Five weeks ago, when I wrote my last blog post, I thought that by now I would have finished The Working with Stories Sourcebook, the last in my new book series. But I ran into a brick wall.
The big exciting project I mentioned last fall has now had its funding fully rescinded (for political reasons). I cared a lot about it, and it would have provided me with an adequate and stable income (and the ability to keep doing PNI) for four more years. It was the kind of "anchor" project that consultants like me rely on.
New book covers
In the midst of this I was talking with my son about my need and inability to get back to working on my books. He asked me to show him what I had left to do, so I did. He suggested that proofreading the first three books might help me to finish writing the last book. I said I needed to improve my book cover designs before I could order my first proof copies, so he offered to help with the redesign.
These were the design constraints we discussed:
- Because I wanted to distribute the four photographs from WWS3 across the four books of the WWS4 expansion, each book cover had to accommodate a single black-and-white vintage photo, not too large (because of limited resolution) and not too small (because they are complicated photos).
- Because I wanted to tie the books together as a set, I wanted the words "Working with Stories" to be prominently featured across all four books.
- To avoid confusion, I wanted to give people an easy way to distinguish among the four books.
- I wanted to come up with a more interesting and attractive version of the covers than the placeholders I threw together last year.
Working together, we came up with this.
The swooping lines frame the inset photographs and identify the books by their colors and positions. If you place the books together on a bookshelf, the colored boxes step down (from left to right) in the order I think most people will want to access the books.
Redesigning the book covers helped a lot, and I'm now back to work on
the Sourcebook, making slow but sure progress. I have 2-4 weeks of work
left on that book, plus 2-3 months of proofreading, writing indexes, and
preparing the print, PDF, and Kindle versions of all four books. I hope to finish the whole book project by the fall.
Where you come in
If you look closely at my first picture above, you can see that each book has a "Reader praise" section on the back cover, as WWS3 did. You can also see that the space is blank on every book but WWS4.
I would like to fill those blank spaces with blurbs from you.
Please take a look at the new books and, if you like them, send me (via email) a one-or-two-sentence blurb. I will have room for three blurbs per cover, but I can put more inside the books. If you would prefer to send a blurb about the whole set of books, you can do that instead. I will put those blurbs on the first pages of WWS4. As with WWS3, all of the blurbs will be anonymous.
If anyone would like to help me out with some careful proofreading (of any of the four books), I would appreciate the help very much.
Finally, I am including a chapter on published papers about PNI projects in the Sourcebook.
If you wrote a paper (or dissertation) about a project that used PNI, and you want to make sure I mention your paper in my book, send me a note. I have twelve papers in the list now, but there may be more I haven't seen.
What comes next
After the books are published - unless by some miracle I get a lot of new consulting work - I will go back to looking for a full-time job. This time I plan to repackage my skills (in technical/educational writing, software development, research project management, and data analysis) without (much) reference to PNI. That seems to be the only realistic way forward, given the disastrous result of my I-can-do-PNI-for-you job search last year.
Of course, I have already started to look for jobs, but I've made a deal with myself. Until the books are done, I will allow myself to apply for "dream" jobs in which I might be able to do PNI, or at least PNI-adjacent, work. After the books are done, I will put that dream away and focus on finding a real job.
To be clear, I do make money doing PNI. I have done so for decades. It's just that my consulting gigs (and other business ventures, like my courses) haven't added up to an adequate or stable income for some time. It looked for a while like the big new project was going to change all that, but now it's gone, and projects like it don't come around every day. So I'm back to square one. Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.
A milestone
I recently realized that by the time I finish this book project I will have donated ten person-years of work to the world: 2.5 years on WWS1-3, 5 years on NarraFirma, and 2.5 years on the PNI Practicum courses and WWS4.
Does the world owe me something for all of this? It does not. Nobody asked me to do any of it. And I did what I wanted to do, not what the world wanted me to do. Sure, I was guided by what I thought people needed, and by what people said they needed. But people need all sorts of things. It's not like I was out digging ditches.
Besides, I have received some donations and software commissions, and sold some books, over the years. I have been grateful for every donation and purchase. They have added up to about 2-3 percent of the money I could have made in those ten years - but again, I chose to do the things I did.
I know that my work on PNI has helped people, because people have told me so. I have been proud of what I have done and grateful that I was able to do it (even though it has been difficult). And I have been overjoyed to see people around the world using PNI in many and varied ways.
Even so, I have come to the end of what I can do. It will soon be time for me to pass on the baton of PNI to a new generation of thinkers and doers. I hope some of them will grow to love PNI as much as I have loved it, and I hope that some of them will support it as well as I have.
