Just had a really difficult morning trying to get a Word file to do what I wanted it to do, and uploaded to my new publisher on the web. Really, I was hitting my head against a wall. It really represents my love/hate relationship with computers in general.
Usually, I sit here thinking how great writers have it in the modern day, with computers and portability and the ability to change whole documents. I think of those folks who needed a constant supply of trimmed quills, pots of dripping ink, and limited amounts of paper. Or even the typewriter age, when you still have to watch for mistakes or ruin a whole page? Not to mention all that stuff had to be copied the same way it was written in the first place.
But, alas, then I run into computer issues that may seem trivial, but they corrupt a whole file. One section gets formatted one way, and it skips the other section, or a footer with a page number flies off to the right where there is “no” page, and I can’t see the little culprit hanging out there. That sucker cost me over an hour trying to figure out why all my text wasn’t fitting even though it seemed like it was. The old adage, “When all logical things have been ruled out, whatever remains, however improbable, is true.” I expanded my digital paper size to larger-than-realistic proportions, and there I finally caught that suspect hanging way outside the borders in the digital abyss.
I hate computers. But, I guess writers across history all have their hang-ups and challenges. I guess I’ll stick with mine rather than go back to the quill and parchment.