Crikey, oh crumbs. Sorry to have abandoned my post at this blog-spot, but it became urgent to ship Psychic Virgin off to Lulu. Not the singer! No, the printer/publishing company.
So, good idea. I did. Mmm. "Let's have a check, give it the once over, shouldn't take long". Oh, merdre! (I love that word. It's better that the F word. F**k is short and succinct - crisp and quickly done. But merdre, said 'mayrdrer' can be rolled around and can be made to linger quite satisfactorily if there is a need to use an expletive urgently). On viewing the pdf download (pdf inspiring a dearth of 'merdre's) my heart sank into my boots (remember 'my boots' blog: Why Boots?) to lay puddled up and despondent. I had spent ages and ages making sure that ALL the pages, of which there are 300 in total, were tidy looking. Housekeeping a book, to make it look pristine, takes effort and stoicism. The same as keeping a house all tidied up, or caravans in my case. You go from top to bottom, or front to back, tidying up, rearranging, making pretty so things look 'just so', everything in its place, "must have another quick look round to make sure everything looks OK", and no....just need to do a little bit more tweeking, and done!
Thus it is with housekeeping a house / caravans. But it / they only stay pristine if left alone. Get one's husband and various menagerie invading said tidiness and chaos quickly ensues. Topsy turviness rules the day. Uploading Psychic Virgin up to Lulu so pdf formatting could be done (don't know what pdf is but something to do with converting words in Word to words in pdf). Ah so, tidy book. All housekeeping done. Off it goes on upload. Down again on pdf download .... merdre! And again, merdre!
It looks the equivalent to a house being partied in.
So, back to the drawing board, or rather the PC screen, where dedicated effort was required otherwise avoidance mode would have been gone into and the book would been left, probably for months. I have found that one has to get back in the saddle with some things otherwise one is likely to stay out of that particular saddle for ages, if not forever. Hence my week of earnest endeavour.
And I was still having probs. So the resident Tech Team Guy came to my rescue, and took me into the bowels of Word, after having shown considerable amusement at my over simplisitic efforts at formatting which were contributing to the untidy pdf format conversion. Apparently. Anyway, he said so, as he whizzed about in Word, showing me a thing or two.
But my head is fogged up with Word-stuff, and I feel as if I am drowning in a sea of words. Not creative ones, but ones which have to sit tidily on the page, don't go wandering off to other pages in mid sentence, do one-line line-breaks and not one and a half, remember to do exactly the right indents, to behave when one says that they are title words and remind them they are not allowed to frolic with all the others on the page, and to remind the top- of- the- page words that they must not convert themselves into anything else other than what they were they were first born: they are devils, these particular group of words, and love redesigning themselves. And there are the little figures at the bottom of the page, who like to pop up when they are supposed to be absent, and then not appear when they are supposed to. I keep telling them that they are important, that they help the reader to navigate their way through the book, but that they have special positions and please could they understand this and stop misbehaving!
It has been an upload / download week. Me head feels fogged. Tech Team Guy has saved the day, and I am going to go retrieve the chicken pie from out of the oven, which has also hopefully behaved itself and cooked the pie properly, to say thankyou for his efforts in trying to get Psychic Virgin out into the world.
So, good idea. I did. Mmm. "Let's have a check, give it the once over, shouldn't take long". Oh, merdre! (I love that word. It's better that the F word. F**k is short and succinct - crisp and quickly done. But merdre, said 'mayrdrer' can be rolled around and can be made to linger quite satisfactorily if there is a need to use an expletive urgently). On viewing the pdf download (pdf inspiring a dearth of 'merdre's) my heart sank into my boots (remember 'my boots' blog: Why Boots?) to lay puddled up and despondent. I had spent ages and ages making sure that ALL the pages, of which there are 300 in total, were tidy looking. Housekeeping a book, to make it look pristine, takes effort and stoicism. The same as keeping a house all tidied up, or caravans in my case. You go from top to bottom, or front to back, tidying up, rearranging, making pretty so things look 'just so', everything in its place, "must have another quick look round to make sure everything looks OK", and no....just need to do a little bit more tweeking, and done!
Thus it is with housekeeping a house / caravans. But it / they only stay pristine if left alone. Get one's husband and various menagerie invading said tidiness and chaos quickly ensues. Topsy turviness rules the day. Uploading Psychic Virgin up to Lulu so pdf formatting could be done (don't know what pdf is but something to do with converting words in Word to words in pdf). Ah so, tidy book. All housekeeping done. Off it goes on upload. Down again on pdf download .... merdre! And again, merdre!
It looks the equivalent to a house being partied in.
So, back to the drawing board, or rather the PC screen, where dedicated effort was required otherwise avoidance mode would have been gone into and the book would been left, probably for months. I have found that one has to get back in the saddle with some things otherwise one is likely to stay out of that particular saddle for ages, if not forever. Hence my week of earnest endeavour.
And I was still having probs. So the resident Tech Team Guy came to my rescue, and took me into the bowels of Word, after having shown considerable amusement at my over simplisitic efforts at formatting which were contributing to the untidy pdf format conversion. Apparently. Anyway, he said so, as he whizzed about in Word, showing me a thing or two.
But my head is fogged up with Word-stuff, and I feel as if I am drowning in a sea of words. Not creative ones, but ones which have to sit tidily on the page, don't go wandering off to other pages in mid sentence, do one-line line-breaks and not one and a half, remember to do exactly the right indents, to behave when one says that they are title words and remind them they are not allowed to frolic with all the others on the page, and to remind the top- of- the- page words that they must not convert themselves into anything else other than what they were they were first born: they are devils, these particular group of words, and love redesigning themselves. And there are the little figures at the bottom of the page, who like to pop up when they are supposed to be absent, and then not appear when they are supposed to. I keep telling them that they are important, that they help the reader to navigate their way through the book, but that they have special positions and please could they understand this and stop misbehaving!It has been an upload / download week. Me head feels fogged. Tech Team Guy has saved the day, and I am going to go retrieve the chicken pie from out of the oven, which has also hopefully behaved itself and cooked the pie properly, to say thankyou for his efforts in trying to get Psychic Virgin out into the world.
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