The Home Stretch

All this new enthusiasm, motivation and inspiration had me feeling like I was about to get somewhere, but it's definitely not a sprint to the finish.

Website refinement has not proceeded smoothly, although I get text messages and e-mails from all over who want to do the website for me.  Where do these people come from?

I have an editor. My 45 chapters are in individual Word files. She wants one contiguous file. No problem. Copy and paste. And while I'm at it, check the document format and line spacing. Also, convert any straight quotation marks to curly ones, and replace the two spaces after a period with one space. Then copy the file and paste to the end of the unified file. Detailed and tedious. Not usually my thing.

So now I have the unified file and the 45 individual files. I know there will be further changes, even before the edit. It seems that I need to make the changes in both places, change the chapter file then copy and replace that section of the unified file, and try not to screw either up.

But it's just work, right? The creation exists and has been improved tremendously. So now I get the edit, make the changes and put the manuscript into an e-book. Wrong! The first edit is an evaluation of the full manuscript. Then there is a more detailed and thorough edit. My editor said after the manuscript evaluation, she can give me an idea of how many rounds of editing it will take. ROUNDS?

I got a compliment from my wife.  She said it would be a good book if I ever finished.  That's positive, right?  Oh, well, I'm nearer the end than I've ever been, and the continued improvements are significant.

I have continued searching for the copyright information for the painting I want to use on the cover.  The artist died.  Today I found a website made in his memory by a niece.  I left a comment requesting the copyright info, and also asked in a tweet.  The artist is Peter Lloyd and his niece is Nicole Lloyd-Sullivan.