HMAUS Signal

MacKinnon Simpson, author of many pictorial historic books about Hawai’i offers his thoughts about authoring.  He writes directly into InDesign, placing his images as he creates the text.  All of his books have been written on a Mac, including the first desktop publishing book created on a Mac in pre-Photoshop days.  He and Bob Goodman co-wrote Whale Song. Here are his best tips for writers…

WORDS:

I love words, and to me, reading and writing are hopelessly entangled. Though I rarely have a chance to read for pleasure anymore, for most of my life I was omnivorous. Magazines, books, cereal boxes, pretty much anything but instruction manuals. Experiencing how others use words, and learning some new ones, was always part of my process. I learned to write well  from my Dad, who would read my stuff aloud and say, “How could you make that sentence better?” Taught my kids—both of whom are better writers than their old man—the same way. Having an ear for words is far better than having a Thesaurus.

CURIOSITY:

This is the root of all learning.  For me it used to mean a Webster’s Dictionary and the World Book Encyclopedia. Now it means, with some reservation, the Internet. I am constantly looking stuff up. I’m sure my kids shuddered whenever they heard my mantra, “Let’s look that up!”

SKEPTICISM:

Right behind Curiousity is Skepticism. Before I ever pass along an email verbatim, I try to verify it. At least half the crap I get (today was the “real” story of the Twelve Days of Christmas song which was a complete fabrication) is totally false, or with just a hint of truth. I’m the same way with book research, using primary sources not secondary ones.

SPELLCHECK:

I refuse to use this software, and because I do not use any word processing programs, it is not built in. I would much rather mis-spell a word (even in publication) than have it replaced automatically. For book manuscripts, I have a small circle of victims who read for spelling and punctuation.

SAVE:

There is no reason to ever lose anything on a computer as long as you learn to save it constantly. I have two internal hard drives—and five externals—attached to my main writing computers. And I promise myself to learn about iCloud, and start using it, this week.

LEARN TO TYPE:

Whenever I give talks to elementary school kids, I always emphasize the importance of typing. I have probably entered at least a BILLION consonants, and the occasional vowel, into typewriters and keyboards over the years, all with my two middle fingers while staring mesmerized at the keyboard. I STILL have no idea where most of the letters are! I checked once and if the words are short ones, I can top out at about 26 wpm. Since that’s also the speed at which I think, it works for me. I’m too set in my ways to learn to type now, but kids definitely should.