If you’re as tired of reading about the never ending saga that is this book, as I am writing about it, then follow the title’s advice. If you haven’t had enough (or perhaps you love to read about my misery) then feel free to carry on.
Since my last book related post I’ve had plenty of time to get the majority of the book redone in the new layout style which James actually liked. With the boys at their father’s house for a week and Holly super busy at work, I’ve been working a lot more than usual. I had only one short chapter left to layout yesterday when James called (Sunday is his favourite day to call and have long chats and add to my workload) and informed me that he wanted to change the layout again.
After looking at other books, he came to the conclusion that most books printed at 8.5″ x 11″ use two columns of text rather than one. His solutions are either re-size the entire book, or switch to a two column format and keep the current size. Either option results in me starting over (essentially from scratch) yet again. This wouldn’t be quite as disappointing if I hadn’t have already brought this all up at the beginning of this project, and he said it was fine. I don’t see how something so important could be ignored or avoided for so long. These things should have been decided on before layout began. I even suggested he find his printing company before we began the layout so we could avoid any potential issues, and have a better idea of what sizing to go with.
I fought off yelling “FUCK!” into the phone, and informed James that I had almost completed the new layout of the first book, and asked him to please look at what I had so far before deciding it wasn’t good enough. I also suggested he find a print-on-demand service that could fulfill our needs and provide us with a one chapter sample (I figure if he can see what it will actually look like he’ll decide it’s fine, and not something that goes against all the rules of book creation) for now, and a finished product in the near hopefully near future. I really hope he figures it all out and makes a firm final decision soon.
Before I hung up he also added some more work to my already intimidating load. It turns out he’s decided we need to show people some more examples of what you can do with simple modular post and beam construction, and therefore we need to add some images of other P&B houses. One of the examples he wants to include is an image of his old house, which is now the ISBA student residence. I was excited at the idea of getting to model this building, as it’s one of the nicest places I’ve ever seen. Instead, James suggested he take his old book and get it photocopied, then mail me the image. I tried to convince him it would be better and more consistent if I put the effort into modeling it. He was completely against the idea so I told him to leave it to me, and I’d see what I could do.
Today I sent him an email with the image above. It’s a photo I took of the image in his old book, then fiddled around with until it looked decent. In the email I made one last plea for the ‘Okay’ on modeling the house, but I doubt he’ll even read it. It always amazes me how many corners he tries to get me to cut considering he’s one of the hardest working, most motivated people I’ve ever met.
