The Magic Memories (192)

Hello everyone!

Today’s topics are: Sample of Unexpected Agenda – With Edits

These are The Magic Memories 192, gone online Sunday, September 1, 2024, at 0:07h sharp.

All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, and 2023, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.

Sample of Unexpected Agenda – With Edits

I recently read a scientific report that states the efficiency of the human brain starts to deteriorate when the temperature exceeds 23° C (75.2° F).

As I enter my studio to write this week’s The Magic Memories, it is 31° C (87.8° F) outside in the shade, and approximately 35° C (95° F) inside. (No, we do not have air conditioning… but the reason why is not the subject of this blog).

Nonetheless, by working downstairs, where it is cooler, I have been installing the edits for Unexpected Agenda that are now coming in from my editor Max Maxwell and my proofreaders, Mike Vance and Andreas Buchty.

I do not want to bore you with the details of such work, but believe me, this part alone requires several hundred hours of work—on the part of the proofreaders, and on Barbara’s and my part installing the corrections. When you think all the work is done—thinking, planning, researching, writing, rereading, correcting, rewriting, taking photos, doing the layout, rereading everything once more, and correcting it—which has taken almost three years, then you have to add another 20% of time to revise the whole darn thing. It is like at the end of the forty kilometers of a marathon, someone tells you that you have to run another eight kilometers (without extra pay).

So, taking into account the hot weather and the time needed to bring Unexpected Agenda to completion (hopefully in approximately four weeks), working full-time, you will understand why I will keep this week’s The Magic Memories short.

However, I want to give you a glimpse into the book by sharing an excerpt.

When I told Barbara the idea, she suggested that I should give you an edited page rather than the final version. I am not sure if it is a good idea, but… why not? as my friend Dani DaOrtiz would say 🙂

First, you will see how many mistakes I make when writing in English (something you as a reader of The Magic Memories already know!). Second, you might appreciate the nerve-racking work it takes to carefully install the edits while going back and forth between two side-by-side documents on the screen.

It takes me an average of ten minutes per page (day); considering a month has 30/31 days, and a year twelve months, well… I leave the math to you. And that is only the first major edit; two proofreaders with their comments and the mistakes they find follow, although the time to install those edits is admittedly a lot less.

Okay, after this lamento (which is certainly less than that of an Italian soccer player after he has been fouled—as an Italian only child, I am an expert in these things…), I hope you enjoy the “unedited-edited” preview of Unexpected Agenda I have extracted for your entertainment pleasure.

I am not sure if this sample gives an idea of the book’s content, as I just picked one month (May) and three entries at random. Whatever your impression, rest assured that, like in the previous two Agendas, there is a great diversity of topics being discussed (tricks with various props and in diverse genres, subtleties, presentational ideas, professional advice, anecdotes, puzzles & riddles, curiosities, opinions, reports, techniques— a bit heavier on cards than on other instruments, but there are ideas with coins, ropes, calculators, etc.).

I am rereading it now as I install all those edits, and I am very happy with it; it is a book I would want to immediately buy, had I not written it myself 🙂

To read the three entries I have chosen for you, CLICK HERE. (If you open the PDF in a PDF-app, you should be able to read the comments that go with the edits, should you desire to do so.)