Page Proofs and Indexing, Oh Boy!

The page proofs for Magnetic Woman arrived a week or so ago, which means that for the month of June my life will be largely occupied with checking for errors and, in particular, creating the index.

Authors always get the chance to check for mistakes, and some people are better at that than others. As a former proofreader, I'm fairly good, but it's always dangerous to proofread your own work without someone else also taking a look. Still, I've already noticed a few things that will need fixing.

As for indexing, nonfiction usually ought to be indexed, and as University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly press, I did not have to make a case for why my book needs an index. However, there was the question of whether the press would hire an indexer (and charge me for it), whether I would hire an indexer (and hope it would cost less than the press's charge), or whether I would do the index myself.

I have never previously indexed a book, but--having been a writer for many years and also worked some in publishing--I had a good general idea of what was involved. I knew I was capable of the job, assuming I had enough time. But were there exciting new ways of accomplishing the task?

I asked around, and learned that there are indeed various software tools, some of them in my word processor. (I wrote the book in Nota Bene and submitted it in Word, but it is now in pdf.) But indexing remains largely something done in one's mind rather than with software, because while software can easily create a concordance, a good index deals heavily with ideas, many of which are not identified by name at every occurrence in the text. While, if I were a professional indexer, I might want to invest in special software to speed the task, the cost and learning curve didn't seem worth it to index this and the small number of other scholarly books I expect to publish.

It turned out that writers of my acquaintance on Facebook who responded to my inquiry did their indexing in pretty much the same way as the job has traditionally been done, except that not all of them used index cards, preferring to type the entries directly into a Word document, where the entries can easily be edited. Once I learned this, I decided that yes, I would do my own indexing and that simple methods are often easiest and best.

And so, at this point I have reached page 75, which means 95 pages indexed as the front matter takes up 20. I find that I can index pretty well for most of a morning (depending on how many interruptions and to what extent my neighbors are producing construction and lawn-care noise), but it's not quick work because each page has so many things to index. Luckily, my temperament seems well suited to doing this amount of indexing. I would hate to spend all day indexing, but I find that three or four hours of indexing per day (at least on my own book) is kind of enjoyable. The part I like least is trying to deal with topics that are huge throughout the book, like Toyen, surrealism, and the avant-garde. These have to be broken down into sub-entries (as do many other topics, of course), but that still can be complicated.

However, for the most part I'm just happily working away each morning and waiting to hear back from Artists Rights Society about copyright clearance. Because yeah, even dead artists' work isn't necessarily out of copyright, and Toyen's art will be under copyright for decades to come.

We Protest, in Dayton as Elsewhere, Police Brutality

It's been awhile since I've blogged as I've been largely focused on just writing and doing some gardening and course prep for fall, and there hasn't been any exciting news on my books to report. But with recent events shocking us out of our coronavirus isolations, it seems appropriate to comment.

Like people across the country and around the world, I was appalled to learn of the death of George Floyd, although not terribly surprised; what I found surprising was that even after years of video documentation of such crimes, and even after the outcry at the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery while he was jogging, police in the city of my birth felt free to mistreat and kill, on camera, a man who was no threat whatsoever to them. A man who at worst may have passed a counterfeit $20 bill and who was on the ground, subdued. How do I know--how do any of you know--that we have not at some point passed a counterfeit twenty? But George Floyd was black, and so one policeman felt free to kill him in front of horrified witnesses, unimpeded by his fellow officers.

It is no surprise, then, that despite our remaining in the throes of a pandemic, Americans have felt obliged to take to the streets in protest. Not just one day of protest, and not protest only by the black community, but days of protest by outraged human beings from many communities.

Here in Dayton, where the police have enjoyed almost a year of public adulation after their success at rapidly taking out our mass shooter last August, I would have thought we might be one of the cities where public and police came together to mourn George Floyd. But no. On Saturday evening, after a day focused on writing and chores rather than the news, I went out to gather dandelions and plantain for Felicia and Mikko's supper, and heard honking and chanting. Once the rabbits were fed, I hurried out and found a crowd of protesters facing a line of police across Keowee, a major street two blocks from my house. In the distance near the line of police, I could see clouds of something. At that point I didn't know whether something was on fire or what. I moved in to join the protesters. We chanted "Black lives matter!" and "Hands up, don't shoot!" We took a knee several times. The line of police just stood there, repeating announcements that we must disperse or run the risk of serious injury. The police lobbed something at us and we ran back. As the hours went by, we walked all over downtown Dayton, past groups of police from Dayton reinforced by police from all the suburbs--cars marked Fairborn, Beavercreek, Huber Heights, Centerville, etc. were parked all over. Over by Sinclair Community College, a line of police threw canisters of tear gas at us, so we had to run a retreat with wet cloth over our noses and mouths. I heard someone say that this was relatively quiet compared with earlier in the day, when there had been rubber bullets. I can't confirm the rubber bullets, but there was tear gas. We kept asking police we passed to join us, but they did not. Retreating from the tear gas, we passed a huge humvee painted in camouflage and marked Police. The Wikipedia entry on humvees shows photos of numerous versions of this type of vehicle; the one on Third Street towered over us and I wasn't sure passing it that it wouldn't lurch forward and run over us, or that someone safe inside wouldn't open fire. To my relief, neither of these things happened.

Eventually, though before the end of the evening, I peeled off and headed home, wanting to get there while I still could walk and before anything more violent occurred. At 9:30, an automated call came through announcing that a curfew would begin at 9:00. I'd gotten home around 8:30, but had I been less tired, I might well have been out after 9:00.

Was there property damage? Yes, some. I personally only saw two kids of approximately junior-high age using spray cans plus one young man kicking a dent into a police car. Some windows were broken too, but I didn't see that. On the whole, our protesters were peaceful and were met with aggression. Our police had the chance to keep the community's regard, but in my opinion they did not.

It is time for the police of this nation to serve and protect, not bully and kill. My thoughts are on my black family members in Minneapolis and elsewhere, and on our grieving and angry country as we attempt to right what is wrong.