Preparing the Collection

After deciding to do the Empty House collection, the next step is very simple, but very important... I had to get physical copies of the stories and organize them. Physical copies are important because having them in my hands allows me to mark important parts of the story, things that I want to remember, or analysis that I might do. I also do not think that it is bad for the eyes to stare at a piece of paper as opposed to a computer screen (ironic, huh?).

I used the following process to get organized: printing from Gutenberg.org, stapling the hard copies, ordering the stories, and numbering all of the pages.


Printing from Gutenberg
Since I am doing the stories one-by-one, I did not simply want to go to the website and print off the stories in a big heap...not to mention the fact that I already had printed 3 of the stories and read them. Anyway, I copied and pasted the text from Gutenberg into Microsoft Word and printed from there. As a side note, I am also proud of myself for printing off the stories on the back of already-used sheets of paper. Hooray for re-using! I discovered the other day that one has to put the already-used side of the paper facing up. I stacked the papers in alternate directions first so that I could keep the sheets from getting mixed up.

Stapling
Next, I tracked down one of my professors to borrow his stapler because, for some reason, the stapler that usually sits at the front of the Fine Arts lab has been missing for a few days. I stapled the stories in book form instead of corning stapling because I think it helps create the feeling that I am reading a book; that, and I can crease the side and easily flip back and forth to reference different parts of the story.

Putting the Stories in Order
As mentioned above, I already had printed three of the stories. These were "The Empty House," "A Haunted Island," and "The Wood of the Dead." I numbered the stories 1-10 as they appear listed on Gutenberg. After this, as you would expect, I put the stories into a neat stack, 1-10, and placed them in a pocket folder with 1-5 on the left side and 6-10 on the right. (I also put another story that I had printed off, "The Dance of Death," behind 6-10, to keep it out of the way.

Numbering the Pages
I had actually started numbering the pages before stapling because I had not yet obtained the stapler. I started numbering the pages because I was concerned that they would get out of order and I would have a big mess. I , fittingly, placed a story number before each title, and then numbered each page using a keyword from the story title followed by the numeral. I circled the numeral to help me in scrolling.


As a footnote...
The possibility of doing the collection as a solo project
On the LibriVox forum message board for the Ghost and Horror stories collection (Volume 003), the thread manager, user name ceastman, suggested that, if I wanted to do all ten, I should consider doing a solo project. I have messaged the person back and asked how I might do this.