#amediting

[elingregory]

There's something incredibly dispiriting about trying to get a story as perfect as a very imperfect newbie writer can manage, just about get it sorted, convert it from a .doc to a .rtf as required by the publisher and then discover it's a sea of red as ALL the spaces either side of the quote marks throughout the story have disappeared! Again - after one of my betas did such sterling work in picking them out before. :(

I can put it right but I'm worried stiff now. What if I send off my piece and when [if] it's opened those damned spaces have disappeared again? Honestly I expected to be putting right my bad choices of words, repetitions, crutch words, and tweaking the story arc into a more interesting shape but arsey machines and software are a bit beyond my ability.

I think I'll cheer myself up by writing something silly.

Comments

[wulfila.livejournal.com]

Good luck - formatting problems are always nasty! Write something fun and silly indeed; that sounds like a good plan.

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

I turned off the PC, had a good sulk then wrote a bit of my 'all on lined paper' fantasy story. :) That cheered me up.

[melanietushmore.livejournal.com]

rather terribly i dont even attempt to do these conversion things myself! you have my respect!

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things that should be dead easy. Then something weird happens. :(

[melanietushmore.livejournal.com]

its def not easy for me! XD

[josephine-myles.livejournal.com]

Hi Elin,

What wordprocessing programme are you using? I had all sorts of problems with rtf conversion in Open Office - there is a new open source programme based on OO (Libre Office) which should have sorted the problems.

If you're using Word there is an easy way to search and replace for these kinds of things, but if you're using Word this really shouldn't have happened anyway.

If you want to send me the doc and see if my version of Word(2007) can do a decent conversion for you, I'd be happy to have a go :)

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

I've gone through it now and made the alterations so fingers crossed it's okay, but I would be very grateful if I could send it to you just to check whether it's something to do with my version of Word. I have Word 2010 that I got through my place of employment, and it's perfectly possible, knowing the IT department, that it's not the complete package but some truncated version they got on the cheap. Should have thought of that, really, shouldn't I?

Will send the doc now. You're a star!

[britalone.livejournal.com]

That's an odd thing to happen! I've noticed tho that sometimes things like that happen for no reason. A couple of weeks ago I printed a list of the books I'd read and the spaces I'd put in between title and author disappeared. I edited the post twice, but they wouldn't show up in the post! fingers crossed your story will be ok. Good luck with it.

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

Infuriating, isn't it? But I got it sorted out. :D

[bg-thomas.livejournal.com]

Have you ever been terribly busy making a post for LJ or a comment in someone else's LJ and then suddenly something happened and you lost it all? OH! I hate that! I don't know about you, but now I almost always write that stuff in word and the copy and paste it.

I have written stories, converted them to RTF, and horrible things happened! OMG to I get what you are saying.

SO... Do what I do! I now ALWAYS write my story in the format that want right from the first word. I set the margins and font size and style and RTF it and put the stuff in the header or footer and put those page numbers and every single thing they ask.

THEN that stuff doesn't happen! (((HUG)))

And thanks for the friending. How did you find me?

[elin-gregory.livejournal.com]

LOLZ we've been chatting all afternoon, hunny! This is Sal in her writer hat!