My frustrating long-term affair with Stacy

From 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. Wednesday I sat at the computer working on the Stacy Letters; got another 45 pages edited.

Since I changed blogging programs last month,(the earlier postings are on my Bluefish Books Storefront ) it might be well to post some information about these Stacy Letters here, so I’m just copying a few excerpts from my February journals when I first began this project:

Copy of Journal entry for Feb 22, 05:

A few years ago I found a sheath of old letters stuffed in the back of a wooden file drawer I bought at a yard sale somewhere in Riverside. After a glance I put them aside as something interesting to be looked at later.

A few months ago I came across them again and I found them so fascinating that I've decided to publish them on my Bluefish Books Storefront. I feel they ought to be preserved both for their charming style and for their historic content.

Slight problem: some letters had been crumpled and all had been folded and refolded so many times that my scanner will not pick up the full text.

So, first I spent a few hours removing rusty staples being careful to keep the pages in order because they are not numbered.

Then, I spent hours and hours flat ironing dozens and dozens and dozens of these letters one page at a time.

Does Stephen King prepare his manuscripts this way?

Anyhow, if my career as a writer ever goes belly up, I have a trade to fall back on – I can take in ironing.

From Feb 23^rd Journal:

I attempted to scan in the letters I ironed yesterday. HA! I tried and tried and tried but nothing I tried worked; the scanner would overwrite all previously scanned pages and save only the last page. Drove me nuts.

I called Donald who came over and did something or another to the machine and taught me how to do it right. Thank God for him.

From Feb. 24^th: Journal:

Click. Click. Click. Swish. Swish. Swish. Whirrr. Whirrr. Whirr. Click. Click. Click. Swish. Swish. Swish. Whirr. Whirr ….

That’s been my day. John Cowart, human document feeder as I fed 200+ pages of Stacy’s letters through the scanner from 3:30 a.m. till 3:30 p.m.

Ah, the excitement and romance of a writer’s life. Gives me an adrenaline high.

From Feb 25^th Journal:

Spent most of the day avoiding work, i.e. formatting those Stacy Letters. The manuscript text scans in at assorted sizes and I puzzle over how to make them uniform.

From Feb 28^th Journal:

I sat at my desk fiddling with updates to my website (www.cowart.info) and making changes in the format of the Stacy Letters. Somehow in scanning the letters into my computer, I managed to get some of them in portrait and some in landscape and I’ve not been able to do them consistently but Donald advised me to save the files in plain text then transfer them to Word format and that worked fine – but it was nerve racking. I feel these letters are too important to lose to a computer glitch ( meaning my not knowing how to use a computer).

Back to Today, June 9^th, 2005:

The above Journal entries give some idea of what the Stacy Letters are and how I’ve been working on them since February.

Incidentally, I have kept a daily journal for about 30 years and if anyone has any interested in reading a few excerpts from my fascinating past, you can find some in the middle of the right hand column on my website at www.cowart.info .