Project Juggling

March 21st, 2010

I believe I’ve said and written it before: I like working on two books at once. They each provide breaks from the other, thus keeping me fresh and the work seeming new—or newer than it would otherwise seem.

Having worked this way a few times in the past, I know it is rare for two books to keep the same pace; but this only adds to that sense of variety that prevents me from falling into a rut. Right now, however, I have three books in production, albeit one of the three just barely. All three are interior page design and layout jobs.

The first is a novel. Short of a textbook, it is one of the most elaborate books that I have ever worked on. It is filled with many different kinds of narrative: basic text, as well as letters, articles, and certain unique pieces of copy.

The second book is a memoir. Written by a retired physicist from India who has lived and worked in U.S. a number of years, it is also meant as a serious aid to preserving the Sanskrit language. This book is less about many different kinds of design elements, the way the first book is, and more with the proper use of diacritics and the typesetting of transliterated characters.

And the third book is a lot more like many of the books I have worked on over the years. It is a new edition of a book that was set in a fairly straightforward manner the first time around. The idea is to produce more attractive pages, while maintaining the usability as the student guide that it is.

Predictably, each has a different kind of schedule. The novel and all its materials are in-house. I have taken up the basic design, laying out the first part of this lengthy work. I await the client’s feedbackbefore plunging into the whole layout. With the Indian memoir, I have gotten only as far as acclimating myself to he transliterated characters and diacritic. As of this writing, I received the finalized first chapter to begin setting type. As for the third book, I await approval of the design and all materials.

And so it will be a matter of working on what I have in-house at any time. Right now, the novel is most ready for production. But as each client sends me more material, I will work on portions of each. The one organizational rule I will maintain is to try to always have a significant page of pages in the hands of each client, so that we are all in some state of doing. And that is how I will complete three books in roughly the same time.

Entry Filed under: book design,freelancing