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A note from Jane

I once held a job that rarely exists any more for children: I delivered the morning newspaper starting at 5 a.m.

I was hit with a bit of nostalgia for those days when I read Peter Hessler’s personal essay in the New Yorker about being a paperboy in Columbia, Missouri. But only a tiny bit. In the end, we had vastly different experiences. Unlike Hessler, who says that to this day he can’t sleep late, I can sleep late and believe I am in fact still catching up on my sleep these many years later. I rarely encountered anyone on my route, there wasn’t camaraderie among paperboys in my town, and there were no awards or sponsored group activities offered by the newspaper. These were all things he enjoyed—with one major life-changing element. (You’ll have to read the essay.)

Near the end of his story, I took great solace in one sentence that instantly resolved my years of guilt: “To this day, I am uncomfortable around dogs.” He was attacked mercilessly on his route and so was I, and no matter the situation, for life you expect the next dog you encounter to turn on you. When I go out for runs and see a dog coming, I move into the street rather than tread too close. Still, I try to hide my discomfort because, well, people love dogs and I don’t want to appear a monster.

Jane

P.S. Most popular post this month: What Should Authors Do When Their Literary Agent Is Terminated From Their Agency?

Bob Eckstein

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AMA Office Hours with book doula Joni Rodgers

Writing life is a hot mix of joys and challenges. A book doula is a strategic partner who helps authors thrive at all stages of the creative journey. If you need to brainstorm story structure, solve a plot knot that has you stuck on chapter 7, or just unload on a human aunty with 30+ years in publishing, I see you, writer. Let’s talk. Book AMA Office Hours.

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Jane’s Electric Speed List

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Historical database of 2,000 recipes

Lost Kitchen Scrolls is a delightful database to search. Don’t let the appearance of Renaissance manuscripts deter you: the site offers adaptations for modern kitchens. Invaluable for anyone writing historical fiction.

Sagrada Família Lego set: a gift for someone special

Only $799.99, or basically a bargain. Goes on sale Nov. 1. Take a look.

Clamp hangers for large canvases or cloth

While in Australia, Mark and I saw a beautiful Indonesian batik that we bought to hang on our wall. Rather than frame it or put it behind glass, we were happy to discover something known as “clamp hangers.”

AI and math problems

I was once married to a PhD who used cluster computing to solve complex math problems (this one), so I can’t help but follow what’s happening right now in the math world, as AI solves problems that some people spend their entire careers on. I found this personal essay to be helpful in its entirely human description of what mathematicians are experiencing right now.

Specificity & Context with Tiffany Yates Martin. $35 webinar ($25 early-bird price). Wednesday, October 14, 2026. 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Eastern.

Next online class: Specificity & Context

Taught by: Tiffany Yates Martin
Ideal for: Writers who may struggle to balance offering enough context to orient readers without overloading them or overwriting
Jane says: Does your story detail really merit inclusion, or is it just boring? This class teaches you the difference.
When: Wednesday, October 14, 1:00–2:30 p.m. EDT, or wait for the recording

Learn more and register ($25 early or $35 late)

Your turn: digitizing old documents

In the last issue, I asked what you use to scan or digitize old letters, documents, or photos: a scanner, a phone app, a service? Here’s what you recommended.

I bought a wonderful scanner for copying photos, documents, letters and everything else. It is the Epson FastFoto FF-680W. It is expensive but it has been worth every penny. (I’m in the UK.) It even enhances the photos. I ordered mine from a company in Australia, but seems to be more readily available now. —Jennifer Buckle
For scanning photos, I use the PhotoScan app (from Google). I like that it’s quick and easy to use and you don’t have to worry about glare because it takes an image from multiple angles. —Zev Lawson Edwards
This suggestion may not be practical in onesie, twosie situations, but our downtown library has a wonderful Makerspace which includes a digital scanning station. I have used it to scan old photos, old slides (remember slide projectors?), and even converted two of my dad’s Super 8 movies to digital format. Recently, my uncle sent my brother 30+ letters my dad wrote to his mother in 1945 when Dad was stationed in England during WWII. I encouraged my brother to check out the Makerspace at his local library so he can convert the letters to digital format so all of us kids can have a copy of Dad’s letters. —Bill Leinweber
I found Handwriting OCR very useful after I finished handwriting my first (and so far, only) novel-length manuscript. I hadn’t typed it into a Word document as I wrote. There’s a moment when you die inside just thinking about typing 75,000 words into a document. In my digging around to find ways to convert the hand written document into text, I discovered this tool. It was reasonably priced and does a surprisingly good job at converting my chicken scratching into accurate digital text. —Tillie Fratilli
I discovered that Microsoft OneNote has an OCR function built in. I republish a lot of public domain material for my books, so I take a clear picture of the page, load it into OneNote, right click on it and fix in Word. Not bad. —Bill Peschel
I use an old Epson V330 scanner that feeds into an Epson Scan 2 running on my desktop Mac mini. The big advantage of a scanner over a phone is you automatically get a flat image and the option to get high resolution. —Jeff Hecht
I use the TurboScan app. It has a 3x option (photographing a document three times to get the best clarity) or simple scan. I use it for legal contracts and scanning documents for taxes as well as sheet music. It time-stamps the scan automatically so you know which version is most current. You can add pages easily, and forward scans right from the app to email or text. —Jennifer Brown
I had a fantastic experience with Tab Service Company, based in Chicago but they work nationally. They scanned 45 journals and old notebooks of all shapes and sizes. Pristine accuracy and returned originals (though they will also shred, if you prefer). —Pamela Meyer
I had more than 50 journals that I’ve carried across two countries and more than a dozen apartments. I was thrilled to learn that the mobile Dropbox app has a built-in scanner, which uses the phone’s camera. The scans are compiled in a PDF and saved to a folder in the user’s Dropbox. The trick, though, is to stay alert while scanning hundreds of pages. To my dismay, after I tossed the physical journals, I found about five journals’ worth of individual page scans in my Camera Roll, rather than as a PDF in Dropbox. —Sarah Chauncey
I bought a Plustek Photo Scanner to digitize old photos. It works great and takes no time at all, and I highly recommend. It could also be used for letters or documents but, as a trained arts conservator with a specialization in paper, I am reluctant to submit old or fragile paper to the heat and bending of this machine. Instead, I just use the scanning app in my iPhone, which is a fantastic quality. —Sandhya Jain-Patel

💖 This was a popular question! Browse the full list of recommendations.

Next question: I recently discovered that many more writers are using Obsidian that I realized. If you use Obsidian, I’d love to hear more about why and what it helps you accomplish. Hit reply and let me know. Brief answers will most likely run in the newsletter, but I’ll compile all responses into a single and accessible list.

Do you have a tools or resources question you would like me to ask all readers? Offer up your suggestion, and I might feature it.