The mad scramble

I'm in one of these last minute chicken-with-my-head-cut off phases. Have I mentioned I'm doing another book? And I agreed to a May deadline for it for some reason. Oh, yeah, because if I got everything in by the end of May, there would be a good chance the book would be available before Christmas.

Anyway, I know that May is my busiest month of the year and April is not far behind. It's field trip season at school. There's Spring Break. There's Easter. There's not one, but three kids with birthdays. There are annual projects in clubs/organizations I'm involved in and end of the year banquets. There are spring musicals at school and soon picnics and end of year activities. Oh, and my oldest graduates from high school in May. And at my part-time job, one girl resigned and they need extra help. I really don't know what I was thinking when I took this on, but I'm here now and there's no turning back. And sometimes I need that looming deadline to give me that push to get moving.

So, the final layout of the book and all materials are due in May. But, next week my cover materials are due. I'm running into problems and the project is becoming way more involved than I expected. Way more work.Way more time. Had I known then what I know now, I'm not sure I would have taken it on. Or at least not for a deadline in May.

For the cover, I need to submit 20 images. Well, getting the images scanned to the exact specifications has been much more difficult than I anticipated. It took a lot of trial and error to get to the right format. Some were saved in the wrong format or the incorrect size and I'm doing a lot of work from scratch. For some of the images, I'm saving them at 600% the original size to make sure they are usable for the publisher. Then it takes like a half-hour to complete a scan because it's so large. Tonight my computer went haywire in mid-scan and shut down. And I've had a couple dozen images provided to me that I'm told are not usable due to size or format and now I'm stuck scrambling to find enough that I can send off that meet the publisher's requirements. I rarely drink...but this project may have me reaching for a cocktail or two by next week's deadline.

Aside from these scanning headaches, I'm enjoying diving into the rest of it. It's for a publisher of local histories and I'm compiling a list of individuals to write brief biographies on. It's fascinating to learn about others' lives, especially those lived long ago. I shall check back soon when I come out of this scanning cave I'm in....or when someone finds me curled up in the fetal position in the corner. But I don't give up that easily. On to the next scan!

P.S. I tried to upload a cute photo of a high school teacher circa 1920 or so...but...it's not the right format for this blog. LOL!!!!!!!!!!!