Web sites. The PDF version, when printed, reproduces the entire book, from the [ignored] copyright page to the last page of the index. You have no idea how violated that makes me feel, especially when my ebook royalties from these same titles are so dismally low.

Interestingly enough, the CHM version of a book, if available, is a better product than the original book. Sure, it’s not formatted the same way, but it contains all the content — including the screenshots — and has the added benefit of being searchable and containing hypertext links to other book content. Like the PDF version, it’s portable in that it can be copied to and read on any computer. This makes it possible for the reader to put the book on a laptop and take it on a trip, to read during a long plane ride or consult when working offsite and print books are not available.

Readers Revolt

Recently, a reader e-mailed me with some comments about the ebook version of my Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard book. Although she didn’t blame me, she was angry about the purchase and the product she received. She didn’t like the DRM limitations, especially since she doesn’t like to use Adobe Reader. And although she’d bought the ebook version to save money — there was a special deal going on at the time — she didn’t feel as if she’d saved enough money to make the purchase worthwhile. She concluded in her message that she’d never buy another ebook from that publisher again.

And that reminded me of something that most publishers seem to have forgotten these days: we’re creating a product for our customers. How can we expect to sell a product that our customers don’t want?

The Way an Ebook Should Be

These two developments — pirated book formats and ebook reader feedback — got me thinking seriously about the whole ebook situation. I realized several things:

• Ebooks should be designed to be read onscreen. (Duh.) That means a landscape (wide) layout rather than a portrait (tall) layout. The entire page should fit on a screen so scrolling is not required. Type should be sized so it’s readable even when the page is viewed on a relatively low resolution screen (for example, 800×600 pixels).
• Ebook formats should take advantage of all commonly-used technology available. That means including color images (which are often too costly for printed books), hyperlinked references, and possibly even multimedia content such as sound and video. Imagine having an ebook with live links to additional content online! Why not?
• Ebooks should not be protected by DRM. Readers hate DRM because it limits their access to the content. For a reader to get the most from the ebook experience, he should not be held back by limitations and the frustrations of poorly designed DRM software. If you buy an ebook, you should be able to read it on any of your devices that support that format.
• Ebooks should be priced low enough that anyone can afford them. I believe that most people want to be honest and will not steal content. But people don’t understand why an ebook costs the same (or nearly the same) as a printed book when there’s no paper, printing, or shipping costs. They’re right — ebooks should be cheaper! (They should not, however, be free because a great deal of effort on the part of authors, editors, and layout folks goes into the book.) Fairly pricing an ebook will encourage people who want to read it to pay for it rather than possibly obtain a pirated copy.

And this is where I’ve apparently locked heads with my publisher. I don’t like the way my books are being republished as ebooks. I don’t like dissatisfying or upsetting my readers. I don’t want my readers going to another publisher’s ebooks and authors because my publisher can’t produce a product that meets their needs at a price they’re willing to pay. And I’m not the only author who feels this way.

Thinking Outside the Book

Simply put, my publisher cannot think “outside the book.”

They insist on regurgitating printed books in primitive and inconvenient electronic formats. They insist on sticking to the same price points when the average reader simply doesn’t believe that a paperless book is worth as much as one printed on paper. And they wonder why the books don’t sell, why the authors are angry, why the readers are staying away.

I believe that to succeed in today’s publishing world, publishing organizations need to stop thinking of books in terms of paper and print-friendly layouts. They need to think about the best way to disseminate information to the people who are willing to pay for it. They need to provide quality content in a format that’s convenient for readers. If that’s a printed book, fine. But if it’s an unprotected PDF with hyperlinks to internal and online content, publishers need to accept that — and make their ebooks the ones readers look for when they need information.

What do you think?

I’d love to get feedback from authors and readers about the ebook situation. Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your ideas. You can remain anonymous if you wish.

Less than a week ago, on the morning of Friday, February 8, I was looking at a pretty empty summer season. I had one book contract lined up — an annual revision I usually work in in June and July — and no idea where or even if I’d be flying for someone else during the April through September timeframe I’d set aside for Alaska.

Two other books had been dangled in front of me on and off for the past two months. If I got them, they’d keep me busy from now until the summer time. But it didn’t look as if I’d get them.

And while I was hoping to spend the entire summer flying for someone else in Alaska, the recent demise of Silver State Helicopters dumped all of their CFIs (certified flight instructors) on the job market. If any of them had 1,000 hours (or said they had 1,000 hours), they’d be lined up for the few entry level jobs at the Grand Canyon, Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska. My experience level is a bit higher than entry level for those jobs, so employers would have to pay me more. Why pay for steak when hamburger will do? Despite four resumes out there in the land of the midnight sun, my phone remained silent. So it didn’t look as if I’d be going to Alaska after all.

And that was the state of things last Friday morning.

A Telephone Call Changes the Scene

I did have one other resume out in the wild: I’d sent it about a month before to an Illinois-based Part 135 operator. They were looking for a full time pilot to help them with a special contract and then do odd flying jobs as needed in the midwest. (And yes, I’m being purposely vague. Last week’s fiasco has put me into high caution mode.) I exchanged a few e-mails with the owner, who said that a contract pilot — which is what I’d prefer — might work out better for him. He told me to call him. I did, but never seemed to get him on the phone. I waited for him to call. He didn’t. I sent him an e-mail, asking if the job had been filled; if it had, I’d stop bothering him. He wrote back to say the job wasn’t filled, he was definitely interested in me, but he was swamped with work. He’d call. He didn’t. All this happened during the course of a month.

On Friday, I decided to call again. I wanted to either cross off this opportunity or bring it into the realm of possibility. I got the owner on the phone. We hit it off right away. I got the feeling he’d spoken to a few other people about the job and they weren’t interested in some of the more unusual aspects. (Again, I’m being vague on purpose; I don’t want anyone to screw this up for me.) I also got the feeling he was being inundated with resumes from Silver State casualties of Chapter 7 — guys who have earned their 1,000 hours in a simulator or as an active passenger during dual instruction flights. He wanted someone with experience flying passengers for hire, which I’ve been doing since 2001. We joked around a little. He told me that mid-month, he would fly me up to his base for a face-to-face meeting and a chance for me to see their equipment. I assume a flight would also be part of the interview process.

I hung up the phone feeling good. This opportunity had gone from a long shot to a 75% or more chance of getting the job. And without going into details, I can assure you that the job will be very interesting, with plenty to blog about — if I’m allowed to.

Two More Calls, Three More Books?

My phone rang on Monday morning. It was one of my editors. He’s been swamped since the holidays and has just dug out of the pile of work on his desk. He pulled one of the dangling books out of the air and slapped it on the negotiation table. We talked terms, we agreed. (My co-author on the book agreed yesterday.) I’m looking for a contract in the mail any day now. Time frame? Well, the book is already listed on Amazon.com, so I guess I’d better get to work on it soon.

He also dangled that other book around some more, but no decision was made. We didn’t even talk terms. So although I can’t count on it yet, it’s definitely still in the picture.

Yesterday, I got another call from another editor I work with regularly. She flat-out offered me a book deal with terms that would be tough to turn down. So I said yes. The contract should come within the next week or so. Timeframe: late summer. Sorry; no details will be forthcoming anytime soon.

What’s good about all this is that I have enough writing work lined up to support me through the summer, when Flying M Air continues to incur expenses but does not incur much (if any) revenue.

Another Call with another Flying Possibility

Between the two editor calls, I got a call from a California-based Part 135 helicopter operator. They’d seen my helicopter forum post that had a subject line like “Single Pilot Part 135 Operator with Helicopter Available for Summer Months.” This guy is interested in expanding his business to offer a major city’s commuters with helicopter transportation into that city from the suburbs. (Yes, I’m being vague again; jeez, I hate this.) Rather than invest in a lot of equipment and train pilots, he thinks we might work together with me and my helicopter subcontracted by his organization to provide the flights. If things work out, he’ll expand; if they don’t, no serious money lost.

While this is very interesting to me, I’m worried that there won’t be enough revenue in it to support me and my aircraft. After all, I’d have to relocate for the entire summer and the city in question ain’t exactly cheap to live in. But it is a really nice city, one I wouldn’t mind living in at all. I told him about my other opportunity and how I wanted to pursue that first. He said that if that job didn’t work out and I was still available, I should call him in a month or so to talk about flying for him.

I’m calling that “Summer Job Plan C.”

Plan D, I should mention, is cherry drying in Washington State, which, as usual, is always dangling out there but never quite attainable.

Today

My helicopter calendar has a few — but not many — things on it. I’ll be doing rides at the Buckeye Air Fair again on Saturday. I picked up a Sky Harbor Charter for March with some folks who already told me they want another day trip when they come to Wickenburg. And I have a Wickenburg area tour prebooked through a tour company for March 1.

The Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure simply is not selling. It could be my limited marketing budget. But I can’t see paying $10-$15K for a magazine advertisement if it’ll take the sale of more than 10 excursions just to pay for the ad. (The trip really is a smoking deal and I don’t make much money on it.)

But I do have some possibilities on desert racing aerial photography gigs lined up for March and April. We’ll see how that goes. The ferry cost is hard for most of those companies to swallow. I’d do a lot better with race photography gigs if I’d relocate to Lake Havasu or Bullhead City. (And believe me, I’m thinking about it.)

Today, I’m finishing up an article I started on Monday for FileMaker Advisor magazine. Then I’m going to work on my outline for my half of our WordPress book revision. If I finish that before the end of the day, I’ll finish up my series of articles about using Viddler with WordPress. And maybe — just maybe — I’ll record another video blog entry.

But only if I can do something with my hair.

Yesterday, I began writing an article for a travel magazine. The magazine is relatively well-known and it pays pretty darn well. I’ve never written about travel — beyond what you’ll find in this blog — but I think I’m up to the task.

But I am facing a challenge: word count. The article cannot be more than 1,500 words.

I’m not accustomed to working with length constraints. On my blog, I can make an article as long or as short as I want to. The same goes for the articles I write for InformIt and other Web-based publishers. (That’s one of the benefits of publishing on the Web — it costs the same to publish no matter how long it is.) Even my book publishers don’t usually limit my page count.

But this is a print publication and the limits are real. And I seriously doubt that the editors there will love my words enough to make an exception for me.

Keeping It Short

The way I see it, there are two ways to keep an article short:

• Write it short. I’m using Word 2004 (old habits really do die hard) to write the piece. Word includes a live word count feature, so I can monitor word count as I type. This is how I’m trying to write the piece. What I’m finding is that I’m about 1/4 finished writing, but have used up more than half my alloted words. As a result, I keep going back and shortening up earlier paragraphs and sentences to make room for the rest of the story. I don’t think this is the best approach.
• Write it without worrying about page count, then go back and edit the hell out of it. This is how I usually tackle length problems — especially when I have to shorten up text that appears on a page I’m laying out. In those instances, I’m cutting out 10 to 30 words. But at the rate I’m going with this article, I’ll have to cut more than 1,000 words. This can’t possibly be productive. After all, I’m writing material that I’m just discarding.

Another Way?

It occurs to me that there probably is another way to keep it short: rethink the entire article and reduce the amount of information I want to provide.

This is probably a more professional way to go about it. It requires me to come up with an outline of what I want to discuss and budget a certain amount of words for each part. If there are too many parts, I need to cut out the parts that don’t really communicate the theme of the piece. Once I have a handle on how to approach the article, I should be able to write it close to the proper length. I can then edit it down as needed.

The key, of course, it to stay within budget for each part of the article.

And I think this is a good example of how blogging and writing for the Web can hurt a writer. When I blog, I have no editor — it’s just me. I can write whatever I want, whatever way I want to write it. Sentence fragments? No problem. Slang? Go for it! Extensive use of parenthetical commentary? Why not (since I always have more than just one thing to say)? Bloggers who are also professional writers can lose the discipline they need to produce high-quality work for publisher with very specific needs.

But I think I’ll tackle blogging and how it affects writing skills in another post.

Any Thoughts?

Do any writers out there have some advice for me? Speak up! Use the Comments link or form.

The question:

Now that the WGA strike has had lots of time to affect the prime time television schedules, how is it affecting you as a viewer? What show do you miss most, aside from reruns?

The writer’s strike isn’t affecting me much at all. I’m not a big TV viewer. In fact, there are only three shows I watch with any regularity:

• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• The Colbert Report
• Boston Legal

Of these, the only one I sorely miss is The Daily Show. Jon Stewart’s take on the news is a real wake-up call. Only he can make it clear how absurd things are getting in this country and the world.

Although I enjoy Colbert, I can take him or leave him.

Boston Legal didn’t start going into reruns until recently — at least I don’t think so. For all I know, it might still be running new episodes.

I watch all television on DVR (Dish Network’s version of TiVo). I absolutely cannot tolerate commercial breaks. We have our DVR set up to record the programs we watch, then, when we have time to watch them, we do. I’d gotten into the habit of watching Stewart and Colbert each night, the day after the show was “taped.” When the writer’s strike hit, we just turned off the DVR timers so the reruns wouldn’t fill the hard drives.

Last night, I asked my husband to turn on the timers for David Letterman. He’s back at work now with his writers and would probably make a good substitute for Jon Stewart.

I occasionally watch science, technology, and history shows in PBS, Discovery, History, etc. But I don’t think any of those are new and have no idea if any of that kind of programming is affected by the strike.

I should mention that my husband watches a lot of television — at least 2 to 3 hours an evening. He’s perfectly happy with reruns (apparently) but also watches sports and movies. He also has a much higher tolerance for commercials and can even watch live television.

Extra Credit: how are you spending the time instead?

I’m definitely spending more time reading. I’m preparing for my helicopter Instrument rating, which requires me to read and understand a lot of very unintuitive material — things like tracking VORs, making procedure turns, and doing other things I still don’t quite get. So each evening, I settle down with one of my study guides and read a chapter or two. Sometimes I take notes.

Yesterday, we bought an easy chair for the bedroom so I wouldn’t have to read in bed. Reading this stuff in bed puts me to sleep.

As a writer, I’m siding with the writers. I believe that writers should get royalties or residuals (or whatever they’re called in this instance) on anything they write that’s sold. While some people argue that it might only be pennies per episode of a show that’s sold on iTunes (for example), a lot of pennies do add up to dollars. If a writer is involved in a hit television show that sells millions in the digital markets, why shouldn’t they benefit?

For the record, I’d love to write for television. One of my dreams is to be part of a research and writing team for an educational show on Discovery or PBS. I could do that. And I’d love to go on the road to some of those exotic places while they filmed scenes and talked to experts and locals. Great stuff.

A little over a month ago, a Twitter friend (@desertlibrarian) tweeted about an hysterically funny blog post she’d read on John Scalzi’s blog, Whatever. This led me to subscribing to the RSS feed for Whatever. Scalzi’s apparently a hardcore SciFi author and although I enjoy some SciFi now and then, I’ve never read any of his books. (He’s probably never read any of my books, either.) His blog posts about SciFi don’t interest me very much (sorry!), but his thoughtful and well-written commentaries about other things — such as the Creation Museum — make it well worth keeping the feed subscription.

It seems that Mr. Scalzi had been keeping another blog or site that featured a “Weekend Assignment.” Here’s his summary of that feature from a recent post on Whatever:

For those of you who used to read By The Way, you’ll know that every Thursday I wrote up a “Weekend Assignment,” to give folks something to do with their blogs over the weekend (Friday - Sunday, for AOL Journals, was typically the time period in which the members posted the least). I’m not doing the Weekend Assignments anymore, but I’ve bequeathed the activity to Karen Funk Blocher (aka Mavarin), and she’s doing them on her blog now. The first of her Weekend Assignments is up, and it’s asking what people are doing with their time in the wake of the WGA strike.

It seems like just yesterday that I wrote an almost pointless blog post about how much trouble I sometimes had finding something to write about. And then I find this.

So, if you’ll pardon me, I’ve got something to write.

I’m a writer and have been since my early teens. So it’s easy for me to write. It’s easy to take an idea and communicate it to others using words, sentences, and paragraphs.

The problem I have is coming up with ideas to write about.

What to Write About?

Sure, I can write about what happened to me yesterday. But is it interesting? Barely. (For the record, I woke up late after being up for 2 hours in the middle of the night, spent some time messing around with some GTD (”Getting Things Done”) software that’s supposed to help me be more productive, ordered pizza for my local helicopter mechanic and a few other pilots, hosted a pizza party at my friend’s hangar (which is insulated and has amenities such as a latte machine and leather sofa), and came back home to waste some more time with the same GTD software (which wasn’t working as advertised) thus not getting much else done.)

I can also write about the things I think about, which can be more interesting when I’ve had time to fully develop my thoughts. Lately, I’ve been thinking about politics, but I don’t feel well informed enough to blog about my thoughts. I’ve also been thinking about the English as the official language issue, but I haven’t finished thinking about it — or reached a stage where I’m ready to write. I’ve been thinking about the pitfalls of living in a town that’s trying to be something it’s not — which is also something that it wasn’t when I moved here — but why waste my time preaching about something that no one cares about?

Why I Blog

I like to start each morning with a blog post. I sit at the kitchen table with my coffee and my laptop and write about whatever comes to mind.

I find this therapeutic. I’m taking my organized thoughts and recording them where I — and others — can read them again and again. Or perhaps I’m taking unorganized thoughts and organizing them as I get them out.

It doesn’t matter to me whether people read what I write. I blog primarily for myself. (Remember, blog is short for Web log and my blog is a personal journal.)

While it’s always nice to have readers who comment to say that they like what I’ve written or add some information I hadn’t known or considered, getting readers or reader participation is not my primary goal. It’s the head-clearing aspect of blogging. Getting it out of my head and onto…well, not exactly paper, but something that’s just as “permanent” and accessible.

Unpublished Blog Posts

Sometimes I’ll start a blog post and never finish it. It’ll remain as a draft on my computer’s hard disk, waiting for future attention it may never get. This isn’t as good as publishing a blog post. That’s not because publishing is the goal. It’s because completion of the thought is the goal and an uncompleted blog post represents an unfinished thought.

I can also assume, when I don’t finish a blog post, is that I didn’t have enough to write about when I began it.

Full Circle

Which brings me full circle with this blog post.

The topic was the lack of topics. And I proved a lack of topics by writing a blog post that didn’t really cover anything in enough detail to make it worth reading.

Have I just wasted my time? It appears so.

Have I wasted yours? Please accept my apologies.

I’ve been a writer since I was 13. I always had a story inside me trying to get out. I started with college-ruled notebooks, writing on just one side of the paper in my printed handwriting, just to keep it neat. As the computer age began, I moved to word processing.

Somewhere along the line, I went pro and began being paid for what I wrote. But it wasn’t the stories that earned me money. It was the technical non-fiction, the prose that explained how to perform tasks with computers. With no formal training in the computer field — after all, it was in its infancy when I graduated from college in 1982 — I had become a computer “expert” (whatever that is) and I churned out books at an alarming rate. Sixteen years after getting my first check for a writing assignment, I now have 70 books and literally hundreds of articles under my belt. (And no, I don’t I don’t think that explains my current weight problem.)

A number of conversations with people within the past few days has made me think about writing and why writers need to write. I thought I’d set my thoughts down here. And the timing couldn’t be better, with National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starting today.

Kinds of Writers

The way I see it, there are different kinds of writers:

• Born writers are people who just feel an overwhelming need to write. Obviously, no one is “born” to write. They’re born with the equipment to get the job done — a good brain, etc. — and are molded by experience and education in such a way that they enjoy writing. They may not be good at it, but they like it and they do it. Whether they can successfully turn it into a career depends on their personality, willingness to learn and improve, ability to meet editors’/publishers’ needs, and business sense.
• Made writers are people who, through circumstance, find themselves writing a lot. Most of these people do it for a living or derive at least some part of their income from writing. This might be someone who steps into a management job that requires writing a lot of reports. Or someone in marketing who writes a lot of ad copy.

The Need to Write

Born writers often need to write. They have these ideas rolling around in their heads and they need to get them down on paper (or pixels). Sometimes just getting them out there is enough. Other times, they need to work the words, to fine tune them, to perfect them. Some people write prose, others write poetry. Some of it is very good, some of it is crap. It doesn’t matter to them. They write because they need to get those words out.

I’m pretty sure that I’m one of these people. I feel a need to write something every day. That’s why you’ll find a new blog entry here most (but not all) mornings. Throughout the day, I think about things going on in the world and in my life. During quiet times — while driving, flying, showering, or doing other “automatic” or mindless tasks — my brain shifts into high gear and really thinks things through. That’s when I get ideas. It’s also when I accumulate enough conclusions about something to begin writing about it, often for the next day’s blog entry.

If I go several days without writing, I get cranky. It’s like going through withdrawal.

Blogging — which I’ve been doing for four full years now — really helps me get those words out. From the very start, I looked at my blog as a journal of my life. It’s only within the past two or so years that I combined my personal blog with entries and information to support my books. My life is multi-dimensional; shouldn’t my blog be the same?

But the more I blog, the less I work on the fiction that got me started as a writer all those years ago. Earlier this year, when I lost the manuscript for a novel I was working on (read “Death of a Manuscript“), I simply stopped writing fiction. I don’t feel the need as much, if at all. I think the blogging I do fulfills my need to write.

Insight from a Professional Writer

Years ago, before I went pro, I was friends with a professional copywriter. He wrote mostly advertising copy — the kind of text you’d find describing products or services in a full-page magazine ad. He also did some technical writing. He made a very good living.

I was young and foolish then. I thought he’d be interested in critiquing my fiction. I sent him a story. He critiqued it. Like most wannabe writers, I wasn’t happy with his comments. (Have you ever met a wannabe writer who actually likes honest criticism?) I don’t recall all of his comments, but I do know that he had an issue with my use of the word pretty as a modifier, as in, “It’s pretty cold outside.” He claimed that it wasn’t professional. I think I used it in dialog, where it could be an indication of a character’s background, maturity, etc. But he didn’t know dialog. He was a copywriter. He was looking for high quality, polished prose. I didn’t deliver it.

He did tell me that I had some talent — that I knew how to write. This was enough praise and encouragement for me.

But the biggest thing I learned from him was that there was more to writing than writing fiction. While writing fiction could be enjoyable and a nice way to spend my evenings, writing non-fiction could earn a living and pay my bills. And while wannabe novelists could look down at a technical writer as a “hack” or someone who had “sold out” and no longer practiced the “art” of writing, professional writers know better.

Every word I write — whether it’s a how-to article for using Microsoft Word or the opening paragraphs of a novel — makes me a better writer. So isn’t it better to have someone pay me for all that practice?

Writing for Money

The other day, I had a conversation with my friend, Pete. We were talking about the writing I do and he wanted to know how advances and royalties — he called them residuals — worked. I explained it. (I also explained it on this blog in “Royalty Statements.”) Pete said something like, “That sounds like a good deal. I’d like to write a book.”

I explained to him that it wasn’t such a sweet deal if your books were about timely topics and had short shelf lives — like mine. It isn’t as if every author can write Gone with the Wind and collect royalties for the rest of his or her life. But we did agree that it was nice to get quarterly checks.

I reported this conversation to my husband by saying something like this: “Pete wants to write a book. He likes the idea of royalty checks.”

“That’s stupid,” my husband replied. “That’s not the right reason to write a book.”

What?

That, of course, almost started an argument. I asked him why he thinks I write books. I reminded him that writing about computers isn’t exactly the most engaging or creative thing a person could do. I asked him if he thought I’d keep writing computer books if no one would pay me to do it. At first, he didn’t get it. But then he did. And he wisely backed off.

A Conversation with a NaNoWriMo Participant

And that brings to me to a “conversation” I had with a fellow Twitter user yesterday. She was pushing NaNoWriMo, which I wrote about in “NaNoWriMo ‘05” and “NaNoWriMo Expanded.” (If you follow those links, be sure to follow both of them for both sides of my opinion.) I followed a few of the links in her posts and was pretty turned off by what I found. Maybe it’s because I’m cynical and hard-minded about writing, probably because I’ve seen too many wannabes waste their time. So I tweeted:

Dare I ask it? Do any of the novels actually completed each November ever get published? Or am I missing the point?

The response came back immediately:

Yes, there is a whole list of published authors from NaNoWriMo on the site—will go fetch URL. I’m talking w/several agents now.:-)

Ok, the list of published NaNoWriMo authors is at: http://urltea.com/1y4e Scroll down on media kit page.

I looked at the list and found 17 novelists listed with their NaNoWriMo books. One of them was Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, which was hot last year. It was good to see something published, but I admit I wasn’t convinced that these were NaNoWriMo works. (I really am a cynic.) And, frankly, with hundreds of thousands of writers participating since 1999, 17 published works wasn’t a very impressive result.

Now you can rightly argue that publication isn’t everyone’s goal. To which I can argue that any idiot can type 50,000 words in a month. Publication is one of the true measures of the value of those words when taken as a whole. That’s the way I look at it, anyway.

But I tweeted back:

Thanks for this. I’ve written 70 books since 1990 but still don’t have a novel out there. One of these days…

Was I bragging? Probably. (I can be such a jerk sometimes.) But I’m proud of that number, proud to be a published and paid professional writer. And I want to make sure that people don’t confuse me with the wannabes. I’ve got my medals and war stories to prove I’m beyond that.

The response:

You’ve written SEVENTY BOOKS since 1990? :-O OMG, you could teach the rest of us! It sounds like your year to write that novel!

No, I couldn’t teach the rest of them. I’ve realized that I have a knack for what I do and that a “born writer” couldn’t learn it from me. And although I’d like to write that novel, I’m pretty busy this month.

I replied:

It sounds a lot more impressive than it is. I think NEXT year will be my novel year. Hold me to that, will you?

I was hoping she’d agree and remind me a few times next year. But instead, she replied:

Everyone says “next year will be my novel year.” That’s why THIS year is when we encourage you to Just Do It, ala Nike.;-)

And I think that’s what separates me from the NaNoWriMo crowd. “Just do it” isn’t a battle cry I apply to something as important as writing a novel. I know I can write 50,000 words in a month. I don’t need to prove it to myself. I’ve already proved it. I wrote my third book, which was 300 pages, in ten days. I routinely plow through revisions of 400+ page books in less than a month.

And yes, I realize that a novel is different. But how different is it? Start with an outline (like I do for all my books) and character notes and write the damn story. I was 100 pages into the novel I lost when my hard disk ground to a halt. I’d done all that in less than a week. But that wasn’t what was holding me back from taking the NanoWriMo challenge…

I replied:

It’s a lot easier to write a book when you know there’s a check (and an impatient editor) waiting for you when it’s done.

And that says all. I finish writing projects because I’m paid to.

Her reply:

Deadlines and a check are motivation to be sure. What I love about NaNo is rediscovering my inner motivation to just love writing.

I don’t think that being forced to write 50,000 words in a month is a good “inner motivation to just love writing.” But I didn’t say this. Instead, I said:

I think that’s what my blog does for me. Since losing a novel manuscript to a hard disk crash, it’s hard to get started again.

She replied:

Ooh, that’s every writer’s nightmare, a reminder to all of us to keep backing up our novels. I can understand why it’s hard then.

On the other hand, it might be fun for you to start a completely different novel and see where that goes.

Fun? Hmm. I’m not sure about that. Another thing holding me back is what I do at my desk all day: I write. Do you think I want to spend my evenings doing the same thing?

I will write that novel. But not not this month. Sometime when I have a clear head and no work stacked up on my plate. If that day ever comes.

Why Do You Write?

Are you a writer? Why do you write? What motivates you? Inspires you? I’m always looking for input from readers (and writers) as food for thought. Use the Comments link or form below.

And if you’ve ever participated in NaNoWriMo, I’d love to hear your honest feedback about it. Did you achieve your goal? Did it provide “inner motivation”? Would you do it again? My Twitter friend showed me another side of the NaNoWriMo scene. What do you have to add? Comments are always welcome.

While I was in the middle of the Big September Gig, I found several times to post “tweets” to Twitter about my progress, using the text messaging feature of my Treo. Later, when I got a chance to read the tweets of the people I follow, I found this comment from a fellow Twitter member:

Wish I was out flying but after so much, does it become a “job”?

The question kind of floored me. After all, the flying I do for hire is a job. So I replied:

Any time you’re required to perform a task at someone else’s whim in exchange for money, you’re doing a job, aren’t you?

But that doesn’t mean it has to be a bad thing.

And that pretty much sums up the way I think about all the things I do for a living, whether it’s writing or flying.

Why People Might Think Otherwise

That got me thinking about why some people might think that my flying or writing was not like a job. What did they include in their definition of job that I wasn’t including?

And I came up with the following list of items:

• Many people’s jobs require them to be in a certain place at a certain time every day, such as an office or a jobsite. There’s usually some regularity to this, for example, 9 to 5, five days a week.
• Many people’s jobs have a limited amount of time off that has to be approved before it’s used. For example, a 2-week vacation or “personal days.”
• Many people’s jobs include a manager or supervisor or some other kind of “boss” who keeps tabs on their work and has the final say over how their work is done. This same person will also evaluate performance and provide input into promotion and raise decisions. And this person can terminate employment at any time.

For many people, this is the true gist of what a job is. They go to work on a regular basis, they do something under the supervision of a boss, and they get paid. A few times a year, they take time off.

Freelancing and Business Ownership is Different

I’m a freelance writer and the owner of a business. These are my two “jobs.” And in both jobs, I’m subject to the same requirements of a regular job, but in different ways.

As a freelance writer:

• Although I’m not required to be in a certain place at a certain time every day, I am required to complete my work on time. So that means I have to sit at my desk and work to get the book or article or whatever is due done. And if meeting a tough deadline means working 12- or 14-hour days — even on weekends — that’s just the way it is.
• I get as much vacation time as I like and no one has to approve it. However, if I don’t work, I don’t get books or articles written. And I don’t get paid.
• I have a boss: my editor. He or she decides whether I’m creating the content the publisher wants to see. He or she can also make changes to my work or require me to redo it a different way. And if I don’t do my job right, he or she is not likely to recommend me or hire me for future assignments.

As the owner and chief pilot of Flying M Air:

• When I have a gig, I have to show up on time and stay until my client is satisfied that the job is done. That job can be any day of the week, any time of the day or night.
• I get as much time off as I want — as long as there isn’t an upcoming gig on my calendar. But when I’m not working, I’m not making money.
• My boss is my client. If he wants me to be on the ramp, ready to fly at 6 AM, I have to be there. (There are exceptions to this. For example, as pilot-in-command, I have final say over whether a flight is conducted. So if I feel a flight cannot be conducted safely due to weather or other conditions, I can cancel it.) If I don’t do my job satisfactorily, my client will probably not hire me again in the future.

But Wait, There’s More!

I can make a good argument that being a freelancer or business owner is a lot more work than being an employee with a desk job.

• When I’m not working and have no work lined up, I have to work to find work. For example, I might need to write a book proposal or pitch an article idea. I have to maintain my Web sites to keep potential customers — editors, readers, passengers — interested in my services. Or meet with hotel concierges to convince them that they should be recommending my helicopter day trips to their guests.
• I have to manage the finances of each of my businesses. That includes keeping track of all banking records, balancing bank accounts, paying bills, and filling out sales tax returns. (Thank heaven I don’t have employees anymore; dealing with that paperwork is a nightmare.)
• I have to keep my competitive edge. That means learning about the new technology I might have to write about and purchasing the computer hardware and software I need to get my job done right. I have to take an annual Part 135 check ride with an FAA inspector and work with helicopter instructors to get advanced ratings (like the instrument rating I want to get this season) and practice emergency maneuvers. It also means preflighting and washing the helicopter and managing its maintenance.
• I have to think about and plan for my businesses 24/7/365. So yes, I lose sleep when I have a seemingly impossible to meet deadline ahead of me for my biggest book. (I made it.) Or when I can’t figure out where that pesky oil leak is and wonder whether it’s serious enough to be squawked. (It wasn’t.) And I’m thinking in the shower or while driving or flying about things I can do to grow my businesses and my income.

Do you do all that in your job?

I’m Not Complaining!

I’m certainly not complaining. While it’s true that being a freelancer or business owner can be a headache sometimes, it’s never bad enough for me to face the alternative — that desk job. I’ve been there and I know.

There’s something enticing about collecting a regular paycheck (with benefits, if you’re lucky) and moving your way up the corporate ladder — or even just skating at a ho-hum job. There’s something sweet about not having ultimate responsibility for profitability of a business. It’s certainly great to leave your job at the office door when you leave at the end of an 8- or 9-hour day.

I made the move to a freelance career in 1990, after eight years of a “9 to 5″ job. And after 18 years of working for myself, building a writing career and flying business, I simply could not go back to the 9 to 5 grind. I’d rather work my ass off on my own schedule, taking the ups and downs that come with the freelance/business owner lifestyle, and be completely responsible for my livelihood than to tie myself to an office job again.

But that’s me.

What do you think? Use the Comments link or form for this post to share your thoughts.

And please, no get-rich-quick links. They will be deleted.

I’ve been neglecting this blog lately, which is something I’m not happy about. You see, I need to blog. I need to keep this journal of my life and share tips and how-tos with strangers all over the world.

So when I neglect it, as I have been for the past week or so, I feel bad about it.

I Take Work When I Need To

But the reason I’ve been neglecting things is because I’ve been so busy doing the kind of work that pays the bills. (No, blogging doesn’t do that.) As any business owner or freelancer can tell you, there isn’t always paying work to do. Sometimes, after a dry spell, you have to take the work that comes along.

And that’s how it is with Flying M Air. Summer in Wickenburg simply sucks. I can’t put it any other way. There are few people around and none of them want to fly — including me. It’s just too damn hot. So with just one gig in all of July and just three or four in all of August, I was personally funding Flying M Air again, paying its bills through the dead summer months.

And Flying M Air doesn’t have small bills to pay.

When September rolled along, I was anxious to do rides at the Mohave County Fair for the third year in a row. And right after that, were two good gigs with photographers over some of Arizona’s most scenic areas. Although the Fair gig was a bust this year, the two gigs that followed it earned me more than 15 hours of revenue time. That’s enough to keep Flying M Air in the black for four to five months. Best of all, I have another very lucrative gig lined up for Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock at the end of September and beginning of October.

I Work Two Jobs

All these gigs have been keeping me from my office for days at a time. That means I can’t do the work I need to do for my other job, the one that funded Flying M Air in the first place.

I’ve been working on my 70th book, a revision of my Mac OS X Visual QuickStart Guide for Leopard, since July. It’s a 750-page volume and I decided this year to tear it apart, reorganize it, and rebuild it from the ground up. I’m nearly done, but it’s been a long, hard task from the start.

It’s always hard writing a book about software when all you have is beta. Betas aren’t always stable, so they occasionally crash at the most inopportune times. Betas aren’t always final, so the thing you wrote about two weeks ago might be different today. It’s a constant process of review and revision.

It’s also a process of learning how new features work. Sure, there’s some onscreen help for some of the new features. But it’s spotty and incomplete, designed to teach basics. It’s best used as a starting point for learning more. Only by “playing” with the feature and experimenting with it can you learn the little tricks that give the book value to readers. That’s my job, and it’s both fun and frustrating sometimes.

Tight Scheduling

As I write this, aviation photographer Jon Davison is in my kitchen, cutting up a cantaloupe for his breakfast. Here’s here to photograph and write about Flying M Air and my helicopter for a book he’s writing about Robinson helicopters. We’ll be flying today and tomorrow and probably on Tuesday. Today’s the air-to-air portion of our photo work; we leave in 45 minutes to fly in formation with my buddy Dave, who owns a Hughes 500.

Although this isn’t a paying gig, it’s important. Jon’s coverage of Flying M Air will help me promote the company. The book, when released, will show readers the kind of work I do and places I go. I’m eager to promote my 6-day excursions and this will definitely help.

So I’m squeezing Jon into my schedule. A few days with him followed by a few days of Leopard followed by a few days in the Four Corners area, flying photographers around.

October is another busy month, with gigs on three of the four weekends.

What To Look Forward To Here

When the Leopard book is done, I’ll begin writing short how-to pieces for this blog about it. But don’t expect to see them before Leopard is released. I take non-disclosure agreements very seriously and don’t have any desire to get Apple, Inc. pissed off at me.

And if you like reading about flying, keep checking in. I’m sure I’ll have some things to say about my work with Jon — hopefully, with photos — and the photographers I’m working with at month-end.

I realize that I haven’t been blogging lately. I have a good excuse. I’m unbelievably busy with work.

I have a drop-dead deadline for my Leopard book coming up very quickly now. So whenever I’m at home, I’m in my office with my fat butt planted in the chair in front of my computer, writing about Leopard. The book is coming along very well, but not without some minor problems. Still, if I keep at it, I’ll get it done on time.

Trouble is, I’m not spending much time in my office. After a seriously crappy-to-the-point-of-wasted-time gig in Kingman last weekend, I had to fly up to Page to take some photographers around Lake Powell. For three days in a row.

I love Lake Powell. I think it’s one of the most beautiful places on earth. And if you think it looks great from the ground or water, you should see it from the air! But after a 4 hour flight on 4 hours of sleep today, I decided I’d had enough of the Lake. Fortunately, I’m going home tomorrow, after dropping off one of my clients in Phoenix.

I’ve been in the Marriott Courtyard here since Monday night. I’ve had five flights totaling over 10 hours of billable time, with about 3 hours more to come. Great for the Flying M Air bank account, which can always use a good cash inflow — especially after a slow summer in Wickenburg. But not great for the Leopard deadline.

So now I’m sitting here at the desk in my hotel room with two laptops in front of me — my MacBook Pro test mule running the latest Leopard beta and my trusty 12″ PowerBook G4 — revising text and making new screenshots for my Leopard book. I’ll finish Chapter 7 today and, with luck, start Chapter 9. (No, I’m not doing them in order.)

Tomorrow, I’ll check out of here at 7 AM and take my luggage — including my “portable office” — to the airport. By 8 AM, I hope to have my passenger on board for the flight to Phoenix. With cooperative weather (read that, “no headwinds”), I’ll be at my desk again by 1 PM, laying out the chapters I wrote in Page. Friday, I’ll be in my office all day.

Then, on Saturday, I pick up another photographer. He’s from Australia and he’s doing a coffee table book about Robinson helicopters. I’m one of his featured operators. I’ll fly him around for a few days, taking time to work on the Leopard book in early morning hours, before he’s awake. He leaves on Tuesday. Then I have two more days in my office before another helicopter gig at Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock.

Anyone who thinks being a freelancer or owning a business is an easy living should walk in my shoes this month. It’s times like these that I think back with a bit of longing for those cubicle days, when I spent more time shooting the bull with co-workers than working long hours to meet deadlines and client needs.

But by mid-October, things should be back to normal. Until then, bear with me. On the priority scale, blogging has slipped behind a few more important tasks.

Some advice for people who want to make money as a writer.

I’ve been writing for a living since 1990, when I quit my day job to become a freelance writer. Since then, I’ve written 68 books and literally hundreds of articles about using computers and other topics.

One thing that amazes me is the number of people who claim they want to be writers but can’t get something as simple as grammar even close to right.

I’m Not Perfect, But I’m Okay

Okay, so here’s my disclaimer: I never claim to have perfect grammar. On the whole, my grammar is pretty good — certainly better than average — but this isn’t because I study grammar. It’s because I read a lot and always have. I believe that reading teaches good (or decent) grammar simply by example.

I use Microsoft Word with the spelling checker turned on (mostly to catch typos, but I admit my spelling skills have slipped over the years) and the grammar checker turned off. My grammar skills are better than the checker inside Word and I consistently find errors in its preprogrammed logic when it’s turned on.

My opinion: Anyone who must rely on a computerized grammar checker to get grammar right should not pursue a career as a writer.

(Allow me to digress for a moment. Back in the early 90s, when I was struggling to make my writing career work, a friend of mine was working as a temp for a company that hired out people with computer expertise. She encouraged me to check out the temp company and sign up. I went to their office in Manhattan with a copy of my first book in my briefcase. Silly me: I thought being a published author would help me get my foot in the door. They made me fill out a form that had the same exact information as my resumé — I never could figure out the bullsh*t of making a person rewrite his resumé on an application form — and then gave me a grammar test. Yes, a grammar test. They wanted to see if I could write. I guess carrying around a 450 page book with my name on the cover wasn’t enough evidence for them. So I took the test. And can you believe it? I got one of the 20 questions wrong. It was the old who’s vs. whose. To this day, I still struggle with that one. In case you’re wondering, they never called me. And I admit I’m pretty glad about that. The whole experience was completely demeaning.)

An Example of a Wannabe Writer Who Needs Help

A while back, I received a communication from a blog reader who wanted to be a writer. Here’s what she wrote:

Thanks for sharing how you make it as a writer. I have always had the dream of being a writer, but just never seem to get with the program.

This is America so I ask my self why not write. I really don’t have a style of my own yet so it will be easier for me to do things the way that publisher want them done.

I just need a topic, or an area of intrest. I heard it said that after you get a topic you will write. (Hope this is true.)

I draw your attention to the second paragraph’s first sentence. Not only does this wannabe spell myself as my self, but she’s completely screwed up punctuation in the sentence, leaving the reader to figure out what she means. The disagreement between noun (publisher) and verb (want instead of wants) could be a typo, but I can tell you right now that publishers don’t want typos.

The third paragraph (also with a typo in the word intrest which should be interest), also has a grammar problem. Can you spot it? Think about it.

Take My Advice

If you want to be a professional writer — that is, if you want to write and get paid for it — you need to understand the basic rules of grammar.

Here are three tips for improving your grammar:

• Read. Read a lot. Read good quality writing. There’s plenty of it online, on quality publications such as newspaper Web sites, Slate.com, Salon.com, and numerous others. All of these sites have editors who check the grammar, spelling, and punctuation of the writers. Don’t read just blogs. The average blogger is not a writer and very few blogs are edited. Worse yet, many bloggers have their own “style” that shuns standard grammar and spelling.
• If you still think you need help, read a grammar or style book. Lots of people like the Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. (I prefer the illustrated hardcover version.) But there are lots of other books out there. The Elephants of Style by Bill Walsh is lots of fun and very educational. Go to a bookstore (you know, the place you hope to find your name on the cover of a book) and check the Reference or Writing sections. You’ll find plenty of options.
• When you finish writing something, read it out loud. Unless the language you’re writing in is not your first language, grammatical errors should jump off the page at you as you read them. Simply said: Your writing should sound good when you read it aloud. That’s not just grammar, either. It’s also the rhythm of your writing, the combination of long and short sentences. That’s something that comes with a lot of experience as a writer.

Don’t worry about developing your own personal writing style. It’ll come to you — if you don’t try to force it. Learn the basics first.

Then just write, write, write — until you get it right.

A few months ago, I read a blog post by some A-list pro blogger that briefly discussed eZineArticles.com as a place to publish articles and generate hits for your site. The idea was that the articles contained a byline with links and people who read them would come back to your site to read more. The result: more hits.

I dug deeply into my well of content and found a handful of articles I didn’t mind republishing. I formatted them as required and submitted them to eZineArticles.com, after setting up an account as an author. A bunch of the articles were bounced back because they read like blog posts. But I successfully argued that they did provide useful information in my somewhat conversational and bloggish writing style. All five articles were published on the eZine Articles site.

First Surprise: Anyone Can Republish!

What I didn’t realize at first was that anyone who sets up a publisher relationship with eZineArticles.com could republish my work, as long as it was republished exactly as written and included my byline, bio, and links. I discovered this when an article I wrote about flying at sunrise was picked up by a Web site with content about cruising.

After a few e-mails went back and forth between me and the site owner and eZineArticles support staff, I realized what I’d missed by not reading the fine print — I was basically granting a very broad set of rights to eZineArticles.com. But the site that had used the piece was a high quality site and I didn’t mind my recycled work appearing there. And the eZineArticles folks assured me that publishers had to meet certain requirements to use the work.

Second Surprise: Hot Sex?

But I wasn’t very happy when I traced a link to one of my Antelope Canyon photos article to a Blogger blog with the words “hot-sex” in its domain name. Although the site didn’t appear to contain any porn, I didn’t want my content — or name! — associated with it. So I wrote to eZineArticles support to complain.

Today, I found the same article used on a site with “nurse-fetish” in the domain name. Now I was pissed. I wrote again to the eZineArticles staff.

eZineArticles.com Responds

My new message crossed their response to the first one in the ether. In their response, they told me that if I didn’t want my work on a specific site, it was my responsibility to contact the owner of that site and ask him to remove it.

Ever try to contact the owner of a Blogger blog? It’s not possible if they don’t want to make it possible.

I replied that their response was completely unsatisfactory and that I would be deleting all of my articles from their site.

And then I did.

Lessons Learned

I am certainly not desperate enough to be published or to get hits by releasing my work on a site that allows distribution without prior approval by the author. Frankly, I don’t think any author should be that desperate.

eZineArticles.com obviously doesn’t give a damn about its authors if it won’t work to prevent this kind of activity with an author’s work. Any author who publishes with them deserves whatever shit he gets — including his name spread around on sites of questionable quality and purpose.

From now on, I will publish my work electronically in only three places:

• Here, on this site, where my work is covered by a copyright notice that helps protect my work from misuse.
• On the sites of publishers who pay me for my efforts and protect our copyrights.
• On the sites of other bloggers who have asked me to guest author for them and will protect our copyrights.

I’m angry about this, but I know it’s my own fault. I was conned, first by the pro blogger who pushed eZineArticles.com and then by eZineArticles.com itself. I don’t understand why anyone would allow their work to be reproduced in a way that they cannot control. Could they all be as stupid as I was when I signed up?

As for the “hot-sex” and “nurse-fetish” sites, I wonder how the other female eZineArticles authors feel about their work — and their names — appearing there.

Yesterday, as I completed the revisions to Chapter 10, I reached the halfway point in my revision for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: Visual QuickStart Guide.

No, the book isn’t 20 chapters long. It’s 27 plus an appendix. I’ve revised 14 chapters. I’m not revising in order. I’m revising in the order I think it might be safe to revise in. Some features are still in flux and if I revise based on what I see, I’ll likely have to revise again.

And no, I can’t tell you what I think might be in flux. I’m under non-disclosure and I take that stuff pretty seriously. That’s also why you won’t find Leopard screenshots here (yet). And why I haven’t written any articles about the new features (yet).

This is a Deep Revision

I’ve settled into a pace of about one revised chapter per day. That might seem like a lot. It is, especially since I’m doing what I call a deep revision.

I not only write my Visual QuickStart Guides, but I also do layout for them. This is called packaging — the author provides final files to the publisher, who then (after editing, of course) sends them on to the printer.

I currently use InDesign CS3 for all my layout needs. But that’s not what I was using when I wrote the first edition of this book, which covered Mac OS 8, back in 1997. (I still remember that book’s release at Macworld Expo in Boston. Peachpit sold out on the first day of the show, but UPS was on strike and we couldn’t get any more books in.) In 1997, I was using PageMaker. And that’s what I used to create the original book files.

A revision is a revision. That means you start with something and modify it to bring it up to date. So each year, I’d start with the previous year’s file and modify text, replace screenshots, and make various other changes to bring the content and file up to date.

Every time I switched to a new version of my layout software — PageMaker became InDesign 2 which became InDesign CS which became InDesign CS3 — I can’t justify the expense of updating my software for every release — I’d simply convert the file to the new version at the beginning of the revision process.

Over the years, this led to inconsistently set up files. Sure, the differences were minor, but they were there. And it bugged me that there were tiny differences in the style definitions and that some text included indexing codes from a failed experiment with the indexing feature and that the Zapf Dingbats font applied to bullets wasn’t working right in all files. And that in some chapters, each page was a different InDesign “story” and in others, the stories would go on for several pages.

So this year I decided to clean up the files by recreating them all. I built a brand new template in InDesign CS3, adding the staggered tabs that many other VQS books include but mine never had. I took full advantage of InDesign’s nested style feature to automate bullet and reference formatting. I made my styles intelligent and highly functional.

Then I got an InDesign plugin that enabled me to export the individual stories in a single chapter file as one big story in plain old text. I do this for each chapter. I make sure the text has smart quotes and paste it into my template. I then manually reapply all the styles as I go through the text and edit it to bring it up to date.

Along the way, I reorganized much of the content to remove 2 chapters, add 5 chapters, and move a bunch of content around.

A deep revision.

Other Revisions

Contrast this with the last book revision I did. That was for another publisher which doesn’t allow author packaging. Instead, the book is submitted as a series of Microsoft Word files.

I start with the previous year’s “final” files. I turn on the revision feature so all my changes are marked — supposedly for the benefit of the copy editor, so she doesn’t re-edit the whole thing — and go at it. The result is a mess that only gets messier as the book goes through the editing process. In the end, it’s all cleaned up, laid out and sent to me as proofs so I can make any final corrections to it.

If the software I’m revising the book for hasn’t changed much, this can be incredibly quick — I can sometimes turn out 3-4 chapters in a day, with plenty of time for my morning coffee, blog entry, e-mail processing, and even a little Web surfing. My record was 2 weeks for the entire 400+ page book.

Time Is Not on my Side

But for a deep revision, things go much more slowly. If I’m lucky, I can turn out a chapter a day. That’s a complete 20-40 page chapter, laid out with dozens of screenshots — I’m averaging about 80 per chapter right now — and captions and even a few callouts.

I just did the math. If I can keep up a chapter a day as my production rate, I should have the whole thing done by September 20. Right?

Well, unfortunately, I don’t have the next 13 days to work on this book. Next Friday, I’m flying my helicopter at the Mohave County Fair, giving rides for the whole weekend. On Monday, I fly directly to Page for two separate flying gigs over Lake Powell. I should be back by Thursday afternoon. Then the Saturday right after that, I’m hosting a photographer/writer and pilot from Australia who are preparing a coffee table book about Robinson Helicopters, featuring about 20 operators all over the world. (Can you imagine that they picked me?) When they leave, I have a few days before I head back up to Lake Powell, Monument Valley, and Shiprock with the helicopter for a group of Russian photographers for a big photo excursion.

What does this tell me?

It’s 6:26 AM on a Friday morning. I’d better get to work.