writing | Tien Chiu's Blog- Part 4

July 14, 2015 by Tien Chiu

T minus 19 days

The book is due to the publisher in the early morning of August 3 – 19 days from now. I’m pleased to say, though, that I am making excellent progress, and expect to be able to turn in the manuscript and marketing materials on time. (Which is a good thing, considering that one major section of the book is about project planning and meeting deadlines.) In fact, yesterday I declared the manuscript complete! and will now turn my attention to translating the manuscript from a conventional Word document to a custom-formatted document to meet the publisher’s submission requirements. I expect this to be a fairly lengthy process which will take up most of the remaining time.

“Complete,” of course, is a relative term. I’m still missing one or two artists’ bios, photos, etc., a few captions are missing information, and so on – but the book is 99.5% done, and my contract editor assures me that the few outstanding items can be sneaked in after the deadline.

So what’s left? Quite a bit, as it turns out. The biggest item is converting the manuscript into Schiffer’s format, which involves inserting a lot of tags into the text, removing the photos and replacing them with image insertion information, putting the captions in a separate file, etc. (Lots of etc.) I expect that process to take me at least half of the allotted time. The remaining half will be spent working on marketing materials: the author bio, the book blurb, figuring out possible sales outlets, defining the target market, etc. More non-writing tasks that are nonetheless essential to getting the book published.

Of course, this is all coming to a head at the same time as my digital painting class, where one major assignment is due Tuesday the 21st and the final class project is due Thursday the 30th, just a few days before the book is due. Fortunately, with some self-discipline and good time management, I think I can squeeze both of them in. Of course, if push comes to shove, the book comes first, but I’m really enjoying the class and would like to make a strong finish.

I wish you all could read the manuscript! It’s come out remarkably well, infinitely stronger than the book blog I wrote nearly two years ago. It fuses my two decades of experience in project management with insights from 22 well-known artisans in a broad range of media. I’m very proud of it, and feedback from my beta readers has been very positive. I hope the editors at Schiffer will help me make it even stronger.

Sadly, I just gave my latest printed copy of the manuscript to a beta reader, or I’d include a photo of it. It is now 218 pages, with 50,000 words and about 140 photos, and makes an impressive stack of paper. It’s looking almost like a real book now.

But I need to be careful not to get too proud of it. Otherwise I might wind up like Tigress, who may become a snob if we aren’t careful. She is every bit as friendly, playful, and pettable as always, but she also really enjoys looking down on people.

April 12, 2015 by Tien Chiu

The book is beta ready!

Woot! I have finally gotten to a beta-ready manuscript of the book. That is, I’ve reached a point where I feel the writing and editing are almost done – that the topics are well-written, and in the correct order. And the phrasing is well-polished. So I have sent it out to a few select beta readers for their feedback, before sending it out to the artists I interviewed. I’m hoping to start sending it out by Thursday or Friday. Meanwhile, I’ll be prepping summaries of each artist’s quotes, requests for photos, etc. to send out to each of the 22 artists who are included in the book. Lots of stuff still to be done, just not that much writing/editing.

I have also spent two solid days studying jacquard design and ArahWeave (jacquard design software). While I have only scratched the surface of the topic, I am feeling considerably less bewildered. I believe I am starting to understand the conceptual framework for jacquard design – how the system “thinks”. I’ve also, thanks to the ArahWeave manuals and tutorials, begun to develop an understanding of how one translates these ideas into actual fabric design.

In the course of exploring the ArahWeave tutorials, I’ve also developed an interest in velvet and matelassÃ©. I’m hoping my next warp will allow me to weave both – not sure, though, as the velvet will have to be woven on two warps, wound onto separate beams. (One for the ground cloth, one for the pile.) That may make it incompatible with matelassÃ©. But now that I’ve finished my intense focus on the book, hopefully I can try my hand at these new structures. I need to come up with something to weave soon, before I finish the sea turtles!

Tomorrow I’m going back to work. It’s been a pleasant month of post-surgical recovery, but insofar as I’m mostly recovered, it’s time to put on my professional hat again. I’m not looking forward to the first few days back – I’m guessing I’ll return to 1000+ unread emails in my inbox, and the usual set of fires to fight. On the other hand, that is what I’m paid for, and I’m reasonably good at it. And I enjoy it, most of the time.

Meanwhile, between my printing out the manuscript and the ArahWeave manual, it has been a busy time for our laser printer. Which of course makes the cats happy, since a duplexing printer is endlessly fascinating. Here are a few shots of Fritz in action – sadly, I did not capture the moment where he tried to stick his entire head (and both front legs) into the printer while hanging upside down from the top of the printer. Just as well, I suppose – I was laughing so hard it would probably have come out blurry, anyway.

Fritz sticking his head into the printer

February 25, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Off to Seattle!

The last week has been fairly quiet, partly because of my loom woes, but also because I’ve been busy writing and revising my programs for the Seattle Weavers Guild, where I’m lecturing tomorrow. The first is about the creative process in craft, drawn heavily from the book, of course. It’s illustrated with a ton of photos from Autumn Splendor, and some of my color-gradient shawls. The second is about the saga of the wedding dress, from the Sharon Alderman workshop that started it all to its final destination at the American Textile History Museum. Full of gorgeous photos, of course. And I have two suitcases full of samples, muslins, and finished pieces to show.

It was a lot of fun writing both programs, and I can’t wait to deliver them! I’ll be speaking at the guild meeting tomorrow, delivering both the morning and afternoon programs.

I have also finished the manuscript! I wrote the concluding paragraphs yesterday morning. There are no more “write intro!” or “write more here!” notes in the text. I will likely make more edits before my surgery – adding and subtracting quotes, updating some diagrams, etc., but the text is complete. I’ve already sent it to one beta reader, and will send it to a few more friends for feedback shortly. It’s 128 pages single spaced, and almost 40,000 words.

So, all in all, things are proceeding nicely.

Loom-wise, Mike and I made a last-ditch attempt at getting the loom repaired on Saturday. It failed, so I spent all day Sunday drawing a pentagram, lighting smoky oil lamps, and chanting incantations to summon an AVL technician from the netherworld, aka Chico.

Well, kind of. I did send an email requesting a house call, which (according to my last correspondence with AVL) will take place next Monday. Hopefully that should finally fix the problem. I’m fortunate enough to live within a 3-hour drive of AVL, so a house call, while expensive, will not entirely break the bank. I think I’m going to finish putting on the warp this weekend, so we can test the loom both with and without a warp on Monday.

Off to pack for Seattle! I’m leaving this afternoon, so I really do need to get everything put together.

The cats, of course, are helping!

February 14, 2015 by Tien Chiu

My god, it’s full of goats!

I gave Mike a ride home from work yesterday, and on the way, I passed a hillside full of goats!

I’m used to seeing the occasional goat or sheep in rural areas, but not thundering herds of goats, and not near industrial parks! But Mike say they appear every year, brought in to trim the grass and help control fire hazards.

(I can’t help wondering how much it costs to rent a goat…and where one finds rent-a-goat services. Does one list them in the Yellow Pages?)

Enough idle pondering! I have been busy on the book – twelve hours put in so far this week, and planning for another three hours today. That will make up my shortfall from last week and bring me back on schedule.

In those twelve hours, I’ve completely rewritten two chapters, interviewed two more artists, and written exercises and examples for the entire first section (the one on design). I printed and reviewed the entire 119-page document with a red pen, doing some light line edits but also marking sections with awkward transitions or places where an introduction or conclusion needed to be written. The Introduction is still missing, and so is one other half-chapter at the end. There are also one or two places where I need to rework illustrations. But there are far fewer gaps than there were last week, and I’m going to close a lot of them over this three-day weekend. I am feeling pretty good about my ability to get something editor-worthy by my surgery date, which is just under four weeks away.

I have also been working on rearranging the garage. The eventual studio floor plan looks like this:

Reality, of course, looks far different. The garage currently looks like this:

In an effort to get some of the stuff off the garage floor, I’ve purchased two more sets of large utility shelves and will be setting them up in the garage this weekend. Of course that means massive rearrangement of Stuff, as all the clutter needs to be moved to the patio before I can set up the new shelves. But I’m hoping it leads to more space, and neater space, in the end.

I’m continuing to work on the sea turtles warp, but since shafts 36-40 are floating again, had to defer continued work until I had a chance to diagnose and address the dobby issues. I think I’ve figured out what’s happening, but am not 100% certain of the root cause. Figuring that out, and fixing it, is also on the list for the weekend. I want to be weaving!

I’m also continuing to work on the candied citrus peel. It turns out that blood orange peel tastes boringly pedestrian (kinda like used sweat socks, actually), so I’m not candying those, but I have batches of candied Seville orange peel and candied grapefruit peel with rosewater syrup in process. They should finish by next weekend.

Finally, I’m pleased to say that I have solved the Dilemma of the Helpful Kitty. You know – a certain cat (let’s call him “Fritz”) likes to come over and help me work, usually by walking right in front of the monitor and demanding to be petted. Then, after being adored for awhile, he curls up where my keyboard should be and wants to take a nice long nap. Since moving the cat is (of course) unthinkable, what does the poor human do in order to get work done?

Well, in this case, the poor human played sneaky. I bought a pet heating pad, and put it on the desk in a slightly more opportune spot. What? A nice warm place to nap? Now Fritz can supervise from atop a comfy heating pad, and the human can get work done as well! A win for all involved. (And no need to move the cat!)

February 8, 2015 by Tien Chiu

Temptations

The last week has been pretty quiet, creatively speaking – work has been busy and almost all my remaining time has been spent on the book. But I have made significant progress – interviewed four more artists, annotated three interviews, and rewrote one entire chapter! Not bad for one week, especially since much of my attention has been at work.

I have now finished all the artist interviews, I think. I had been considering doing a few more, but they eat up an unbelievable amount of time – about 3.5 hours per interview to set up, interview, annotate the interview transcript, and tag all the annotations. Since I only have twelve hours a week to work on the book, that means that just three interviews will eat an entire week’s work. Given that I’ve only got four and a half weeks until my (self-imposed) March 12 deadline for a complete-and-moderately-polished draft, I really need to get going on the manuscript. So I am declaring my interviews complete. I’ve talked to twenty-five artists already, and I think that’s enough.

My goal for this week is to annotate the transcripts for my final three interviews, and finish rewriting the chapters on design. I have restructured the book into two parts, one about design and one about process. It’s a much more logical organization than what I had previously, and the book reads much better now, but I now need to do a good bit of editing to support the new scheme. I also need to add some examples.

But, just to mess with my exemplary self-discipline, several temptations have appeared on the horizon. Here’s the first one:

Seville oranges, pink grapefruit, and blood oranges

I was so surprised to find Seville sour oranges at the farmer’s market that I bought eight pounds. Then I went on a buying spree, getting another eight pounds of blood oranges and ten pounds of pink grapefruit. I have no idea where I got the impression that I’ll have time to process those into candied citrus and marmalade. There must have been chocolate fumes wafting through the air!

The other temptation looks like this:

As you can see, despite the work madness, I did carve out enough time to get started on the sea-turtle warp. I beamed on a 14″ wide warp in 60/2 silk/cashmere yarn and am about 1/3 done threading it. I’ve also dyed the weft yarns – sea foam green for the tabby weft and deep indigo for the pattern weft.

I’ve arrived at what I think is a decent compromise between discipline and temptations. In the mornings, I work on the book. But in the evenings, I work on other things – in this case, candied citrus and warping/weaving. This lets me make reasonably quick progress on the book, while still leaving time for other fun. (And I’m really not losing much working time on the book, as I’m usually too tired for writing/editing by the end of the day, anyway.)

The book is fun too, of course. Particularly if you are a cat – or, better yet, a pair of cats – who are fascinated by the duplexing printer. The printer makes clicky noises, hums a bit, and a sheet of paper appears! And then, almost immediately, it disappears again, only to reappear (with more clicks and hums) a few moments later. Magic! They could watch it endlessly. So a 117-page manuscript rolling out of the printer is pure, unadulterated joy.

Fritz and Tigress investigating the printer

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