I'm not sure whether this should go in the chapter on work stories, or in the chapter about Gloria. It involves both.
A few years after we got married, I ran out of information technology jobs. Well, not completely. I did get a few contracts over the intervening years, but my main, and most regular, source of income was as a security guard
This actually worked out fairly well, in the end. For a number of reasons. I, because I worked as a security guard know an awful lot more about physical security than most of my colleagues in information security. In fact, when I went to get my CISSP certification, I had to use the experience in physical security as the reference for work experience, which was, at that time, less complex than it is now. (Although the complexity, now, does make it possible to tweak your description of your work to fit just about any domain in the new security domains, and so it may be that it's easier to get your work experience, nowadays.)
But, working as a security guard also meant that I had a lot of time, during the shifts, when I was just sitting around. There were, of course, rounds to make, at set times, and various things to check. But security guarding is, primarily, just being there, to observe, and (possibly primarily), to be observed as a security presence. (Actually, a number of the shifts that I had over the years that I worked as a security guard, and particularly when I was assigned to a bank, tended to be just being there, and being seen.)
But, as I say, much of the time it was just being on site, doing the rounds, and having a fair amount of time in between rounds. I was still doing the book reviews. I was also writing up my research into computer viruses, and posting this, piecemeal, on the Internet. I, at one point, expressed, to Gloria, my frustration about having all of this time to read, but not having access to a computer to write out my reviews, and my research results. Gloria offered to type it up. If I wrote it out long hand, she would type it in to the computer. Then I could edit it, and send it out.
I was initially quite hesitant to take her up on her offer. Now, Gloria can type extremely fast, and my scribblings, even with my terrible handwriting, wouldn't take her awfully long to transcribe. But, at this point, I didn't see an awful lot of purpose in what I was doing. It was more of a hobby than anything else, and although I had vague ideas of publication, at some point, it really didn't seem to me important enough to take up Gloria's time. However, she said that it wouldn't be much of an imposition, and she was quite willing to do it to help me, so eventually I accepted her offer.
Gloria had had interesting experiences with typing up other people's dictation. Some people, like her father, really had a problem with Gloria correcting *anything*, including spelling and grammatical mistakes, which were clearly erroneous. Some of the bosses that she had worked for had been more open to her corrections and amendments. So, initially, Gloria was very hesitant to make any corrections to my material. And, of course, I, used to the fact that if anybody pointed out in errors with my text, that I was the one who had to rewrite it, in order to correct it, was not, initially, the most receptive person to correction. But I had already realized that with a computer, and a word processor, the grunt work of making corrections on text was much reduced, and so I was already, when dealing with computerized text, much more amenable to making corrections.
So, extremely tentatively, Gloria started making suggestions for corrections. I have repeated my joke about my advice to those who want to write books, to the effect that, when you find a good copy editor, you marry her. As noted, this is really more of a comment on the availability, and value, of copy editors, and the skill, or lack thereof, that most of them have. I very quickly found out that, if Gloria challenged me on anything about grammar or spelling, she was probably right. And, as I say, when I married Gloria I had no idea that I wanted to write books, or was going to write books. So the comment about marrying your copy editor, really does not apply to Gloria and myself.
But, as Gloria made suggestions and edits, and realized that I did not fly off the handle like her father had, and I was not absolutely married to my sacred and holy text, she started making more extensive editorial comments. Eventually, I did manage to get a laptop computer, a Compaq Aero. (I got it second hand, and it was even cheaper because it had a Spanish keyboard, and a Spanish language version of DOS and Windows. We referred to it as "Jorge.") Even after I was able to take a computer with me to my shifts, and type up my own reviews, and my own material in regards to computer virus research, I still submitted the text to Gloria for editing. Not just in terms of copy editting, but because Gloria was able to edit at all seven level levels of editing function and management, up to and including developmental editing. Gloria improved my writing. Not simply because of the edits that she made to the text, but that, as I reviewed her edits, and suggestions about my writing styles, that I realized some of the mistakes that I made consistently, and took steps to correct those errors. It made my writing better. This material, that I am producing now, the memoirs, the sermons, the blog postings, and other content, are simply not as good as my writing was when Gloria was around to review it.
So, Gloria's assistance, initially just with typing the material in, encouraged me to produce more materials, which could be posted on to the Internet. In addition, it provided me with a body of material, which became the bulk of my first book. Having produced enough for a first chapter, I submitted that chapter to a number of publishers, because of all of my contacts, because of all of the book reviewing that I had been doing. And, two of the publishers expressed interest in publishing the book.
Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/06/mgg-523-hwyd-youre-much-taller-on.html
Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html
Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/06/mgg-525-hwyd-my-folks-and-my-books.html
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