Trick or Treat? Definitely a
TGIF
My favorite quote of today was from my 7-year-old daughter, as she put a 1.5-pound block of chocolate into my shopping basket at Central Market:
“But mom, dark chocolate helps prevent cancer! We have to buy it!”
I admire the sentiment, but I’ve got to wonder… where do these little tidbits come from?
We compromised on a Dairy Milk bar (one of the big ones), of which I consumed about 2/3.
It’s been a long, chauffeur-filled, edit-filled day. I finally tackled the very last (for now) edits on Howling at the Moon; i.e. making sure everything I did worked, fixing the fact that one of my characters was surprised by the same information two chapters in a row, adding another steamy 700 words, and fixing it so that the chapters are of relatively equal length. Sort of. Well, closer than they were, anyway.
Which is time consuming, especially when you’re using the “find” feature and have to retype “chapter” every time you’re looking for the next chapter heading. (I had replaced “Camry” with “BMW” earlier in the day, and every time I pulled up the find and replace tool, it still said “Camry,” so I had to retype “chapter” every single time. No idea why, but with 40-plus chapters, it got a bit annoying. Note to self: complain to Microsoft.)
So I’m sending it off on Monday, and I’m sure I will have more edits once Charlotte (my editor) goes through it, but at least I can focus on the second book again. Which will be lovely, and far preferable to changing previous work, which always results in continuity problems. And chapter length issues.
My dear friend Lindsey was supposed to be coming in tonight from New York, but I found out her flight is canceled, so I’m a bit disappointed. I was looking forward to her company at my signing tomorrow; I haven’t seen her for like six years. (I even washed the sheets for her!)
And for some reason, I am convinced that my ceiling will fall in while the reporter from the Statesman is at my house. Or that my coffee cake will implode. Or that any number of catastrophic events will occur.
At any rate, somebody is yelling in the hall, so I’m off. How was YOUR day?
Hi Karen, It’s very exciting about the interviews you have set up. When the Statesman one comes out, please make sure you blog away so I’ll know…I mean I do read the paper, but every once in a while I just throw it in the recycling. Since you mentioned computers, I have a question. If you could buy any brand of laptop which one would it be? My funds are limited, although my first day of my first professional garage sale, we made $2015 thank you very much. I only get half, so don’t get too excited for me. I took a 45 minute bubble bath to get the grime off (with your book for company) and now I’m off to bed.
OK, so first of all, your daughter is right: dark chocolate is heart-healthy (in small doses). Milk chocolate is not.
Second, I can help you with the MS Word problem. (As with all MS products, it sucks. Part of the reason I use a Mac.) The easiest way to handle chapters is to make them sections. When you want to change chapters as you’re writing, instead of just starting a new page, click “insert”, then “section break; new page”. Your chapters will be sections (that is, section one = chapter 1). When you do the find/replace, click the little arrow down next to the “replace all” button and be sure the drop-down menu says “current document all”. That *should* do the trick.
By the by, that little tutorial is the only thing I’ve written today. Oh, and a “hello” comment over on the BookEnds blog.
Goodmorning,
Karen I feel your pain about the “find” feature. I’ve been going through my ms. and changing my sleuth’s name. Yep. That’s right. I didn’t realize how often I used it. Also, I couldn’t help but laugh when you realized that one of your characters was surprised by the same piece of info for 2 chapters in a row. My experience? The developer (a suspect) gets the okay to build a development of expensive houses, then a few chapters later we learned that the body was killed (and then moved) in the model house (wow, that’s even faster than one of the modular homes – but it gets better) my sleuth goes to the model home and drives around the development – yes that’s right it’s the fastest development built in the state of CT. A matter of days. LOL. It took me a whole draft to figure that one out. Duh!
Those are my tales from the editing front. I’m going to go make those pancakes now.
Have a great day,
Debra
Debra –
I did something similar in the last book I worked on…had a murder victim named “Tom”…then I looked through and realized I had two more “Tom”s, though relatively minor ones, in the book. So I couldn’t use “change all” because I wasn’t sure which Tom I’d be changing! UGGGG.
Karen –
Given your post office rant a few days back, I just HAD to send you this link from the Houston Chronicle: Post Office Clocks
Melissa,
I will blog, I promise.
Congrats on the profitable sale; that’s amazing! And I hope Dead and Berried helped you relax; and that you’re not too sore today!
Re: laptops, I have a Mac, but that’s only b/c my IT manager is an Apple man. I am quite fond of my iBook, even though my hard drive has been a bit dicey.
If it were just up to me, though, I’d probably by the cheapest one. (This one was a floor model, and was 30 percent off.)
Does that help? 🙂
K
Laura,
I know she’s right about the dark chocolate, alas… that’s why instead of eating straight milk chocolate dove promises, I make myself milk/dark chocolate sandwiches (a dark and a milk squished together). Twice the calories, but heck, if they fight cancer, it’s worth it right?:)
But I still like milk chocolate better.
And thank you, dear MS goddess, for the tips. Now I know who to ask!
We all need a day off from time to time. I’m taking one today. And probably tomorrow. Recharge the batteries, so to speak.
P.S. thanks for the BookEnds comment (waving back). 🙂
Debra,
These fictional worlds do get away from us, don’t they? 😉 Glad to know it’s not just me. My husband is an architect, though; if you could share your secret for rapid building, I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear it.
And Laura, I forgot to tell you; in MURDER, Bernard used to be Marc; I did a global search and replace, and ended up with lots of people ‘bernardhing’ around rather than marching… whoops!
Laura — I suspect the clock removal has less to do with the ‘standard appearance’ than with the desire to keep their customers from… well, ‘going postal.’
If you know what I mean. 🙂