I’m Sorry (but not really…)

I haven’t posted anything new lately.  I haven’t been writing.  For that, I am sorry…but not really.

I’m not really sorry because I’ve been editing and editing and editing and editing my novel, Elmer Left, so that it is shiny and perfect when it goes to print.  I’ve been editing for hours on end, combing through the tiny details, re-reading chapters for the hundredth time, looking up grammar rules, figuring out the difference between toward and towards (By the way, there is none.  Towards is more commonly used in Britain and towards in the U.S.  For some reason, I’ve always used towards.).

I’ve gotten very good at executing complex “search and replace” rules.  For instance, *^t*^t* ^p replacing *^t*^t*^p^p.  That’s right.  Boom!  I just changed the spacing of all my *   *   *  separators in the book.  Sorry for my brief nerd-out….but not really.

I’ve also been designing the interior–font size, font style, chapter headings, margins.  Changing one thing tends to change everything else.

And the cover–front, spine, back.  I  never thought about book spines until this project.  There are particular little buggers.  Whenever I edited something in my book (hacked out a few pages, changed the font, etc), the spine would need to be revised.  The width of the spine is, of course, determined by your number of pages and type of pages (white vs. cream, etc.).  So, it hinges entirely on the content of the book.  When that content is constantly changing, it’s hard to pin down the spine.

But eventually we got there.  The cover was made–spine and all.  It turned out pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself:

Between all the editing work I’ve been doing, working job #1, working job #2, helping a friend from Portland move to Mpls, cleaning, dog-walking, and having food poisoning for 2 days, I’ve been pretty damn busy.  So, I’m sorry for not writing lately….but not really.