Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Monday, April 4, 2016

The Joy Of Word...

Sometimes I hate computers. Their programs seem designed to drive you mad and remind you that even as they lessen some of the effort you have to put into a manuscript, they increase it in ways unknowable...till the time comes when you have to use them.

After a nice long search on Google and through YouTube I have come to the conclusion the only way to get a uniform number of lines on a full book is to do every two pages as a section and then cut and paste to force it on the damned format. Meaning...since the hardcover wound up being 320 pages long...I'd have to set up 160 separate sections. And that's with me not even knowing if that would work with Ingram Spark.

So...the book's got everything it needs but that. Well...that and the irritating way it keeps adjusting my headers in spots so that the numbers are out of line by a half-point. And not consistently. The good thing is, I don't submit a Word doc for publishing; I send in a PDF. Which may mean my worry about 160 sections might be meaningless.

But here it is -- the paperback is 376 pages, front to back, while the hardcover is 320. And I'm still finessing the story. I just rewrote the last few paragraphs to better suit Jake's growing self-awareness, and I decided a couple of lines at one point were not really right for Jake, so out they came. Meaning I had to update both editions.

Jeez...maybe I better set up the e-book format and see if I have any adjustments to make with that before I send the final manuscript off.

No comments: