Aliens and My Noodle

​Benjamin Franklin once said, “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.”

Right now, I’m working on getting my fourth book set to publish. This one was expected to be released last November, but I had an idea when reviewing it that changed a lot about the book and required copious revisions. I suppose it’s better to get the book exactly the way I want it before it is released than to release it in haste and later regret it.
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But while I was waiting for the proof of the book to come back, I got two other books set in InDesign and in the proof stage. I was amazed at how quickly the process went. When I was first learning to use the features in InDesign that would allow me to get a book laid out, I found it problematic to say the least. Every feature I needed had to be learned. That was just the layout. I won’t even go into the problems I had with doing the book covers. That will be the topic of another blog post. Thank goodness for the Internet and YouTube. That’s all I have to say about that.
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​Having an easier time with InDesign the second time around reminds me of a moment from my earlier days. When I was in college, I studied accounting. I went to a very strict and well-respected private college. It taught accounting, finance, and business. That was it. My electives weren’t fun things like learning a foreign language or how to create macrame plant hangers. We had Learning the Stock Market and Investing for Retirement. Studying for mid-terms and final exams was ... not fun.
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​In one of my earlier college classes, I was introduced to the concept of cost allocation. Briefly, allocating is the accounting process of taking overhead or indirect costs and allocating them to the direct costs to better analyze the amount needed to break even and make a profit. Back in college, I found the concept difficult to learn, and I struggled with it more than any one person should.

​I managed to get through the subject with most of my hair still intact and hoped like heck I wouldn’t need the knowledge in whatever job I had in the future.
 
Anyway, fast-forward ten years and I’m working at a company as a controller. I have reporting to me two accounting clerks, one for receivables and one for payables. My accounts payable clerk was still in college and was having trouble in a few of her subjects. She asked me if I would tutor her. I agreed, and we sat down during our lunch break, so I could pass along my knowledge and expertise.
 
One of the subjects she was struggling with was cost allocation. Having been in the workplace and, unfortunately, doing allocations on a regular basis, I was now very familiar with the process. I explained everything to her. She didn’t get it. I was amazed at how much my thinking had changed. I had been in her exact place ten years earlier, struggling to understand. Now I was frustrated explaining something I found quite simple and having her not understand.
 
That was how I felt recently with laying out my books in InDesign. Publishing my first books years ago, I struggled with every aspect of doing the books. Not that I’m an expert by any means, but when I began using InDesign again after years of being away from it, I didn’t find the task quite as daunting as I had during my previous adventure in self-publishing.

​I wondered why this was.

I had not immersed myself in laying out books over the years. I had not dedicated a large amount of time to the task of preparing a book for publication. I hadn’t even opened the program in nearly five years. So, why was the process so much easier this time around?
 
Mainly, I think it has to do with the quote that starts this post. I learn by doing. I know this about myself. Someone can tell me a hundred times how to do something, and I will scratch my head when left to my own devices. I’ll struggle to complete the project, and probably use some colorful language in my pursuit to complete what I am trying to complete.
 
Someone can show me how to do something until next week. I will remember how to do it, and maybe complete the task on my own with some success, with or without the aforementioned colorful language. But the information will probably not stick inside my noodle, and I’ll be back to the head scratching and colorful language when I try to do the task again.
 
But when I do the process myself, that’s when I learn. By doing, I break down whatever barrier I have inside my head that allows the information to stick. I always used to joke that I have a file cabinet inside my head. When I try to do something I’ve only been told how to do, the file cabinet drawer doesn’t even get opened and the knowledge gets misplaced.
 
By doing something I’ve been shown how to do, the information might or might not make it into the file cabinet, and if it does, it gets filed under “Q” instead of “L.” It’s not accessible when I need it.
 
By doing something myself, I file the information in the correct drawer under the correct letter, and it is available to me when I need it. That’s kind of an odd analogy, but this is my noodle I’m talking about.
 
Off topic, but that reminds me of the Stephen King book Dreamcatcher. I haven’t read the book, but I have seen the movie. I saw it a long time ago and don’t remember much other than aliens come to Earth and take over humans. The main character hides from the alien inside his mind in a locked room. His mind is filled with file cabinets. In one of the cabinets is the solution on how to get rid of the aliens. He has to sneak out of his locked room when the alien inside his mind isn’t paying attention. He’d run from the room, look through some files, and run back before the alien knew he was there. It was a weird movie.
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Anyway, back to self-publishing, which oddly enough includes one book involving aliens. But more on that in a bit. When I got serious about self-publishing this second time around, I took the time to learn some of the features that would help me. I found this course on InDesign.
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​In the course, the instructor (who explains things extremely well) explains the concepts, then shows you how to do the concepts. What sets this apart from most tutorials is he then assigns homework. He encourages you to create the same project on your own that he created in the lesson.
 
By doing, I learned.
 
There were several projects in the course that were irrelevant to my goal, but I have used several of the tricks he shows in the course. If you’re interested in learning InDesign, I highly recommend the course.
 
Anyway, now for the alien bit, I’m going to finish up proofing my fourth book for publication. I hope to have it out by the end of the week. This book was out of my comfort zone when I originally had the idea to write it. I saw an image from a fellow artist on Instagram that just refused to leave my mind. A story took root and I now have the Arkainians, a species with their own appearance, language, history, and culture. Oh, and they just happen to live on another planet.

You can read a chapter of the book as well as get updates of when it will be available for sale. Just click on “Lyra Zonder” at the top of the page.
 
Well, I hope you enjoyed this post. It has been the first one so far this year. I will try to be better about blogging more often, but I make no promises. I tend to write when the mood strikes me, and I have learned over the years that it is pointless to argue with myself. I almost never win.