I woke up this morning to the mellow tones of Otto barfing on my bedroom floor. That’s one of those sounds that wakes you completely up. It was 4:00 AM. He’s fine, sometimes he gets snotty and chokes. I’ve woken up coughing more than once myself.
Since I was up, I had some quiet time and spent it reading. I don’t often get to read these days, and relished the opportunity. As a young man I could devour a book per day. These days it’s more like a book per month.
I’m currently writing two stories at once, and intended to devote some time to both of them. I had a pile of critiques to address on one of them, and did that this morning. If I don’t do anything else, at least I got that done.
I looked to the other one and discovered a problem. This is me, being anal, but it completely stifled me. I’ve been working on it using two different computers, one Apple and one PC. (We get a lot of hour long lunches during January and February due to the holiday weeks.)
Specifically, I’m using Microsoft Word and Apple Pages for iPad. My problem involves straight quotes vs curly quotes. Shouldn’t be a problem, right? Some whizbang formatting trick and all should be well. (Apostrophes are the same way.)
I tried the help link in Pages to no avail. I Googled what to do, seemed like some reasonable suggestions, except they didn’t work. I found instructions to try on a Mac. Okay, I have a Mac. I opened my manuscript and went through the step by step instructions. Very easy to follow… except it didn’t work.
I fiddled around myself, and if I delete my paragraph marks, the entire super-paragraph takes on the format I want. Then I can hit return again, make the quotes the way I want them before moving to the next paragraph.
This is possible, but I’m not going to do it just yet. I’m going to see if I can fix it using Word. At this point I gave up completely.
This is my short weekend, and I have other things that need tending. I got a haircut, paid the bills, and we have some errands in town. We’ll probably go out to dinner while we’re out.
Tomorrow is the day I call my parents, and I’m not going to address it then either.
I have some decent time coming up, and I’ll take up the keyboard then.
I hope you are having a better weekend than I am. Boise is covered in snow and ice, but it’s pretty shallow. More freezing than anything else. Maybe some beef and beer will improve my outlook tonight.
That’s a tough problem. Any way to do a find/replace? I’ve used that for issues that span a document. Good to hear Otto is okay after that kind of wake up.
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I’m going to try that with Windows. Right now it’s a Scotch Ale and a big helping of I don’t care anymore.
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Sounds yummy.
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Oh, bummer. I hope you get your problem solved. Glad Otto is okay.
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Problems for a different day. I’ll figure something out… or my formatter will.
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Beef and beer fixes everything. Glad Otto is okay.
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Thanks, John. Lovely Scotch Ale on tap tonight.
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Sounds delicious. I love Ales.
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Okay, formatting is like, the WORST thing ever about word processing software. Especially when Adobe is converted to Word. There are times I can’t even get the caption done before deciding Screw it! It’ll be faster to type it all over again! My way. With proper margins and indents and orphan control. Gah, what a time suck. I hope you get it sorted.
Moo is our in-house snot stomach and she’s every bit as loud as a bulldog. After that, though, she’ll take her sniffer, which as we know, bulldogs not so much!
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It seems to be that time of year. I wake up from sinus drainage too. I prefer sinus problems to formatting issues myself.
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Word.
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Technology is great. Until it fails us. I swear Microsoft Word sometimes does things that make me want to take a baseball bat to my computer. Anyhow… glad Otto is okay. One of our cats has a habit of gorging himself too fast and he often picks carpeted floors to throw up on.
Hope you’re able to fix the problem with the PC.
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I’ll figure something out. This weekend is a wash though.
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All the way across the sea, I had one of those weekends too.
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Sometimes it’s best to declare defeat and move on. I’ll take it up again next weekend.
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Reblogged this on anita dawes and jaye marie.
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Must be the time of year for problems. I’m editing, and found a terrible error last week. Yesterday, I found another and I hope its the last!
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It’s just part of what we do. Other projects have their own issues too. Thanks for the reblog.
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I know. It wouldn’t do if we got it right first time, now would it?
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Doesn’t seem like it.
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Glitches like that derail me, too. I can’t move on until I fix them. I hope you aren’t stymied for long.
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I won’t be. It’s possible I needed to be lazy for a couple of days.
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Another crazy weekend for you, Craig. I got limited writing done this weekend too. I was my wedding anniversary yesterday so I had to devote some time to hubby and his family.
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Happy anniversary. Hope you had a lovely time.
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Once upon a time, there was a word processing program called Word Perfect, that the world fell in love with long before Microsoft. I used WP to do all of my writing, then eventually was dragged kicking and screaming to MS Word. Problem was, these two programs didn’t like each other. So when I tried to dump my manuscripts into Word all of my quotes got wonky. I spent days trying to figure out a cure, consulted with numerous people online—I honestly can’t remember the outcome. I just remember it being a nightmare.
For the last year, I worked on a Mac and a Windows PC but paid to have Word on both. Now I’m straight Mac, but I still use Word. I hope you find a solution. I can so relate to your nightmare, especially because my problem all came down to those wretched quotation marks too!
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I loved Word Perfect. I have a labor intensive fix, but I’m going to try a couple of things before I take that path.
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Hoping it’s not labor intensive for you.
The best thing about Word Perfect that Word never hit upon was “reveal codes.” Even right now, that would probably make all the difference for you!
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Things change, but Word Perfect was great.
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I hate losing time to techie things I don’t understand. Good luck, Craig! And enjoy your night out.
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We had a great time, thanks. I’m not sweating the glitch. My simple fix might work, if not there is the labor intensive one. Par for the course as an author. It might be the end of using my lunch breaks for writing though.
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Yeah, the snow we usually get at Christmas has come to Spokane a couple of months late. We have about 6″ on the ground but it was super fluffy and the wind blew it away yesterday. But today more is coming down. I have 5 short stories to read for a student competition. That’s going to be my afternoon.
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That actually sounds like a fun afternoon.
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I have no idea how to fix your problem, but I’m hoping you’ll share when you figure it out. It’s cold in Texas, but nearly as cold as it is in Idaho. 🙂 I’m sure the two B’s will make things better.
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Thanks, Jan.
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Can’t help you with the formatting, but I’ve been woken by a cat hacking up a hairball more than once.
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I have everything the same now. It isn’t exactly as I want it, but it’s consistent. I love my pets, but some mornings they can test me.
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Ooh, formatting issues are so frustrating. Hope you got your quotes all straightened out.
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I did, to a degree. I have them all the same, just not how I like them.
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