January 12, 2001
It's the New Year, and I'm juggling so many personal projects, it's ridiculous. Ridiculous, I tell you. Last year I basically sat on my butt and surfed the Internet most of the time, and this year I'm making soap, furthering my career goals, planting bulbs, and in general being a bona fide Busy Person.
The Soap. I got right back on the horse after that miserable failure last week. I probably shouldn't say "miserable failure" just yet, because the soap is still drying, so we don't know how it's going to come out yet. But I'm not optimistic. It's crumbly, which is usually a sign of too much lye. We'll do our usual tests of it, but I fully expect it to be harsh and drying.
However, I made a new batch last night, and I have high hopes for this one. It's scented with violet and lavender, and I did my first experimentation with color. I used liquid chlorophyll to color the batch green, then took a small portion of it and added cocoa to color it brown, then swirled the two together. I'm anxious to see how the color comes out in the final bars.
I've been really into soapmaking lately, much more than Keith even. I've been experimenting with different oils, trying different fragrance combinations, and now this coloring thing. It's not even so much that I want to be able to sell the stuff, although that would be nice. I just have this driving urge to Make.It.Better. I've been joining soapmaking mailing lists, reading the websites, you name it. I am a damned well-educated soapmaker, by God.
The Garden. OK, so far the garden has gone nowhere, but it's still January, I still have time. We're going (well, I'm going, and Keith may or may not go with me) to a seed-starting seminar at a local nursery next Saturday. I plan to start the plants from seed this year, to avoid the ridiculously expensive full-grown plants that I bought last year. I want a shade garden in the back yard, and some sun-loving flowers in the front, and somewhere in there I want to plant some more herbs, possibly in pots and possibly in the ground. I got some gardening books for Christmas, so I've been reading up on all of this stuff. It's all very exciting.
The Career Stuff. Do you guys know what I do? I'm not sure I've ever really explained it. I work for a company that publishes books. Some of them are written in-house and some of them are by outside authors. We edit them, proofread them, lay them out, index them, and in general produce them. Most of the books we do are about technical subjects (Microsoft Excel, etc.), but not all.
When I started here, I was primarily a proofreader. That means that once the book was laid out in pages, I would go over it with my ruler and spec sheet and examine all of the graphical elements to make sure they were laid out exactly where they were supposed to be. I measured space between paragraphs, length of page, and other sundry page elements. I also made sure there were no egregious stacks, hyphens, or widows, and gave the text a once-over to make sure there were no horrific grammatical errors that had slipped past the copy editor.
That was all right. I liked it well enough. But then they assigned me to indexing. When I indexed my first book, I had no idea what I was doing. Not a damn thing. I basically just skimmed through the text and stuck in index tags wherever there was a useful term. I knew that cross-references were important, and I vaguely understood that I was providing a guide to the text, but I thought of it more as a glossary of terms than anything else.
Rudimentary as that first index was, it sparked in me a desire to learn more, to do better, to find out just exactly what a good index was.
I found resources on the Web that discussed indexing. I found index-L, an indexers' mailing list. I discovered that indexing is a deep, broad discipline, with many fine nuances and so many details to comprehend and internalize.
An indexer does not provide a glossary of terms. An indexer provides a guide to the book, with many entry points for the reader to find his or her way. An index, depending on the type of book being indexed, can be one of the most important parts of a book. What good is a medical guide without an index? What good is a software manual without an index?
An index is an intricate web, designed and controlled by a single individual. Is the text about automobiles? Well, are you going to have the term "automobiles" in the index? What about "cars"? What about "vehicles"? Are you going to have sub-entries under those terms? If so, are you going to cross-post the sub-entries under each main entry, or simply provide "See" references to direct the reader to your term of choice? Are you going to double-post the sub-entries as main entries? What about particular models and makes of cars? How is the reader going to look those up? How are you going to create an index that will be a true guide to the material, and not just a listing of terms?
It's a complex puzzle, and I have found that I love doing it. I just had my yearly performance review here, and I informed my boss that indexing is the main job duty that I want to pursue, and she said that sounded good to her. I'm joining the American Society of Indexers, so that I can get the periodicals published by that organization, and so that I can go to seminars given by them. I'm researching various indexing software, in case I decide I want to do this as a freelancer to supplement my income on the side. I'm going to take a graduate-level correspondence course in indexing.
I am going to become a damned fine indexer, see if I don't. And I will bet you good money that for the technical books I index, more people will read my work than that of the author.