Getting Mixed In/Up
Published 21 years, 11 months pastRemember the redesign competition I mentioned (along with a lot of other people) a while back? They’ve announced the prizes up for grabs, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the Grand Prize package includes a copy of Eric Meyer on CSS. I do have to wonder how much use it will be to someone who can successfully restyle another person’s site with CSS… but hey, no complaints here! Good luck to all the entrants.
Contrary to what Zeldman has to say, I generally don’t wish I were not writing a book. When I’m writing a book, I enjoy it because it’s something I like to do and because I wouldn’t have agreed to do it if I weren’t excited about the project. When I’m not writing a book, I enjoy the time off, but usually get back to the authorial keyboard within six months or so.
Rewriting a book, though… that’s a whole other story, and one with distinctly fewer comedic overtones. I hate having to revise my own work, because my deep-seated impulse to tinker usually drives down the quality of the text. The dread spectre of endless revision is tempered by the glimmer of needed new material, but to me, it’s like mixing chocolate syrup into a thick vanilla milk shake: the end result isn’t as awful as it could have been, but Lord, it sure isn’t good.
(It may help your understanding of the previous paragraph to know that I loathe chocolate. No sympathy is necessary, because believe me, I’m not missing out on anything. Call to mind a food that you truly despise; something that, if you accidentally got a mouthful, you would instantly spit out and then try to scrape off your tongue. That’s what chocolate is like for me. Kat couldn’t be happier, because I never try to steal her dessert.)
Reviewing other people’s work isn’t bad. I’m currently reviewing two books, and this morning I started getting severe dèjá vu. The chapters I was reviewing for both books referred to the same sites, and even had screenshots of those sites that were taken on the same day. I’m about 98% certain it was all just a big coincidence. Either that or the computers that run the Matrix are getting less creative.