The Week-ender - An index

I'm going to start a week-ender blog, just a short bit of information for the week-end.

I have spent the last week building an index for my screenplay book. It's that catalog of words at the end of a non-fiction book. I've never done one before and since I can't really pay for someone else to do it, I did it myself.

There are apparently some software ways to do this; even MS Word has a selection button where you click on it and it automatically puts a certain word you select, like Screenwriting or Paul Newman or anything that someone might want to find in the index.

But MS Word was a lot more confusing than I thought and my format guy said the best way to do it is manually. It was a good idea because it was easier, at least for me.

What I did is pick a word or phrase, say William Goldman, and then I write it down as Goldman, William 46 (the 46 is the page where Goldman can be found). If he's in another place it would read Goldman, William 46, 120.

If you're wondering how you go about finding another page for William I simply did a search and there it was. Some words like "conflict" was used 20 times, sometimes more than one on a page.

The work is not exciting, it reminded me of working on the line at the Chrysler plant one summer when I was earning money for college.

I also had to separate words; a title would be in bold, like SCREENWRITING. A movie would be in italics like Zero Black Thirty.

I didn't find any books on the subject, in fact I didn't want to. I just grabbed several film books I already had and copied what they do. In fact each book is often different in the way they make their index so I wasn't too worried.

It took me 4 days to do it right. I missed some and misplaced other words and even forgot some of the headings but I think I got it right.

One step closer to publishing, which I hope will be in 2 weeks.

And then I focus on Emperor of Mars once again. After 28 years, it's going to get another shot.

Oh, the shoe? Believe it or not I tossed my shoes off yesterday and went to bed and when I got up they were like this. Just a coincidence, but what are the odds of the shoes being arranged like someone did it on purpose.

Have a good week-end. Regular blog on Monday as always.