Friday iFAQ: Pages ’09
Every Friday we publish a list of inFrequently Asked Questions and answers to help you, the Crazy Apple user, get more out of your Crazy Apple products.
Our iWork Trifecta ends this week with Pages: the word processor with style.
Q: Stand aside, ridiculous web-writer-bloggish person! For I am a true author!
A: Wow. What have you written?
Q: My oeuvre includes such seminal works as The Scent of Weeping, Whither, Herringspell? and Drink Softly, Mockingbird.
A: Those sound pretty, er, pretentious.
Q: Indeed. Reviewers have said that my works have “channeled the spirit of the Parisian Café Waiter” and “make extensive use of five-dollar-or-higher words at every opportunity”.
A: So, do you use Pages at any point in your writing?
Q: STOP! You can’t just leap to the page layout portion of the experience without truly understanding the full process! To understand the soul of writing you have to start at the seed, the very nascent glimmerings of an idea!
A: You’re supposed to be asking questions…
Q: The story process begins with me sitting in a room, my long blond hair streaming as the wind casually caresses my cheek…
A: Wait! Are you, or do you look surprisingly similar to, this guy?
Q: That is neither here nor there. As the wind whispers sweet nothings in my alabaster ear, I reach first for my cognac, then for my moleskine notebook, where the velvety creamy pages invite the touch of my pen, each stroke giving them meaning, enriching them as they realize their true raison d’être!
A: Let’s keep this clean, please. This is a family Internet!
Q: Gripped by the feverish passion of my muse…
A: What did I just tell you?
Q: I write draft after draft, forging my characters in the deep waters of tribulation, molding them as a carpenter would frame a house, building their very beings from the immaterial, yet consistently present hearts of beings long dead, of beings not yet born. Their colors and personalities coruscate across the page, lines of eternal fire like lightening struck from the anvil of some primordial god!
A: Richard Lederer would be so proud.
Q: Inevitably, the muse leaves me, and with the morning sun I have naught but the ashes of the glories of the previous night, simple ciphers, sought from the cinders of my shining soul, and I am left to attempt to recreate the beauty I saw in a night vision!
A: Hangovers are rough on ya, huh?
Q: Like Coleridge–
A: You drink a lot of laudanum?
Q: –I am left to try to convey in sterile language the verdant worlds of my mind. And it is here that Apple’s Pages assists me.
A: Thank goodness.
Q: With my notebooks and loose pages of sketches and drafts around me on the desk, I bring the words into Pages, relying on its ability to block distractions with its full-screen capabilities. Outline mode reveals the order underlying the seeming chaos of my story, and with page layouts my words flow seamlessly around the lovingly-rendered images I include to further illuminate my texts.
A: Wow. So Pages really–
Q: My story complete, I am able to save my manuscript as a PDF, the format preferred by my publisher, and soon I know that hundreds will be enjoying my words, all around the world.
A: That’s really great. Hey, do you use the new iWork.com service to get comments on your stories?
Q: Hmph, no. Unlike you hacks, I prefer to keep my words free from the grubby paws of Internet comments, which only soil and deride my flawless texts. Indeed, I seek to keep my words out of anyone’s hands until they can be delivered as a complete, fully formed novel, ready to be cherished and put on the shelf next to the works of Tolstoy and Dumas.
A: No editors? No book doctors?
Q: Naturally not! They would only seek to change my words, to re-shape my vision to fit their base standards of “readability” or “economic feasibility”.
A: Sorry, of course. My bad.
Q: Well, you are not to be expected to know. Still! I will give you a little bit of insider information.
A: Oh?
Q: My new book, The Fountains of Frigid Fate will be on bookshelves next week.
A: Really?
Q: Well, Lulu.com will print copies for people who order it. So close enough.
A: Sounds riveting. Well, that’s all the time we have…
Q: Be sure to buy a copy! Or several!
A: I’m sure we’re all counting the moments. Which we’re out of, so–
Q: Please! Somebody buy my book! Anybody!
A: Okay, okay! We’re off to, er, buy it right now! Goodbye!
Q: Maybe Mom will buy this one…[sniff].
Off to wash my grubby paws……
The “Q:” guy never did ask a question: it was more of a guest editorial. But I did learn something about Pages, I believe, although I can’t quite remember it.
That’s the problem with these question askers. They rarely do what I wan them to. This guy definitely thought he should be the one giving the answers.