Not long ago, during a presentation I was giving on knitting, a student asked, “How long did it take you to write Sweater 101?”
My answer? “Ten days, and about 3 to 4 months of editing to simplify it.” I remember, quite clearly, sending my husband and son off to Grandma’s for a long visit and I stayed at my beloved Mac Plus computer day and night. I really thought I wrote it in that amount of time . . . but memory is a slippery and creative thing.
When I got home from that presentation and dug out the old knitting magazines in which I’d published articles and started scanning them so that I could offer them on the web (they’re coming, I promise), I found six years worth of articles and many of them became part of the book. So the real answer to how long it took to write the book is “Ten days and six years, plus three to four months of editing, and another year in final editing, formatting and layout with Linda Skolnik, the founder of Patternworks.” It’s a little like childbirth. One forgets the labor once the precious package has been delivered.
One of the main reasons I started this blog was to write “articles” about food preparation that could eventually become part of The Dear John Cookbook. Some of the “articles” will make it into the book. Others will not fit the narrow focus of it, but either way, we all win. I get to have fun writing and you learn a few things about food that might make your world better for you.
I recently posted about finding Facebook a little creepy. That was an energetic/emotional reaction, but now I’m starting to pay attention to Facebook in a more professional way. And you can bet your boots I’m going to be very careful about what I post there because I make my living with intellectual properties and Facebook co-owns everything anyone posts there.
Facebook changed their Terms of Service in February of this year. Anything you have ever posted there, a picture, video, article, clever riposte, etc, they have free and clear non-exclusive rights to . . . EVEN IF YOU CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT. You can find more details here (pay special attention to item 4) and here.
Bottom line? Don’t put anything on Facebook for which you want to maintain exclusive rights. If I write a post about food and put it on Facebook, they can publish it in a book or send it out to other sites . . . do as they damned well please with it.
I don’t tolerate that in the physical world. Why would I tolerate it in cyberspace?
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Yep. I’m concerned about the same issues. I don’t think most people in cyberspace give a damn about their privacy or anybody else’s, either. There has been a real dumbing-down of the populace about these things.