Cautiously Optimistic

 

After a week of stress for a number of reasons, I am feeling cautiously optimistic this morning.  

The fact that we have had a couple days of sunshine has surely helped while I adjust to daylight 'savings' time.  (What we are 'saving' I've never been sure and would be delighted to be on standard time year round.  DST year round means it will still be dark at 10 am here in the middle of winter.)

Anyway, the TexSolv pegs arrived yesterday and the adjustments were made.  I was able to finish the towel that was half done when everything went pear shaped, then one complete towel with zero issues.

Then I got an email from the second alpha reader and based on her comments my inner critic is currently quiet.

With the organization I completed while waiting for the loom parts to arrive, and a muse also currently quiet (although I did ask first alpha reader about a topic to see if she thought it was a good one to include) having some time to do the tedious task of sorting and filing what has been done into something I could now begin to analyze for content and begin to sequence, means I feel a lot more confident that this is a project worth doing and have a road map to see me to completion.

Normally (ha!) I have the end goal in sight and do everything I can to get myself to that end goal.  This project just started bursting out with no real end goal in mind.  It wasn't even originally a book but articles I would try to find a venue for - magazine, website, whatever.  They are too long for a blog so some other way to get them out would be needed.  A newsletter?  I could start a Patreon, or do something for subscribers only via ko-fi as they allow for that option.  It all seemed like a whole lot of on-going work and frankly I'm trying to reduce my daily quota of 'work'.  Being 'retired' and all.

As the essays came tumbling out it seemed 'right' to collect them and offer them as a 'book'.  I talked to a couple of friends who were all encouraging, then asked two people to alpha read.  I could have done the polishing to find the typos and grammar issues myself - and I did do a pass through before sending them to the alpha readers, but I wasn't hunting for the problems; my sub-conscious was too busy pumping more content out.  What I mostly wanted from them, apart from the obvious editing polish, was an honest assessment of the content.

They have both been very supportive and now that personal issues are in the process of being resolved, the loom appears to be fixed, things are calming down chez nous.

I have settled on Stories from the Matrix for the title and am now pondering a cover.  The book will be paperback to keep the cost down as much as possible, but everything is more expensive now so it will be offered as a pdf as well as print version, just like Magic and TIW.  My goal is to keep writing up until my editor tells me when to give her the files.

As one pundit put it: an author does not finish writing a book; they *stop* writing a book.  If my sub-conscious keeps feeding me more topics when this one is ready to be published, I can always do what so many other books have done - add the content and keep going?  Mary Black did that with Key to Weaving, which became New Key to Weaving; Allen Fannin with Handloom Weaving Technology; Jackson and Dixon with Textile Science for Interior Designers, and so on.  Or if there looks to be enough content, a volume 2?  Who knows.  I never really know what the heck my sub-conscious is up to!