Getting better

This Beatles song perfectly demonstrates for me what was so freaking brilliant about the partnership of Lennon and McCartney: they balanced each other. There's Paul, all cheery and upbeat with his "I've got to admit it's getting better, just a little better, all the time," and then John the grumpy realist chimes in with "It can't get no worse!" Love it.

Thanks to everyone who was concerned about my funk. It happens. My brain wiring is screwy and sometimes the serotonin and all that other gobbledygook goes awry. Sometimes, something in particular will set it off, other times not. But it passes. One morning, I'll wake up and no longer feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest.

Today, I feel tired, but I'm not bursting into tears every time I read a post or comment about the party this weekend. This is a very good sign. The negative nattering in my head has ceased, and good riddance.

Anyway... yesterday, I threw myself headlong into CreateSpace, which is the Amazon platform for self-publishing. I still haven't decided on cover art -- I'm not completely convinced that I have THE book cover from last week's shoot and I have another shoot scheduled for Friday -- but I figured I could start the formatting process.

Fortunately, I enjoy these computer challenges, figuring them out. Because things are always more complicated than you think they will be. For example, CS indicated that once I chose my book size, all I had to do for formatting the interior was to paste my document into one of their handy-dandy templates, and poof! Done! Right. I downloaded their 6 x 9 formatting template, and then copied and pasted my book file into it. What a mess. The fonts got all screwed up, and there was a horizontal line running across the bottom of each page that I could not figure out how to remove.

So I scrapped the template and searched the site for reminders on how to format in Word. Ah yes -- File + Page Setup + margins. Then change the type from flush left to justified (squared off on the left and right), add in hyphenation so I don't have those ugly gappy lines, then read through the entire document to make sure I didn't have any hyphenated widows (when a paragraph ends with just a piece of a word. I hate that.). I ended up with 301 pages; that's a fairly reasonable amount, no? For several minutes, I was freaked out because the document was over 600 pages! Then I realized that instead of a .5" margin at the bottom, I had a 5" margin. Oops.

Next, I looked up the various free online programs that will convert a Word doc into a PDF. The first one I tried didn't work. But the second one was a complete success. So now I know how to do the conversion when the file is finalized. Like I said, I love it when I figure these details out.

In the midst of this experimenting, I got an email out of the blue from someone I don't know; one of my readers, offering to proofread my book for me. He wishes to remain anonymous, but we exchanged several messages and I liked him immediately; plus, I could see that he was quite the excellent writer himself. I asked him why he would offer to do this for a perfect stranger, and he replied that he felt like I was already providing him a free service with the entertainment from my blog, and he wanted to return the favor. Besides, he was curious. :-)

So now, I have a proofreader, my second pair of eyes. I have read this damn thing over and over and OVER and yet I know there are things I've missed. So thank you, kind anonymous person. I appreciate this greatly.

It's Wednesday and my favorite TV shows are on tonight.

Oh... and did I mention that The Villain is coming over tomorrow? He is.

Stay tuned...