Writing Goals During the Pandemic

On or about March 9, 2020, it was clear to me that the corona virus pandemic would require what has been labeled social distancing and lockdown. In fact, lockdown started in Illinois on March 20 and was extended through May 30.

What, I asked myself, did I want to do during this time of undetermined length? 

Things that would make me happy — because feeling sad or depressed is a detriment to the functioning of the immune system.

Writing makes me happy. Very happy. So I set myself three writing-related goals during the pandemic . . . with the hope that I wouldn’t have to add more goals.

My goals were: (1) Create and publish a book trailer for Sound Proof, one that matched in tone and style the one I had created for Dirty Proof back in 2019. (2) Publish my book on Cookie, the famous Brookfield Zoo cockatoo. (3) Read, critique, and rewrite Draft #1 of my current work-in-progress, a 94,000-word novel, thus creating Draft #2. (This was a formidable goal, and I really hoped the pandemic would be over with before I finished.)

I began working on the book trailer on March 10, and on March 20 I uploaded the finished video to youtube and GoodReads and Amazon. You can view it here.

This blog is really about the second of my three goals: publishing Cookie the Cockatoo. Cookie was a Major Mitchell’s cockatoo captured by a bird hunter in Australia in 1934 and sold to the not-yet-open Brookfield Zoo in Brookfield, Illinois. Today the Brookfield Zoo is home to approximately 2,300 animals, but back when Cookie arrived he was one of only five original occupants of the Zoo. And he became by far the longest-lived. In fact, Cookie became the longest-lived cockatoo on record.

A Major Mitchell’s cockatoo

When I first saw Cookie at the Brookfield Zoo some time in the mid-1970s, I really had no idea that I would write a book about him. I was, however, struck by Cookie’s colorfulness, his incredibly loud bird calls, and, most of all, his attitude. 

Although Cookie was in a cage and we, the public, were outside that cage looking at him, it seemed to me that the being in charge was not us, but Cookie. He seemed to be performing for us. Or not, depending on how he felt. He seemed, above all, to be the center of things.

After my in-person encounters with Cookie, I encountered him yet another way. For several years I worked as a part-time typesetter for the Chicago Tribune. Occasionally one of my jobs was to typeset a story about Cookie’s yearly birthday party. Later, when I became a full-time freelance writer, I thought of Cookie again.

Most writers probably have all kinds of possible book topics floating around in their consciousness. Far, far more possibilities than one could write in a lifetime. Some of these ideas disappear, some merely recede, and some clamor for attention. Though not necessarily right away.

So it was with Cookie and me. He didn’t really clamor for attention until the 21st century. Maybe ten or twelve years ago he squawked and screeched so loudly in my brain that I had to sit down and write his story. And the way that story came to me was coupled with change — the changes in the world over the last eighty years. Changes to the world during Cookie’s lifetime.

And, just as with Jack and Larry, the story came to me as a series of free verse poems, each coupled to a particular year. I wrote the story, rewrote it, and rewrote it, re-examined it, rewrote it again, all over a period of maybe ten years. Originally my manuscript was titled Cookie Has Seen — because Cookie was alive and still seeing changes.

But in 2016 Cookie died. So I would need to retitle the manuscript, because Cookie Has Seen is present-perfect tense, implying that Cookie is alive and still seeing. In March 2020 a new title came to me, occasioned by the book’s theme and also by the pandemic. My title would be Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes.

I typed the new title into my 6”x9” book template, and then I asked Robin Koontz, who has designed almost every one of my book covers, if she would be willing to design a cover for Cookie. I also attached my Cookie manuscript so that, if she were willing, Robin could quickly assess the content and tone of the story.

Robin was willing, and her design is now the cover of Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes. And while Robin was thinking about the cover, I was working on the book’s Introduction, the Table of Contents, and the individual poems. And then the final About the Author.

Everything looked good, but as I formatted the book a few poems extended onto a second page by only one line. That looked awful. So I made some space adjustments and also some line adjustments in the poems. Eventually I got the content the way I wanted it. Then I worked on the page design. And after that was all done, I printed out a copy of the manuscript and proofread it. Then I submitted it to KDP and waited for a copy of my paperback to arrive, so I could proofread it again.

While waiting (the waiting took a week) I worked on designing the ebook version of Cookie. This was a lot easier than designing a paperback/hardback version, because ebooks do not contain page numbers, headers, or footers — features that cause innumerable problems during page design. 

Nor do ebooks have justified margins (if they do, they shouldn’t). Nor do the pages turn — which means that there is no such thing as a line or two of poetry that flows onto a second page. There is no second page — there is simply scrolling.

So, free of working with all these features that an ebook does not have, I was able to “design” the ebook in a matter of minutes. My main concerns were: (1) The font and font-size for the individual years (i.e., 1934, 1947, 1985, etc.), and, (2) what color (if any) to use for headers and/or titles.

For the font and size of the years, I decided on Big Caslon, 20 point. It may seem as if the size isn’t important because ebook readers can control the size of the font by increasing or decreasing it. However, whatever is on the page increases or decreases proportionally, so if my text were 12-point Palatino (it is), I would want the proportions between the headers and the text to look good. 

The other thing I decided to do was print the years in color, and I made that color as bold a pink as I could — both bold and pink in Cookie’s honor, since Major Mitchell’s cockatoos have a lot of pink in their feathers.

On April 10 my proof copy of Cookie the Cockatoo arrived. I found one error and corrected it. I then uploaded the corrected manuscript and hit the Publish button, and on April 11, 2020, Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes was published as both a paperback and an ebook.

And I was left with the third and most difficult of my three pandemic writing goals looming ahead of me.

————————————

Cookie the Cockatoo: Everything Changes is a quick tour of world changes from a cockatoo’s point of view, suitable for ages 10-100.