I’m deeply involved in a revision of the book Residential Interior Design (3^rd edition); a book revision is both more and less complicated than one might think as follows:

Uncomplicated = the structure is set unless something doesn’t work.

Complicated = there is a protocol to using old art/images and new. And, coding all the things for the new book that can get a little weird and ummm –complicated. Also, it takes forever to fiddle around with little mistakes in artwork and then I fall down a rabbit hole of getting too picky and I just want to sit and do Illustrator all day long (and listen to music, which is easier than writing for me).

Revisions are great because its good to get a chance for a “do over” on any project and that is what I find most appealing as there are always things that don’t quite work out (and there they are in print for all the world to see).

So, its good to fix them up, sort of like tidying up.

Also, its great to be able to update facts and figures as they do change rather dramatically from year to year. For example, in the edition I am revising I wrote that LED luminaires are not commonly used in residences –which was correct when I wrote it –but not so much now. Digging around with researching items for each chapter updates me with current information for teaching –so I gain quite a lot in this process.

In other news, a cat seems to have adopted our family but wants to live outside so I have attached a collar with a bell to the beast in the hope that he does not wipe out all of the song birds we have in our yard.

Before work on the book become so intense I was doing a fair amount of reading including Dead Wake by Erik Larson (about the Lusitania), Pioneer Girl (the original manuscript of Laura Ingalls Wilder edited by Pamela Smith Hill with some fascinating footnotes), Some Luck by Jane Smiley (part of a trilogy that I want to keep reading). Anne Tyler’s new book A Spool of Blue Thread (which sent me back to read Back When We Were Grownups).

And, like a bunch of other people I am reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (can’t tell if I agree with her approach but its interesting in light of my working on a book on the design of homes).