Word
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am working on and have now mostly finished a book on the twenty-five years of motorcycling I have done with my group, called American Flyers Motorcycle Club (AFMC). It is quite the magnum opus with 374 pages, 104,000 words 183 photographs or images and one long chart of our 60 rides over those years. I am writing this for my fellow members and me as a record of what we have been through together. Other than the book I wrote about my mother’s life, Mater Gladiatrix, it may be the most important book to me of any I have or will ever write. My family is not so keen on me writing about them, so I am unlikely to go in that direction other than an occasional piece I dare to publish here. That means that the most meaningful activity to me, my passion as the Greeks would characterize it, is motorcycling.
I started writing this book twenty-five years ago when I started writing stories about our rides and publishing them to our membership. Everyone enjoyed the retelling of the tall tales of the rides so I was encouraged to keep it up. My first story was called Arthur Goes to the Seashore and it was about the oldest member of our group, an octogenarian we now call “Living Legend”, and his observations about the geological formations in the great Southwest that we were riding through. The truth is that Arthur was a copywriter in the advertising game during his career, which means he is a writer himself, and he was and remains a convenient foil for all our good-natured fun. Making fun of one another and our quirky riding habits is great sport among our group so it was all deemed to be fair game.
One of the guys Arthur brought into the group about four years in was an internet entrepreneur (Arthur spent lots of time plying the waters of the new media world in its formative days). His name is Steve Larsen and besides being an internet guy, he is also an avid motorcyclist who chose to write articles about gear and travels for many different motorcycle magazines. It was a great way to stay on the leading edge (lots of free new products), but it was also a great way to make a few bucks doing what he loved. On a trip to Croatia a few years ago, while we all rented BMW GS bikes, Steve went to the Ducati factory and borrowed a new Multistrada for the ride with the intention to write an article for some magazine or other reviewing the hot new machine. Very shrewd and cool.
Steve equally favors on-road and off-road riding and can stand up for miles riding through sand and gravel with the best of them (something I never like doing and can’t do at all well). He is retired now and living in Phoenix where he dabbles in most of the things he always has, just at his own pace now. His wife Maggie is a sweetheart who doesn’t ride with him, but joins us for interesting gatherings and always has a smile on her face. Steve has the distinction of telling me that he has never written a piece, story, article or anything unless he had a pre-agreed payment arranged for his work. That very much impressed me. When I published my pension book with Wiley, I got an advance check (small, but it spent just the same). I once got paid by HBO for winning a story contest, but that was pay denominated in subway tokens (one years worth, though). Other than that, I have written hundreds of thousands of words with no prospect or promise of payment and little likely to ever come my way. I write because I like writing. I am actually paying to publish this book for my friends. That probably means millions will want to read it and will buy it online with no profit margin built in by design.
I guess Steve has time on his dance card since when he heard I was writing the book to publish it for the Anniversary Tour in May, he kindly offered to act as copy editor. Actually, initially both he and Maggie offered to do it together. Maggie had been a publishing editor and a brief exposure to her editing gave me to believe she was a very rigorous editor. I always figure the more help the better. As I restarted the effort in the new year, Steve told me Maggie would not be helping out. He referenced my dedication, which called out Steve and Maggie for helping with the project. Steve suggested I remove Maggie since she didn’t like taking credit where it wasn’t due. I did just that and off we went on our writing and editing juggernaut.
Steve had stories to add. Great, many were not rides I attended. Steve had pictures to contribute. Great, Steve is a wonderful photographer with a great motorcycling eye. Steve understands economy of expression and as a frequent writer, I trust and respect his editing skills. Great, I am generally a guy given to speed and completion and I often am not as careful or diligent as I should be. Someone once advised, “JUST WRITE! Worry about perfection later.” I probably took that too much to heart, so I write and I rely on the built-in spellcheck and syntax editors in Microsoft Word to clean up my act. My view tends to be, I’m telling a story more than I’m a writer’s writer. If I get my story out, that’s good enough. Steve, and even more so Maggie, are cut from a very different bolt of cloth on that issue. Once we got past the big structural issues with the book we got down to real editing, hard editing, red-pen editing with Steve cursing me out for my “that-filled” prose. It seems I use “that” far more than I should. I see I’ve used it 16 times out of 1,012 words in this piece, or 1.58% of the words. THAT does seem a tad high, not THAT I’ve ever thought about THAT.
As we got down to short strokes, we started to have pictures and text jump around a lot and mess with the pagination. It became maddening with Word/PDF reconciliation needed on each pass. This is when the kettle drum starts its thumping and Maggie comes on the scene with her turbo-Word capabilities. She’s less sweet in this mode than I’m used to. I sense a desire to call me and my pal Steve bumbling idiots (I sense that may have happened once or twice before). With her Word help we get where we need to be. The PDF looks good. That’s when I made the mistake of asking if she was satisfied. Not even close. To paraphrase, “I would be embarrassed to submit this document for publication.”
I’m like Harry Chapin in his song Taxi. There’s a wild-man wizard hiding inside of me and he came out just then and said, “Yeah, but it looks good, doesn’t it?” I think it somehow broke the tension. When I told Kim (she knows Maggie much better than I do), she asked if Maggie laughed, and the best I could say was, “sort of.” Maybe after this exercise I will sign up for an advanced Word corse. There is only one thing to say about THAT…..and it’s Word!