I am also happy to report that, even though I greatly increased the white space (thus readability) of WWS4, and even though I added a ton of new content, I was able to bring the page count down to just over 500 pages. I will be adding another 10-20 pages back in when I build the index, but the book will still be 80+ pages slimmer than it was ten years ago.
This new edition of WWS will also be more helpful. I've learned a lot over the past ten years, and the new edition reflects that. Rewriting the book has been a long and difficult task, much more difficult than I expected, and this will probably be its last edition, but I am very glad that I got the chance to work on it again.
While I was revising Working with Stories, I also revised my first draft of Working with Stories Simplified, and I was able to bring its page count down from 300 pages to 155. Both books have the same chapter and section names, but every section in WWS-S is essentially a summary of the same section in WWS4. Because I want WWS-S to stand on its own, the parts of WWS4 that matter the most -- the exercise instructions, for example --- are identical in both books.
At the moment, both book drafts are littered with typographical errors, clumsy pagination gaps, and imperfect sentences. That will all be ironed out during the proofreading phase. If you happen to read either book before then, and you spot any errors (or just get confused), I would very much appreciate a heads-up. It's amazing how many little typos can slip through the cracks.
What's next
Next I will turn my attention to finishing Working with Stories In Depth. Right now it contains:
- More Work with Stories (the original "extra" book, which I never finished)
- All of the too-long-and-detailed sections I removed from WWS4
- A lot of blog posts that don't have a good place to live
I don't want WWS-ID to be a mess, so I am going to be careful about what I keep in it. Probably about half of what is in it now will end up in a fifth document, which I will not publish (or even call a book) but will make available as an archive for the overly curious.
Then, when WWS-ID is done, I will finish The Working with Stories Sourcebook. I already wrote 36 sets of questions for it, so I have just 14 left to write. I also have a lot of case studies (in various forms of disarray) to clean up. And then that's done.
Finally, when those two books are done, I will be ready to prepare all four books for print and Kindle publication. I hope to have all of that done by the end of the summer, or if I am very lucky, sooner.
The future
What will I do after all four books are finished and published? I am not sure. The big exciting project I had started to work on is ... in limbo. It still might happen, and it might not. If it happens, I will do it, and if it doesn't, I will go back to looking for a job doing I-don't-know-what. I have been thinking about starting up some (paid) PNI Practicum courses again, and I'm not ruling that out, but I'm not sure if it's worth doing at this point.
At the moment, I intend to focus on getting these books done. In the interim I am still available for consulting and coaching, so if you need some help, let me know.
