Like visitors to the Center who can create their own customized books from my inventory, a friend suggested that some of you might wish to combine my poems with different pictures than the ones I selected for my Poetry & Pictures books in this site.

All of the poems and photos used in the Poetry & Pictures books, as well as the photos in the Scrapbook Photos pages, are loaded as individual graphics.  This makes it simple to save them to a file in your computer.  Those of you who are adept with computers can set things up on your own, and need not read beyond here.

For the rest of you . . .

In my system I need only to place the cursor over the upper left corner of a graphic, and a "save to file" option appears.  How you accomplish this might differ, since each system is different (you might need to click on the picture or poem, etc).  Give the saved file (poem or picture) a name easily remembered and recognizable, and note where in your computer (which folder) you stored it.  My suggestion would be that you select a poem when you are where it is at.  Then you can go to the Gallery, where all the photos from throughout the site are located, to select a picture to go with the poem.

If you have, in your computer, a program like FrontPage or Netscape Composer you can use it to place the poems and pictures next to, or on top of, one another, in the same scroll down fashion I use in this site.  When you save your P&P Book as a new file, you can preview it in any web browser like Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator, and share it with others by saving it to a disk or CD, or emailing it.

If you do not have these programs, or are unsure how to use them, you can also create a book rather simply in your word processing program like Microsoft Word, or Corel's WordPerfect.  I do almost all of my work in WordPerfect, so will describe how to do it there, but I am certain it is likely a similar process in other word processing programs.

In WordPerfect you would start with a new page.  I like to set my margins to .7" rather than 1", which is likely your default.  Your cursor will typically be in the upper left corner of the document.  Simply click on "insert" (top menu), then on "graphics," then on "from file."  Now you need to find the place you stored the poems and pictures in your computer.  You may need to click on the little picture of a folder with an arrow in it that goes to the left and turns up.  That will take you backwards through some of your file and folder areas until you find what you are looking for.  Once you have located the files, either highlight one and click on "open," or double-click on the file and it should be converted into your WordPerfect page.  It will come in smaller than you probably want it to be.  Click on the graphic (picture or poem) and an edit graphic option should appear.  Mine shows up just above the page to the left and says simply "graphics" with a little triangle pointing down next to it.  You need to click on that, and an options box should drop down.  Click on "size" and you will get a window to change the size.  Be sure to X the box to "maintain proportions."  The poems and photos have been scanned in at a 3.5"x 5" size, and will lose some clarity if you try to go any bigger.  Plus, if you used the .7 margins, you'll be able to fit two vertical items side by side, by sticking to that size. You can move the graphics around in WordPerfect just by clicking on one and holding the mouse button down, while dragging it to where you want it.  Once you get things completely the way you want them, you simply save it like any WordPerfect document, with a filename of your choice.

That's all there is to it.  If you haven't done it before, it likely sounds complicated, but you'll become a wiz at it after a while.   Have fun and enjoy.