Story 74 Part A Background.

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                                                                               Posted by Rajah

Hi! My name is Rajah, Shandra’s husband.

        Up until I wrote this story much of my work on the Letters Project involved admin type work. It is my job to publish every Friday and take care of various problems so the main writers could continue their good work.

        One day we were considering this section covered by the old Vol 5 and the idea came about to split it into two volumes which became the final Vol 5 and Vol 6. During the process, this section was expanded by moving stories around and adding a number of new ones.

       At the meeting to decide this, the idea came up for each of us newer writers to do a story. So Kim, Ayaka and myself, each took a story to develop and write as our own. Ayaka got her one done quickly, taking only a few days (Letter/Story 65), Kim was working on one involving rain and mud, which was published last week (Letter/Story 73). I then had mine set in India with some partner swapping but I was having trouble with it.

        Shandra suggested that I write down an outline of the whole story and then treat each smaller section as a complete story. This was working and as I gathered the notes and ideas I could just add various parts into the story. 

        As this process continued young Ayaka wanted to get involved and give me lots of advice. Just because she finished her story quickly, in only a few days, seemed to make her think she was an expert. But I wanted to do this myself. I think I was making steady process and if I had more time I would have finished it too.

        Unfortunately, it was not to be, as events in my personal life overtook me. Soon the wedding between Shandra and myself was rushing up. We became very preoccupied with the details of this and so not much further writing was being done. Then after the wedding, there were the many tasks involved in preparing my business to be left while I was away in India showing my wife to my family members there.

       Also during this period, that fault was discovered in the HTML code on the index page. Susan had been copying the format as she worked down the page. It seems like a good idea at the time but it actually created a ‘bomb’ waiting to go off. One day we went on-line to discover font size and double spaced issues all over the way down the page. There was no quick answer; I had to deal with each problem, one by one by one as I worked down the page. This took me a lot of time too.

        Now when I was getting ready to leave for India, Anne informed me she and Susan were willing to complete my story using my notes. I knew there were some other projects waiting for me when I got back; I also knew I would be busy with my business, so I gave them my permission to continue. 

       They must have worked fast because I had only been in India two weeks when I came to learn my story was finished. I do notice they were careful to follow my outline so what they completed was very much as I intended. They even seemed to have followed my writing style as well because now it’s hard to say which parts are theirs and which are mine. Anne sent it to me while I was in India, I had time to go over it making final adjustments as I wanted them and then we called the job finished.

       Later the uploading team of Kim and Ayaka came through and did their little bits in the story and Reshma my sister-in-law has done some too. So you can see I am unable to take full credit for this story even if it is attached to my name. But I am very happy with it and I hope you are too. Oh, Allan, I suppose you were in there somewhere too.    
       I really like that opening conversation where we are left to figure out for ourselves who is talking. I don't know who did it that way but it's a good idea.

       Next week I am going to again do the background in which I will be more informing about the story itself and where the ideas came from.

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