| General Non-Fiction posted September 13, 2021 |
  |
At last!
The Great Procrastinator
by kiwisteveh
I've always been a procrastinator - last minute homework was my specialty as a student and when I became a teacher that translated into last minute marking of student test papers, followed soon after by last minute report-writing. Of course those tasks had deadlines and I was not too bad at meeting those as long as they were clear, although I do recall some very late nights as I rushed to get essential tasks finished.
Two or more years ago I gathered together a bundle of what I considered to be the best of my humorous verses with the idea of getting them published. I had a title in mind, "Forty-Four Fabulous Funnies." That's lovely alliteration and I could picture it on the cover, but it soon became clear that I had more than that. I simply added the tag-line "...and Fourteen More for Free." Enthusiastic at the start of this project I created my new title and basic book details at KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and then I did... nothing.
Not really nothing. What I did was procrastinate. Did you know the root of that comes from the Latin word 'cras' meaning tomorrow? There you go, I'm doing it again. I'm really very good at it after all these years. I may have looked the poems over occasionally and once I even sorted them into groups such as Cautionary Tales and Limericks, but that was about as far as it went for all those lost months.
I know what the trouble was. It was work. As Jerome K. Jerome once famously said, "I like work, it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." The poems were all written; they just needed a quick once-over to weed out any egregious typos, but that was just the beginning of what was required. They had to be annotated, formatted, illustrated, indexed, trimmed or expanded to fit the tyranny of page sizes and margins. I enjoy none of those things!
But, you know what? I did it!
New Zealand had been COVID-free for months when the Delta variant crept stealthily in, forcing us into lockdown. I took advantage of the hiatus to plunge into Fab Funnies in earnest. I downloaded the appropriate Word template from KDP and wrestled the poems into suitable compartments, wrangled them onto the page, wrapped them with cutesy illustrations and wrenched the whole darn 44 + 14 more into the confines of 125 pages. Then I just had to wring a wonderful cover out of my uber-talented other half and the job was almost done.
Yesterday I trimmed the A4 pages down to 9" x 6" and pasted them back to back to create a mock-up of the finished product - that what's you can see in the photo above. And what a great product it is! Tonight I will do a final proofread - something I seem to be unable to do by staring at a screen and by tomorrow I will be able to upload the completed files to KDP for their scrutiny before the masterpiece is released to the world on Amazon and the dollars come rolling in.
Finally I can go back to my happy procrastination...
Just to wrap this up, here is one of the Cautionary Tales included in the book. Enjoy!
Suzy
The moment Suzy Plumley-Wilde
Discovered she might be with child,
She started on a new regime
And hired experts -- what a team!
An obstetrician (Harley Street),
Chiropodist to mind her feet,
Psychiatrist, a fan of Freud,
A trainer who would be employed
In making sure that Mrs P.
Was fit for childbirth, something he
Most diligently undertook,
And lastly one who wrote the book
On giving babies just what's best:
"Not formula, you fool, but breast!"
Now, aided by her husband, who
Once led a trek to Timbuctoo,
Our preggers lady organised
A list so long you'd be surprised
Of things that parents ought to know
Of infants when in utero.
To give the budding brain a boost,
Try playing Mozart, reading Proust
In French and English, so the tot
May well emerge a polyglot.
To calm the agitated whelp
meditation's such a help.
No drink, no drugs, no cigarettes,
No flying supersonic jets
(A thing that she was wont to do
Before this baby thing came through)
But now the forty weeks are done,
The oven spawns this well-cooked bun.
Let's skip the actual birthing part;
We know they scream, we know they fart.
We know they..... Draw the curtain here;
Some things are far too gross I fear.
Fast forward for a week or so
As baby Fleur begins to grow...
According to the latest creed,
Now Suzy's teaching her to read.
At one she's learning how to speak -
At first in Latin, then in Greek.
In Mandarin, Italian, French;
Ah, what a clever little wench!
At two, with very little fuss,
She's mastered all of calculus.
By three she has some expertise
In astrophysics, if you please.
And so it goes, her Mum's ambition
Forever leads to more tuition.
Philosophy and Russian Lit.
It seems that Suzy just won't quit.
She's stuffing in her daughter's brain,
More subjects than the King of Spain.
You think that's all? Oh no, not yet;
There's violin and clarinet,
There's opera, blues and swing and rap,
There's ballet, hip-hop, jazz and tap...
Where is this going? Can you tell?
The poor girl's head began to swell.
With information overloaded,
Her brain quite suddenly exploded,
Making such a dreadful mess
On Cousin Margot's brand new dress,
And splattering some awful goo
On Grandma, who at ninety-two,
Had seen such horrors in the Blitz
As half her family blown to bits,
And now remarked, "Please have the grace
To detonate some other place."
Now Fleur has gone to life eternal
And Suzy's left with thoughts maternal:
"I never meant her head to burst;
Next time I'll teach survival first!"
I've always been a procrastinator - last minute homework was my specialty as a student and when I became a teacher that translated into last minute marking of student test papers, followed soon after by last minute report-writing. Of course those tasks had deadlines and I was not too bad at meeting those as long as they were clear, although I do recall some very late nights as I rushed to get essential tasks finished.
Two or more years ago I gathered together a bundle of what I considered to be the best of my humorous verses with the idea of getting them published. I had a title in mind, "Forty-Four Fabulous Funnies." That's lovely alliteration and I could picture it on the cover, but it soon became clear that I had more than that. I simply added the tag-line "...and Fourteen More for Free." Enthusiastic at the start of this project I created my new title and basic book details at KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and then I did... nothing.
Not really nothing. What I did was procrastinate. Did you know the root of that comes from the Latin word 'cras' meaning tomorrow? There you go, I'm doing it again. I'm really very good at it after all these years. I may have looked the poems over occasionally and once I even sorted them into groups such as Cautionary Tales and Limericks, but that was about as far as it went for all those lost months.
I know what the trouble was. It was work. As Jerome K. Jerome once famously said, "I like work, it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." The poems were all written; they just needed a quick once-over to weed out any egregious typos, but that was just the beginning of what was required. They had to be annotated, formatted, illustrated, indexed, trimmed or expanded to fit the tyranny of page sizes and margins. I enjoy none of those things!
But, you know what? I did it!
New Zealand had been COVID-free for months when the Delta variant crept stealthily in, forcing us into lockdown. I took advantage of the hiatus to plunge into Fab Funnies in earnest. I downloaded the appropriate Word template from KDP and wrestled the poems into suitable compartments, wrangled them onto the page, wrapped them with cutesy illustrations and wrenched the whole darn 44 + 14 more into the confines of 125 pages. Then I just had to wring a wonderful cover out of my uber-talented other half and the job was almost done.
Yesterday I trimmed the A4 pages down to 9" x 6" and pasted them back to back to create a mock-up of the finished product - that what's you can see in the photo above. And what a great product it is! Tonight I will do a final proofread - something I seem to be unable to do by staring at a screen and by tomorrow I will be able to upload the completed files to KDP for their scrutiny before the masterpiece is released to the world on Amazon and the dollars come rolling in.
Finally I can go back to my happy procrastination...
Just to wrap this up, here is one of the Cautionary Tales included in the book. Enjoy!
Suzy
The moment Suzy Plumley-Wilde
Discovered she might be with child,
She started on a new regime
And hired experts -- what a team!
An obstetrician (Harley Street),
Chiropodist to mind her feet,
Psychiatrist, a fan of Freud,
A trainer who would be employed
In making sure that Mrs P.
Was fit for childbirth, something he
Most diligently undertook,
And lastly one who wrote the book
On giving babies just what's best:
"Not formula, you fool, but breast!"
Now, aided by her husband, who
Once led a trek to Timbuctoo,
Our preggers lady organised
A list so long you'd be surprised
Of things that parents ought to know
Of infants when in utero.
To give the budding brain a boost,
Try playing Mozart, reading Proust
In French and English, so the tot
May well emerge a polyglot.
To calm the agitated whelp
meditation's such a help.
No drink, no drugs, no cigarettes,
No flying supersonic jets
(A thing that she was wont to do
Before this baby thing came through)
But now the forty weeks are done,
The oven spawns this well-cooked bun.
Let's skip the actual birthing part;
We know they scream, we know they fart.
We know they..... Draw the curtain here;
Some things are far too gross I fear.
Fast forward for a week or so
As baby Fleur begins to grow...
According to the latest creed,
Now Suzy's teaching her to read.
At one she's learning how to speak -
At first in Latin, then in Greek.
In Mandarin, Italian, French;
Ah, what a clever little wench!
At two, with very little fuss,
She's mastered all of calculus.
By three she has some expertise
In astrophysics, if you please.
And so it goes, her Mum's ambition
Forever leads to more tuition.
Philosophy and Russian Lit.
It seems that Suzy just won't quit.
She's stuffing in her daughter's brain,
More subjects than the King of Spain.
You think that's all? Oh no, not yet;
There's violin and clarinet,
There's opera, blues and swing and rap,
There's ballet, hip-hop, jazz and tap...
Where is this going? Can you tell?
The poor girl's head began to swell.
With information overloaded,
Her brain quite suddenly exploded,
Making such a dreadful mess
On Cousin Margot's brand new dress,
And splattering some awful goo
On Grandma, who at ninety-two,
Had seen such horrors in the Blitz
As half her family blown to bits,
And now remarked, "Please have the grace
To detonate some other place."
Now Fleur has gone to life eternal
And Suzy's left with thoughts maternal:
"I never meant her head to burst;
Next time I'll teach survival first!"
Two or more years ago I gathered together a bundle of what I considered to be the best of my humorous verses with the idea of getting them published. I had a title in mind, "Forty-Four Fabulous Funnies." That's lovely alliteration and I could picture it on the cover, but it soon became clear that I had more than that. I simply added the tag-line "...and Fourteen More for Free." Enthusiastic at the start of this project I created my new title and basic book details at KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and then I did... nothing.
Not really nothing. What I did was procrastinate. Did you know the root of that comes from the Latin word 'cras' meaning tomorrow? There you go, I'm doing it again. I'm really very good at it after all these years. I may have looked the poems over occasionally and once I even sorted them into groups such as Cautionary Tales and Limericks, but that was about as far as it went for all those lost months.
I know what the trouble was. It was work. As Jerome K. Jerome once famously said, "I like work, it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours." The poems were all written; they just needed a quick once-over to weed out any egregious typos, but that was just the beginning of what was required. They had to be annotated, formatted, illustrated, indexed, trimmed or expanded to fit the tyranny of page sizes and margins. I enjoy none of those things!
But, you know what? I did it!
New Zealand had been COVID-free for months when the Delta variant crept stealthily in, forcing us into lockdown. I took advantage of the hiatus to plunge into Fab Funnies in earnest. I downloaded the appropriate Word template from KDP and wrestled the poems into suitable compartments, wrangled them onto the page, wrapped them with cutesy illustrations and wrenched the whole darn 44 + 14 more into the confines of 125 pages. Then I just had to wring a wonderful cover out of my uber-talented other half and the job was almost done.
Yesterday I trimmed the A4 pages down to 9" x 6" and pasted them back to back to create a mock-up of the finished product - that what's you can see in the photo above. And what a great product it is! Tonight I will do a final proofread - something I seem to be unable to do by staring at a screen and by tomorrow I will be able to upload the completed files to KDP for their scrutiny before the masterpiece is released to the world on Amazon and the dollars come rolling in.
Finally I can go back to my happy procrastination...
Just to wrap this up, here is one of the Cautionary Tales included in the book. Enjoy!
Suzy
The moment Suzy Plumley-Wilde
Discovered she might be with child,
She started on a new regime
And hired experts -- what a team!
An obstetrician (Harley Street),
Chiropodist to mind her feet,
Psychiatrist, a fan of Freud,
A trainer who would be employed
In making sure that Mrs P.
Was fit for childbirth, something he
Most diligently undertook,
And lastly one who wrote the book
On giving babies just what's best:
"Not formula, you fool, but breast!"
Now, aided by her husband, who
Once led a trek to Timbuctoo,
Our preggers lady organised
A list so long you'd be surprised
Of things that parents ought to know
Of infants when in utero.
To give the budding brain a boost,
Try playing Mozart, reading Proust
In French and English, so the tot
May well emerge a polyglot.
To calm the agitated whelp
meditation's such a help.
No drink, no drugs, no cigarettes,
No flying supersonic jets
(A thing that she was wont to do
Before this baby thing came through)
But now the forty weeks are done,
The oven spawns this well-cooked bun.
Let's skip the actual birthing part;
We know they scream, we know they fart.
We know they..... Draw the curtain here;
Some things are far too gross I fear.
Fast forward for a week or so
As baby Fleur begins to grow...
According to the latest creed,
Now Suzy's teaching her to read.
At one she's learning how to speak -
At first in Latin, then in Greek.
In Mandarin, Italian, French;
Ah, what a clever little wench!
At two, with very little fuss,
She's mastered all of calculus.
By three she has some expertise
In astrophysics, if you please.
And so it goes, her Mum's ambition
Forever leads to more tuition.
Philosophy and Russian Lit.
It seems that Suzy just won't quit.
She's stuffing in her daughter's brain,
More subjects than the King of Spain.
You think that's all? Oh no, not yet;
There's violin and clarinet,
There's opera, blues and swing and rap,
There's ballet, hip-hop, jazz and tap...
Where is this going? Can you tell?
The poor girl's head began to swell.
With information overloaded,
Her brain quite suddenly exploded,
Making such a dreadful mess
On Cousin Margot's brand new dress,
And splattering some awful goo
On Grandma, who at ninety-two,
Had seen such horrors in the Blitz
As half her family blown to bits,
And now remarked, "Please have the grace
To detonate some other place."
Now Fleur has gone to life eternal
And Suzy's left with thoughts maternal:
"I never meant her head to burst;
Next time I'll teach survival first!"
 Recognized |
PS I do have one other book of more serious poetry also available on Amazon. It is called Life, Love and Other Disasters and is published under my name Steve Herbert. It'll cost you peanuts!
Stay safe, everyone. NZ is wrestling Delta into submission, but it's a tricky beast.
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and 2 member cents. Stay safe, everyone. NZ is wrestling Delta into submission, but it's a tricky beast.
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