Secrets of Saving as PDF, How and Why

You’ve seen links like the one above. You’ve probably clicked them and know they produce PDF files. Did you know you can save your own files in that form? Did you know when and why know you should? Here are three compelling reasons:

1. If you share a Word document with someone else, they may not have the same version as you, and they may not have the fonts you use. Your document may not display right for them. By saving as a PDF, you can embed the fonts, and the file will look the same on a Mac, a PC, or an Android based device.
2. If you share a Word document, others can copy from or edit it. PDF files are more secure. Few people know how to copy text from a PDF file. Fewer still have a clue how to edit them or the special software to do so.
3. If you upload to an online printer, like CreateSpace or any POD publisher, they require PDF files, and they must have embedded fonts and be formatted with the right paper size for your project.
4. For long-term storage, PDF is the archivist’s best bet. PDF files from twenty years ago still display just fine. That’s definitely not the case with word processing documents.

The good news is that this conversion is easy to do and if you don’t already have software to do it, it’s widely available for free.

So, you say, “I’m sold. How do I do this?”

The tutorial below will walk you through three different paths, starting with the simplest one first.

Save as a PDF with Word (or OpenOffice or most any word processing program)

1. Whatever program you’re using, select Save As. They’ll all be pretty much the same as what you see here.
2. Click the tiny arrow on the right of the Save as type field. Select PDF from the flyout menu.
   
   
3. Check the options. First check that your file is optimized for printing if you are uploading to CreateSpace or have other plans to print. If it’s primarily for onscreen viewing, select the Minimum size option.  Then click the Options menu to the right and make sure the box, Bitmap Text when fonts may not be embedded is checked.
   
   
   Word automatically adjusts page size (in case you are saving a file with pages some size other than 8.5” x 11”) and embeds fonts. Some commercial fonts can’t be embedded, at least not without a special license. This option ensures they’ll be readable on the other end.

LibreOffice, based on OpenOffice, has an Export as PDF function rather than Save As. For POD publishing, select 100% for JPEG compressions. Other tabs include lots of bells and whistles, but nothing important for our purposes here.

Print as a PDF

Aside from word processing programs and maybe a couple of others, you create PDF files by “printing” them to a digital page. To do this you use a printer driver much like the one for printers that use ink. This means that if you find an error and need to fix it, you go back to your source file, i.e. your Word document, make your change, then “print” the file again, just as you’d do with paper.

Many PDF printer apps are available for free download on the Internet. The ones I’ve looked at all use print setup interfaces similar to one of the two types I’ll show below. I’ll begin with Cute PDF, but first a caveat about downloading any free software:

It often comes bundled with add-on apps. You do not need these add-on apps. They probably aren’t malware, but why take the chance? Only download specific programs that you know you need, want and trust. The add-ons keep the software free, but you can avoid them by paying close attention. Reputable software publishers today offer you the opportunity to opt out of add-ons. If you see any window that asks you to click to install anything other than the app you selected, look for an opportunity to Decline, or a button that says Next. If you don’t see any option like this. kill the installation and find another app. If you accidentally download something you don’t want, on a Windows machine, use System Restore and go back to the a time before the download.

Now a second caveat: I’ve used both the apps in the examples below and they are both satisfactory. They are not necessarily the best or the latest. The field keeps changing. Do a search for PDF conversion software, then check reviews before selecting one. You may want to try two or three.  And don’t be fooled that you need to buy anything unless you want to edit PDFs. If you don’t know, you don’t need it. The conversion engine will be free.

Using the Cute PDF Interface

This interface has been around for years and is shared by many of the free apps.

1. Find your way to the Print menu for your file. Click the arrow on the right and select Cute PDF (or another of your choice) as your printer.
   
   
2. Click Printer Properties to open the printer setup dialog.
   
   
3. Click Advanced on the Document Properties menu.
   
   
   From here you can change the page orientation, and select color or grayscale from the Paper/Quality tab. Advanced gives you more options, including embedding fonts.
   
4. By default most PDF printers substitute device fonts to keep file size small. Play it safe over the long run. Embed your fonts by selecting Download as Softfont in the TrueType font line.
   
   
   
5. Change paper size. This won’t matter if you’re sticking with standard letter-sized paper. For books and other special projects, you need the Paper Size option.
   
   
6. Monitor Print Quality. This app saves images at 600 dpi by default. CreateSpace asks for 300 dpi, which also works well on home printers. Nothing but file size is gained by saving them at higher resolution.
   
   
7. In the fly out that opens when you click the Paper Size field, check to see if your page size is listed. If not, scroll down to PostScript Custom Page Size. A new menu will open.
   
   
8. Enter your page dimensions. These should be identical to the paper size you designated in Word.  You will probably use inches, but millimeters and points are also options. Don’t concern yourself with the rest.
   
   

That’s it. Click OK as many times as you need, then click Print. You’ll be asked to specify a file name and location the same as saving any other file. Remember, this is a digital page, so it’s stored as a digital file, just like your Word document.

Using the Foxit Phantom PDF Printer

This app uses a newer interface with fewer options. Don’t concern yourself with what you don’t see.

1. Select Foxit Phantom PDF Printer and click on Printer Properties as above.
2. On the General tab, select Quality and Color. For publishing, you want High Quality Print. For other purposes, standard works fine. Don’t concern yourself with the confusing options behind that Edit button.
   
3. Alter page size if needed on the Layout tab. Click the Custom Page Size button.
   
4. Enter your page size. As above, this needs to be identical to your document paper size.
   
   
5. That’s it. Click Okay and print as above. You can add document properties information as you wish. If you’re saving for widespread public distribution, this is a way to ensure you retain credit for your work.

You may find slight variations in software interfaces, but these three examples should be enough to guide you through any of them. Now, go forth and fill hard drives and cyberspace with your work!

Clothes Make the Man

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

— Mark Twain

Did you ever stop to think that the way you visually arrange words and sentences on a page amounts to clothing your stories? 

Before you read further, I invite you do to download my free e-book, Make Your Pages Picture Perfect and take a look at eight “before and after” examples of the difference layout can make in attracting readers’ attention and easing the path of their eyes as they dip into the words.

Move your mouse over the small pink stars on each page. Each has a formatting tip about that aspect of the page. If you see a page you like, use the tips to copy the settings in Word or OpenOffice.  Those pages have a mixture of simple and sophisticated tips. If you are just getting started, use these basic tips to make your manuscripts look professional and easy to read. Add others as accessories, depending on your interest, level of skill and interest.

• Single-space, or use 1.5 line spacing. Double-spacing is fine for editing and mandatory for submitting manuscripts for publication, but not the standard for finished copy. A little extra space does make it easier for eyes to track along, so adding an extra half-space is easy to do and works well. When you feel adventurous, try the customized line spacing options, for example, Multiple, 1.16.

• Do not double-space between paragraphs. This is the standard for business letters, not for text. It is proper and standard to use an extra line or two to indicate a break in the action or a change of scene. When you add extra space between each paragraph, your story feels choppy. Use paragraph indentation instead, either a tab or by setting the Normal style to indent automatically.

• Use page numbers if your story is longer than two pages. It doesn’t matter where you put them, but make it easy for readers to reassemble the stack if they drop pages on the floor.

• Include your name. It can go below the title on the first page, or at the end. It’s a nice touch to also include the date at the end.

• Use a header on all but the first page. Include the title in the header. The page number can also go here. This second level tip is especially helpful for keeping things in order if you have a pile of several stories.

Don't send your stories out naked. These simple tips will give them a well-groomed appearance that shows you respect and take pride in your work.

Write now: open a file for one of your finished stories and apply these simple formatting tips if you haven’t already done so. Try a couple of more advanced techniques if you feel ready. 

Hang onto Inspiration

Last night during the preview session for the NAMW Make Your Stories Sparkle teleseminar previewing my upcoming teleclass by the same name, I mentioned the value of building a collection of inspiring passages from books you read. My focus last night was on collecting a wide selection of descriptions that grab my eye and attention, but I also collect other types of examples.

I began this collection several months ago for the purpose of comparing and studying how various authors I admire use various descriptive techniques. It has since grown to include other types of amazing writing. I have found that perusing my collection is sort of like reading the Bible or other inspirational material, and it has been a great help in furthering my understanding of effective description and my skill in writing it. Reading a concentrated collection of pure excellence primes my creativity pump. It pushes me out of my perception ruts and nudges me to expand my awareness boundaries and see things from angles I may not otherwise have considered.

One caller last night asked me to explain exactly how I create and manage this collection. I was delighted by her interest, and realized that others will probably also want to know.

The process begins with reading. I’ve begun keeping a pad of flag-sized sticky tags at hand as I read. When I find an especially delightful, succulent passage, or one includes a powerful thought I want to hang onto, I stick a flag along the side of the page, as in the passage below from Anne Lamott’s book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. I carefully position the flag to cover the row just about the first sentence of the passage I’m interested in, and a smidgen beyond the edge of the page.

When I finish reading a book by an excellent writer, it generally looks like a porcupine, with a dozen or more tags protruding from the edges. Then I type the relevant passages into a jerry-rigged database consisting of a table in OpenOffice (my preferred alternative to Word, which would work the same way). That may take half an hour or so for an especially inspiring book, but I find the time is an excellent investment, reinforcing the power of the examples and setting them more firmly in memory. I’ll let this picture save a few hundred words of how-to explanation.

Click to enlarge this image, then use the browserback button to return to the blog

Notice that I include the page number for the passage, in case I want to go back and find it later. Publication data is minimal. I can get that online later if I need it. As I enter the material from each book, I leave the Source column blank, then type that once, copy it, and paste it in each row below for that book.

The Tags column is especially valuable to me, because I use these examples increasingly often in blog posts, articles, and workshop materials, but anyone will benefit from them. If I were using a more sophisticated database, I could put multiple tags in one field. They can be anything that helps or interests you. Keeping it to one word allows me to sort the table on the Tags column and find all the material on that particular topic quickly and easily. Of course I could also use the Find function to do this.

My method is crude, and someone with more savvy could improve upon it. Possibly a spreadsheet would be a better approach, but the boundaries of my geekiness don’t include spreadsheet or database expertise. A gal’s gotta have limits!

Write now: start a new file with a simple table like the one in the example and purchase a stash of sticky flags so you can start your own collection of juicy examples for further study and inspiration. Your writing skills will soar as a result. If you need help creating the table, refer to the last chapter in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing.

I Refuse to Accept Limits!

“WOO HOO! I DID IT!” Even though I was home alone when the last piece of my "impossible" puzzle clicked into place, I sprang from my chair and dashed wildly around the circuit of kitchen, dining room and living room a couple of times in a wild victory lap, waving my hands and yelling. Although I wasn’t sure my aging spine would take it well, I jumped for joy. Oh, sweet, sweet success. YES! YES!

My success was discovering a way to create flawless PDF (Adobe reader format) files for digital scrapbooks made from software you already have or can get for free. There are some pricey programs out there to help you lay out scrapbooks onscreen, but as far as I’m aware, they are all geared toward selling print services that will convert any cash in your estate into a legacy of glossy pages encased in premium bindings. I’m talking about eBooks that can be viewed on a computer and require an investment of nothing more than your time and maybe a blank disk.

The puzzle sprang from a discovery that any object with slight transparency acquired a nasty set of grid lines when converted to PDF format. By a convenient quirk of fate, I made this discovery as a cold and sore throat set in. Not feeling up to doing much else, I camped in my recliner with my laptop and delved into the matter.

For over two days, I Googled, I downloaded and test drove fifteen free or low-cost PDF writer programs. I put together a comparison chart to keep track of the results. Ultimately I discovered that not even the gold standard Adobe Acrobat was up to this challenge. I despaired. I almost gave up. But I was cornered. I’ve committed to demonstrating this magic at the Digital Imagers meeting on January 4, and cringed at the thought of having to back off in any respect.

I REFUSE TO ACCEPT LIMITS!

There had to be a way, and I determined to find it! I joined a couple of user forums to ask for advice. While I waited, I decided to try the built-in PDF function in OpenOffice. I’d been using Word, because most people use Word, and I wanted to share the results of my discoveries. Well! OO does a stellar job. The problem lies not in the PDF programs, it lies in Microsoft’s software structure.

But my search was not over. OpenOffice was not perfect. On pages where I had a stack of objects (think of glass over a mat over a picture that’s mounted on floral background paper inside the mat) the bottom layer did not show in the PDF version if it had a patterned fill. Solid colors were fine. That ribbon at the end of the course was so close, but still out of reach! At that point both PrimoPDF and BullzipPDF, the two freeware programs that otherwise passed my testing, worked perfectly. My problem was solved. I burst through that ribbon and into song.

But the good news doesn’t end there. Later in the day I downloaded and installed the brand new OpenOffice version 3.0. Oh, my, Santa came early. I’m dazzled. It’s so hard to believe that such a polished software package is just sitting there for the taking. It has so many splendid new features, it’s hard to tear myself away to do real writing. And ... icing on the cake ... the upgraded PDF writer now catches all the layers.

Lest this all sound like nothing but crowing, bragging and crowing are good for the soul, in the right time and place, and this crowing ultimately relates back to life writing. It’s more about the packaging than the writing, but it does all fit together.

Write now: a story about some huge personal accomplishment that set your inner world on fire. It only has to matter to you, not be something anyone "out there" would even notice. And help Santa out by giving yourself the gift of a stunning new Office Suite that anyone can afford.

National Day of Listening: an Adventure in Multimedia

Have you ever wished you could watch movies of your ancestors and how they lived, or at least hear their voices? Although it's too late to capture your ancestors on video StoryCorp is doing something about that for future generations. They recognize the value of hearing voices from the past and are dedicated to preserving them. They are an independent nonprofit project whose mission is “to honor and celebrate one another’s lives through listening.” Jerry Waxler wrote an inspiring blog post on Memory Writers Network about his heartwarming experience with StoryCorp.

Realizing that a very small percentage of the world’s population will ever be able to visit a StoryCorp studio, they have begun urging people to use their own equipment to record interviews with family members and others they care about. This Thanksgiving, “StoryCorps asks you to start a new holiday tradition—set aside one hour on Friday, November 28th, to record a conversation with someone important to you. You can interview anyone you choose: an older relative, a friend, a teacher, or a familiar face from the neighborhood.” You can learn more about this and find detailed guidelines to help by visiting their National Day of Listening website.

This StoryCorp request and nudge toward multi-media lifestory and family history projects seems timely. I still advocate print and written stories as the basic medium, because it is the most durable and accessible, but sound recordings, video, digital scrapbooks and photo albums definitely add impact to your stories by involving more channels of sensory input, and younger generations are becoming increasingly used to multi-media, even if they are avid readers.

If all you have available is a tape recorder or an older video camera that records on tape, don’t hesitate to use it. Just keep in mind that both audio and video tapes tend to deteriorate over time, and it’s becoming difficult to purchase players for them, so as soon as possible, get any tapes you have, new or old, transferred to digital format and burned to CD or DVD disks for storage. You can convert audio tapes yourself with a tape player that has a port for connecting to an external speaker, an audio cable (available for a few dollars at any electronics department), and the free open source Audacity sound capture program. If you ask around, you probably know someone with a combination VCR/DVD recorder to use for playing the tape and simultaneously recording it to a DVD disk, or you can purchase such a device for as little as $59 online (check reviews!).

If and when if your budget allows, prices for digital recorders and camcorders are plummeting. If you already have an iPod or other mp3 player, it may have a voice recorder function that will do the trick. My Creative Zen V Plus mp3 player that I spent $79 for a year ago isn’t quite studio quality, but it’s as good as most tape recorders and quite adequate for the purpose. Cnet.com offers excellent product reviews along with buying guides such as this one for mp3 players to help you choose.

Most digital cameras today have a video mode. It may produce a rather small image, but it’s better than nothing, and you won’t be able to turn the clock back later when you get a better one. Even if the video is less than the best, you'll have the audio. Start with an empty card, the largest you have, and set the camera on a tripod or prop it on a solid surface while you do your interview.

A scanner is the only equipment you need to take old photos and pop them into PowerPoint (or the free OpenOffice equivalent, Impress). Add captions, and get as creative as you want with special effects. You can even record a voice track and add music if you feel adventurous and dig around in Help to figure out how.

Think out of the box and use the toys you already have to create something wonderful. Your imagination will be stretched, you’ll form lots of new neural connections to keep your brain healthy as you learn new tricks to use the software involved, and your family will love the results.

Write now: inventory your gear and use the guidelines on the National Day of Listening site to make plans for recording an audio and/or video interview on the National Day of Listening this year. Find half a dozen old photos, scan them into the computer if you haven’t already done so, and make a simple PowerPoint slide show.

Ritergal's Favorite Free PDF Software

We’ve all read PDF files — you know, all those free eBooks, instruction manuals, reports and brochures that open in Adobe Reader. For several years the only way to create files like this was to use Adobe Acrobat, and that is indeed a high end product. The latest version of their “standard” version costs half as much as a new computer. Forget Adobe. Anyone can make PDF files now by downloading software that is absolutely free.

I tried half a dozen free programs, and PrimoPDF stands head and shoulders above the pack. It’s the only completely free program I found that gives you the option of selecting your desired degree of compression and adding security settings. Whether you use PrimoPDF or something else, it serves as a virtual printer. You “print” pdf files rather than exporting them, and you can print to PDF from any program that uses a printer, not just word processing programs. If you need to edit a PDF file, you edit the source document, then reprint it, as you would with a paper document, so always save your source document as well as the PDF version.

When you select PrimoPDF as your printer, several seconds may pass before an options window pops up. Then you'll be able to select from four options, Screen, Print, eBook, and Prepress. These selections determine the resolution of your finished file, and the quality of hard copy if desired. You can also add a password and other security options. Finally, you can add more material to the end of an existing PDF file. This last option sets it head and shoulders above the pack. If you need help with these options, consult the online manual.

You may be wondering why I'm so excited about this freebie and writing about it in a blog about lifestory writing. The PDF file format is recommended by digital archivists as the best available format for long-term document storage. It embeds the fonts you select, and stabilizes format, so it will look the same on any computer, anywhere in the world, whether it's a PC, Apple, Linux, or whatever, and hard copies will print the same way from any printer. Your digital stories will remain accessible longer, perhaps decades longer, in PDF format than any other.

Microsoft Word is notorious for completely changing their format every few years and creating chaos. Most recently, word is out that they have rendered Word documents created with early versions of the program inoperable with the latest version, “because they may contain unsafe material.” That's scary! What if I want to view that story I wrote fifteen years ago? If you open a WordPerfect document from 1990 today (assuming you still have a copy of WordPerfect) I guarantee you it won't look like it did when you created it. Whatever program you use, if you format a document with the Jester font, almost nobody will have that font if you send them the story, so it won't look exactly the way you intend. PDF files embed the font, so it's as stable as hard copy.

I nearly always convert documents to PDF format before I e-mail them to other people or post them on the Internet. Aside from the size advantage and font consistency, there is an inherent element of security in any PDF file. Since you can't directly edit these files, nobody will be able to interject another point of view.

Another advantage of having a PDF printer is the option it gives you to store records on disk rather than in a file cabinet. When I place an online order for anything from books to plane tickets, I “print” the receipt as a PDF file rather than hard copy. I've scanned in oodles of old family history documents like report cards, immigration documents, etc. With the Append feature in PrimoPDF, I can “bind” all those jpg graphics files into a single PDF document for easy reading, compact storage, and simple retrieval.

I strongly urge you to download PrimoPDF and start using it! Even if you are already using OpenOffice (my office suite of choice), the robust PDF generator built into that program only works within the suite. PrimoPDF will do the heavy lifting with website printing, graphics programs and more.

Write now: about all the ways you'd use a PDF printer if you had one, and then surf over to PrimoPDF.com and download your very own copy.

Your Best Insurance Policy

Have you ever heard the term “Blogicide”? Doesn’t the very idea raise the hair on the back of your neck? I found it on Don Lafferty’s blog. The idea of having my whole blog go poof! is seriously chilling. Don confesses to killing his own blog by experimenting with Wordpress, but there are other ways a blog could vanish from cyberspace, like massive server meltdown or sabotage.

If Don’s story had to happen, I wish I’d known about it a month ago today when I was sitting on a panel about blogging at Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference in Austin. Using blogs as online journals and places to save your writing with related issue of privacy, public blogs versus closed ones, and similar matters were under discussion when a light went on in my head.

“Always keep your blog backed up. Over the long run, you can’t assume online storage in a single location is any safer than storing things on your own hard drive,” I cautioned them. I was thinking of online server disasters. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we can be our own worst enemy. Don’s story would have been the perfect illustration.

Whether you are blogging or writing stories (or anything else), saving your work in more than one place is good insurance. I need the fingers on both hands to count the growing number of friends who have lost major chunks of work to a hard drive crash or fatal virus. It’s like losing part of your soul!

This is post number 228 for me. These posts collectively represent a huge amount of work and are irreplaceable. I’m not taking chances: I copy the finished post from my browser, pictures, links, and all, and paste it into the bottom of an ongoing OpenOffice document. (I stash the source pictures in a separate folder before uploading them.) I start a new document each month, adding new posts as each appears. If I’m in a huge hurry and get lazy, I can add it later, but I don’t let too many pile up.

I keep those files on an external hard drive with my other documents. Every week or two I back that folder up onto an internal hard drive. I keep promising myself I’ll learn how to do automatic backups to keep things current on a daily basis, but ... you know what they say about good intentions.

The external hard drive is my choice now for all the files I use on a regular basis. Not long ago I had major computer problems and faced the likelihood that Hotshot would have to spend time in the hospital. By moving my working files to a removable drive, I could keep working even if that happened.

I feel safe from blogicide and other forms of digital disasters. How about you?

Write now: about your experience with lost work. This may be due to a computer fluke or crash, or it may be a craft project that was destroyed, photos that were lost, or any other type of work. If you’ve never lost anything, write about the safeguards you employ to keep things safe. Or, write a plan of action for safeguarding your work in the future.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka, Ritergal

The Great Pelican Rescue Adventure, Part 2

In the last post I wrote about the “Great Pelican Rescue Adventure” and the advantages of sharing stories like that in an e-mail or other written form to get them recorded while the detail is fresh in your memory and passion still high.

Using e-mail to record stories is especially effective, because you'll probably write in your most natural voice that way, and you can immediately share your work with family and friends. I strongly suggest you save the story in some other format rather than leaving it solely as an e-mail. E-mail is probably the most fragile or volatile form of digital information storage I know of. I've lost large chunks of e-mail at various times, but never lost a word processing file. Some of the e-mails have been lost when changing from one e-mail management form to other. Through the years I've used Industry Net, Juno, AOL, Adelphia, Comcast, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, and a few others. It's not easy, and sometimes impossible, to go back and find old e-mails, especially with the online varieties.

If you write in an e-mail program, copy the story text and paste it into a Word document for long-term storage. Eventually you may want to remove the formatting that e-mail programs often add. I sometimes stumble into story writing mode without intending to, but if I plan to write a story as part of an email, I'll start in OpenOffice (my preferred free, open source, Microsoft Alternative), then paste the story into the e-mail.

Once you have your story saved, you can let it sit for days or ages to mellow before you do anything else with it, if indeed you ever do. Eventually you may think of other ways to use the material in other stories. For example, I may use my pelican story as an element in a larger account of contact with wild life in general. I may link it to memories of the chickens we raised when I was very young, and duck and geese that hunting neighbors used to share. I could use it in an essay about the perils mankind poses to wild critters, or I could go off on a tangent about the spiritual nature of encounters with wild animals. Most likely it will simply fit into a comprehensive account of the Everglades Elderhostel we were attending when this adventure took place.

As you can see, the opportunities for expanding stories and putting bits and pieces of them to other uses are limited only by your imagination. You can string stories together like beads on a necklace, nest them, or segue one into another. For more information about these various methods of combining stories, see an earlier post, “Like Beads on a Necklace.” You'll also find a more complete explanation in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing.

Write now: think of a lively story or story idea of your own. Make a list of all the various associations you can think of that relate to that story. Select at least two others and incorporate them, together with your original story idea, into a more comprehensive account.

Ritergal's Horrible, Awful, Terribly Bad Day

Moan, groan, bitch and whine. I’m entitled to a pity party, and you are all invited. What?! You say you don’t want to come? That you have other more urgent plans, like watching the bread in your pantry grow mold? Can’t say as I blame you. Who wants to attend a pity party? Nobody, that’s who. Including me. I don’t even want to attend my own.

So, why do I write about it? Because it’s real. It’s true. It’s me, and it’s now. Yes, Accuweather.com assures me that tomorrow the sun will shine, but right now I’m feeling bogged down. Word is giving me fits (have I ever mentioned how much I hate Microsoft Word? And like OpenOffice?) as I work on my presentation for Story Circle Network’s Stories From the Heart conference that begins on February 1. I’m in over my head in trying to configure the wireless card for the laptop I converted to Ubuntu. I broke the rules on an Absolute Write Water Cooler forum game thread. I’m tired even thinking about figuring out how to put downloadable files on my website.

Enough of that. As I said, this is real. This day is my Truth. But, how many people are going to write for posterity about days like this? If you’re like me, you tend to paint your stories with a brush filled with sunshine, and paint out the storms and shadows. That’s okay. You may. But why not let your descendants see your back as well as your smile? Let them know that things weren’t perfect every day. After all, my current woes are hardly due to anything I’ve done. I’m simply overwhelmed by technology at the moment. They probably will be too. They may derive hope from evidence that they spring from resilient stock.

So, I choose to write about enough days like this to show them that “S(tuff) Happens,” and when it does, I deal with it. I’ll write about taking a break to read a few chapters of a mind candy novel to distract myself. About going to bed early for a few extra Zzzz’s so tomorrow I’ll wake refreshed and ready to tackle these puzzles anew. I’ll write about writer’s block and other barriers to writing.

In fact, just writing this blog about my horrible, awful, terribly bad day is making me feel better already. Should I delete the file now, or post this? Yes. I’ll post it. You may be having your own horrible, awful, terribly bad day. Yours may be way worse, like losing your job or something, and I wouldn’t want you to feel alone. Maybe readers who are feeling calm, joyful, or energetic will blow some virtual breaths of peace our way.

Write now: about a horrible, awful, terribly bad day, or even a whole season or year. List all the awful things about it, and how it came to and end. How the sun began to shine. If the sun hasn’t begun to shine yet, write about what the world will look like when it does.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Tips For Better Writing and Ducking Computer Crashes

This is the time of year for Top Ten lists. I found a swarm of these lists on the Tech Republic website. I visited there in search of help on a problem that has hosed the Vista operating system on my almost brand-new laptop. I think I shall make my own list of Top Ten Tips for Lifestory Writing, but until I get it written, I recommend that you take a look at Tech Republic’s list: Another 10+ tips to keep your writing sharp and professional.

You may wonder why I’m sending lifestory writers to a site with tips for professional writing. Those tips will improve any writing, with the possible exception of poetry. If a tip doesn’t make sense to you, post a comment here, or ignore it.

For right now, if I can give you one gold-plated tip, it is to back up your work! I had one file on that trashed laptop that I cared about and had not saved elsewhere. I’d worked about six hours on that file and would hate to lose it. I feel sick when I hear of people who lose a whole hard drive full of files that weren’t backed up. The good news here is that after spending a solid day hammering on that system, searching for answers, talking to tech support two places, consulting with my personal ‘Puter Guru, and thinking way out of the box, I finally managed to bully the machine into letting Ubuntu (a version of Linux running from a CD) rescue my files.

A related silver-plated tip would be to avoid purchasing a computer with Vista installed. Most businesses are avoiding it like the plague. I finally found an article on the Microsoft website explaining that the particular file I’m having trouble with is often corrupted by a specific Windows Update. I’m very angry about this system that has probably wasted over a billion hours of user time in the few short months it’s been out.

How can you avoid Vista?

• Order a custom-built machine from a small shop. It may cost more, but it will work better, have the operating system you chose (i.e. XP), and you should get stellar tech support. Do check references on shops before buying though. I found my ‘Puter Guru by asking strangers in CompUSA if they knew of anyone. They did, and they'd forgotten, and we all left without making a purchase. I've now purchased nearly a dozen machines from Jack, for myself and others. (No, I do not get a frequent buyer discount, but I do get unlimited advice.)
  

• Convert your old computer to Linux. Linux runs beautifully on far less memory and power. Unless you use high end commercial programs like Adobe^® Photoshop^® , you don’t need Windows. Dell^™, Lenovo_™ and a couple of other vendors are beginning to offer computers with a choice of XP or Linux operating systems. Walmart’s first batch of $200 Linux-based machines sold out in 48 hours (I am not endorsing these machines, merely mentioning them). You can download Ubuntu, the most commonly used free Linux OS from the Ubuntu site, or order a low-price disk from sites listed there. It includes my favorite OpenOffice suite and enough other free open-source utilities to let you do pretty much anything you do with Windows or Mac. It works much like Windows, and you should quickly feel at home there. Learn more about it from the Ubuntu site or on Lifehacker.com.

Whatever operating system you use (I know there are a few Mac users out there too) I remind you to back things up.

Write now: about your experience with computers. When did you start using one? How do you feel about them? How did you learn to use them? What great computer-related success or disasters have you had?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

P.S. Did I mention how much I hate Vista?

The Season Is Upon Us

Sometime in the next couple of days I’ll have to venture out of my lair and into the commercial sphere. I know things will be changed. The Halloween decorations will be gone, replaced with red and green Christmas decor. It’s that time again!

This brings a couple of lifestory-related thoughts to mind. One is to urge you to write about holidays past. The focus right now is on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

You don’t have to write whole stories if you don’t have time, but as you think of them, jot some notes. Remember those index cards I keep harping on? Keep a few with you for this purpose. You might include a title line (which may change when the actual story is written, or not be used at all if you incorporate the memory in another story), and perhaps a few words or sentences to jump start the flow when you get back to it. Story idea lists are another option.

The other thought relates to gifts. A book of your stories would make a stunning holiday gift. If you haven’t started yet, it may be ambitious to envision one hundred polished pages printed by Lulu before December 25. If you already have a pile of stories, you may be able to weave something together by then, following the guidelines in Chapter 11 of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing.

Grandchildren may be among the most appreciative recipients, especially if the stories are about your happy memories that include them. They love to see lots of pictures, with themselves prominently featured.

If you need help inserting pictures in your stories, turn to page 264 in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing and follow the instructions. I do suggest you be generous in the sizing, especially if you are working with standard 8½ x 11 inch paper. It’s difficult to see details in tiny pictures, and they tend to look lost on the larger page. My experience with The Albuquerque Years proved beyond a doubt that it’s far better to avoid the temptation to resize the picture in Word or OpenOffice and use a photo editing program to resize it to the precise size you want in your document. None of the pictures I edited in the final document printed well, and I had to redo them, “the right way.”

There’s more to the gift angle than just your own stories. Nearly all of us have relatives who are so full of stories, everyone keeps urging them to “write those stories down.” They keep looking away and muttering. Wrap a copy of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing for them and place it under the tree. I know of several instances where this has worked to get the ink flowing. A typical comment:

Thanks for sending the copy of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. It was just what I needed to get a sense of how to get started and go about it. My wife and kids are thrilled that I finally got off the dime and urging me to stick with it. Thanks to you and Sharon for the nudge.

You better believe my little heart went pitty-pat when I read that unsolicited testimonal in an e-mail. Few things are as rewarding as confirmation that your writing hits the target.

Write now: about holiday memories through the years. Did you have an especially memorable Christmas? Get the gift of your dreams? Do any holidays stand out as flaming disasters? Write stories, jot ideas on index cards, or expand your story idea list. You needn't be limited to memory stories. Write about your reaction to the ever-advancing onset of Christmas. Remember when stores weren't decorated until after Thanksgiving? What about the super-sizing of gifts? Expound on your pet peeves and joys.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Project That Just Won't Quit

I wouldn’t call it The Project From Hell, not by a long shot. No, this personal project I’m trying to finish as a test run of Lulu.com’s on-line Print-On-Demand (POD) publishing services is more aptly named “The Project That Just Won't Quit.”

The final result, The Albuquerque Years, will be the culmination of my very first lifestory writing adventure, the story of my preschool years, begun over ten years ago. As I explain in The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing, I began writing this story as a whim, to be able to share my own experience as a very little girl with my then preschool-age grandchildren. I simply sat down at the computer and did a memory dump, in a haphazard fashion, without much order or thought.

Toward the end, I decided I wanted to include photos, lots of photos. At that point, WordPerfect stalled out on files with more than a few photos, so the story began breaking up into a vast array of pieces. In frustration, put it away to deal with later.

A few months ago, I became embarrassed about the fact that I, of all people, have not completed a single finished volume with a legacy of my own lifestories. I pulled out The Albuquerque Years project, determined to see it through to print. OpenOffice and Word are up to the challenge now, and Lulu presents a way of having it professionally printed and bound at an astonishingly affordable cost.

As I launched into what I thought would be a couple of days of final touches, I was chagrined to discover that I’d only told, at most, half the story. Over the course of a few weeks, I’ve doubled the length to 76 pages in Lulu’s Crown Quarto page size (7.44 x 9.68 in.), organized the stories to flow more smoothly, added several details, and inserted over forty photos. I converted the file to a PDF, after wading through Lulu’s occasionally conflicting instructions. (The live chat function works splendidly for clearing up any confusion.) I’ve almost finished a cover design.

At the last minute, I decided to add an Afterward to give background on the project and explain the process of setting it all up to work with Lulu. Perhaps future generations will appreciate this insight, and it will certainly be helpful to anyone today who wants to use Lulu for their own story albums. I’d hoped to announce a couple of days ago on the blog here that the upload had succeeded. Maybe tomorrow.
The morals of this story:

• There’s lots more to do to complete a published project after you finish the writing. Things always take twice as long as you anticipate.
• There is always something else to be done when you are getting a book finalized, whether it’s a commercial publication or something as private and personal as this project.

But it’s not the Project From Hell. It’s more like my flesh-and-blood offspring, who all took at least an extra week to grow to completion. But they all three arrived, strong and healthy, and so will this book! Persistence will ultimately prevail.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Anything You Write Is Better Than Writing Nothing

My husband's Uncle Walter died several weeks ago, at the ripe old age of ninety-six after an exemplary life. Walter had a rich spirit. He was a masterful story teller, and it's a shame that his stories were never written down. Or so we thought.

Earlier today I was looking through my computer files to find pictures of Walter for display at his upcoming Celebration Service. I found some wonderful old ones that will serve the purpose well. Besides those pictures, I found a folder of scanned images that I'd forgotten about. Several years ago Uncle Walter began writing about his early life in Ray, a mining town in the Territory of Arizona. He also wrote down some recollections of his father. He loaned the stories to me for scanning.

The whole collection spans fewer than twenty pages, but each one is precious. Our family genealogist met him once, but barely knew him. She was ecstatic when she received the collection, because they contain some valuable genealogical information as well as anecdotes of life nearly one hundred years ago.

This goes to prove once again, that it doesn't take more than a few paragraphs to thrill your family! His were chicken-scratch scrawls, but they are legible, and they are terrific.

Speaking of scrawls and scans, at the beginning of the new year, I switched to from Microsoft Word to OpenOffice, an open source office suite that is available for download at no cost. OpenOffice has a built-in utility for exporting documents as pdf files (think Adobe Acrobat Reader). I have discovered that I can compile a large collection of image files into a single pdf document rather easily. I open a new document and set the margins at zero all around, assure OO that I really do want to do this, and enter a couple of hard page breaks (hold down Ctrl while pressing Enter). Then I import existing documents, one per page, or scan new ones in. When I have them all in place, I export the collection as a pdf file.

You could do this with Word, but it is a bit more finicky about margin settings, and the pdf function isn't nearly as powerful. Another option would be to use the free, open source program PDF Creator. The ultimate solution is Adobe Acrobat Professional, but that costs almost as much as a new computer. I'll stick with OpenOffice!

This process of compiling scanned images into a single document allows you to keep handwritten documents intact in the original handwriting. Transcribing them is great, but if you have fewer than one hundred pages, it's nice to see them the way they were written.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Saving works

Don't forget to save your work.
Save early and often.

Earlier today I wrote an involved piece about political correctness and lifestory writing that I intended to post. Especially on controversial topics, I like to let a post age for at least a couple of hours, so I clicked over to work on another document.

Half an hour later, I clicked in an Explorer window to open my book manuscript. That was a mistake. I forgot to specify that it open in Microsoft Word. I began the new year by switching to OpenOffice (OO), the full-featured, free, open-source office suite, and I set my computer to open all Microsoft Office documents in OO. Most Word documents open flawlessly in OO, but high end formatting is dicey.

My Microsoft Word book manuscript includes over twenty style definitions, dozens of tables, columns, a long list of graphics, cross-reference codes, Table of Contents codes, Index codes, headers, footers, and section breaks all over the place. OO gasped and died. Normally, even this would not be a problem. Normally, I would have saved that document with a title. Even if I didn't do that, OO creates back-up files every ten minutes that should save the day in the event of a program crash. This function worked a couple of times earlier when I closed the program abruptly.

Not this time! For reasons beyond my comprehension, the restored document was an empty page. I'll have to start from scratch to recreate it.

Perhaps this was just as well. After a couple of hours of thought, I realize the post was going off in an extraneous direction. I would have rewritten most of it anyway. Who knows? Perhaps this was a sign. Stranger things have happened. Many stories are much the better for starting over from scratch, and that post will be one of them. Watch for it in a couple of days.

I won't forget this saving lesson any time soon. My momentary lapse was costly. I'm back to my long-standing habit of giving a new document a title and saving it when I begin writing. Every few minutes as I write, I hit Crtl-S and make sure the latest words are safe on disk. Saving works!

Don't forget to save your work.
Save early and often.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal