Monday, July 30, 2007

Dragging toward the finish line

I am down to the last twenty pages. As expected I had to back track and address a few issues, which required addressing a few more. I worked all afternoon and into the evening. Much my frustration my computer thought this would be a nifty cool time to do a couple of spontaneous restarts. Naturally Word hadn't backed up for twenty minutes at one point. Do you have any idea what it's like to try and figure out exactly what edits you've made when you're skipping around in a 400pg manuscript? I wanted to lay down on the floor and kick my heels and shriek the second time it did this, but settled for a glass of wine (no not whine and no that was not funny) and defragged the drive instead.

I told my husband (probably after the glass of wine) that sometimes I am a darn good writer. He looked very amused and agreed. The last fifty pages of this book are the best part. I just hope the rest of it measures up.

I'm off to work in a couple of hours. I get to sit in a building at a regional fair until ten o'clock tonight and meet and greet the public. This is not a normal part of my responsibilities, but the powers that be thought it would be a good way to save money--to use existing staff to fill a position they usually pay half as much for to temporary labor. It's not exactly a hard day, but it's a nearly two hour drive from here and I don't relish having to walk across a dark parking lot alone at ten o'clock at night.

I guess I'll throw the laptop in and get a little writing done between visitors.

3 comments:

Scotty said...

Do you have any idea what it's like to try and figure out exactly what edits you've made when you're skipping around in a 400pg manuscript?

Yep, in Word it's called 'Track Changes' - Ctrl + Shift + E.

[insert cheeky grin here]

Mary O. Paddock said...

I know that feature. I just don't like it. And it doesn't help when Word doesn't save properly. :)

Unknown said...

Sounds like you deserve to invest in a sleek new computer.

I got away with it.