My challenge and my downfall: I have been defeated by formatting. Did I learn wisdom or was it just humiliation?
It was such fun writing my book and now it is becoming such a pain to give it life out in the big wide world; that is a life beyond my computer.
Swift is not my name in this department. A while ago I posted that my new strategy (after not securing an agent) was to send Pardon My Camino directly to publishers. To do this you must have your text in the right format.
Like all the steps in the publishing universe, you have to get things EXACTLY right. I did a rant-moan post in that vein about the query letter and the synopsis. There are the same dire warnings for a manuscript submission. Get it exactly right or before it is even read, it will be tossed out. Any excuse we are warned will be used to whittle down the great list of novels-to-be-published in waiting.
My editor’s parting words were “get it formatted.” When I dug into this I soon saw that formatting depended, of course, on what it was aimed at publisher submission, self-publish, e-book, and paper-back. Having read the publishing houses guidelines for submitting a manuscript, I felt surely I could do that :
12 points Time
Author/book name on each page
Chapters to start halfway down the page
get those indents right
page numbers to start at Chapter one and not on the title page.
But I could not do it. I spent hours on Word and then back to Scrivener with the Compile feature. It was a gruesome grind. How much more time stretched before me to master this – if ever? Do I really want to spend my hours and days struggling with this, is this how I want to spend my precious time? And the burden on my spirit.
There came a point when I said I am not going to do this. A great weight lifted off my shoulders. However refreshing as this was, this did not solve my formatting problem but it did show me it was time to fold, to give in, admit defeat and find another route.
My editor had said “get it formatted”, not “format it!” That should have been a clue. That other route was of course to get help. That came in the form of a lovely person who does lots of book stuff far classier than formatting, but will do a bit of that too! Thank you thank you.
I told her about my project and my problem. She said that would take a couple of hours and she would charge $100 – and that’s $100 Canadian. And she said, formatting can be tricky and not to feel bad about it – or words to that effect. Oh, what a lovely person. What a bargain, and such consoling words. This is how to get the weight of the computer off my back, my shoulders.
Yes, I have failed in the software department. I am confessing to my ‘old lady with a computer’ status. But it is surely wise to get help and to hell with embarrassment and nasty self-judgment!