2nd Edition Interrupted

In this, only the second installment of my Saga of the Second Editions, I shall demonstrate the “life happens” principle. As the owner of the publishing company, I have a few ongoing tasks, one of which is filling book orders from my two web sites (see the upper right corner of this web page). Web orders must be filled ASAP. Normally this simply involves invoicing, packing and shipping, and after a quick trip to the Post Office, I can get back to whatever I was working on before the order came through.

No biggie, right? And 95% of the time, it isn’t. But I got an order Tuesday for a copy of my booklet 58 Dating Tips for the Newly Single. The three “Newly Single” booklets had been temporarily discontinued, because I haven’t had time to install the new software for setting up, paginating and printing the 5 ½ x 8 ½” booklets. Now I have a credit card order for one, which means it’s already been charged to the customer’s credit card. So one way or another, I’ve got to ship it.

I bought the updated software from Blue Squirrel over a year ago, so I had to either install and customize that or reformat the pages to 8 ½ x 11” size and produce it as a plastic comb-bound version of the booklet. (The profit margin is sweet when you print and bind the booklet yourself.) Since I’ve learned far more about layouts than software, it became a 24-page layout project.

Being more adept at layout revisions doesn’t mean I’m faster at it. It can be a slow process. I'll will be happy with the final product. However, that means no work gets done in the meantime on the 2nd editions.

(Although yesterday I snuck in a few hours to begin expanding the outline for one of the new chapters in dMany Faces of Journaling, and last night I did more copyediting of the original book. But the entire afternoon was spent on the booklet.)

That’s life for an author.

If you are one, you know the feeling, and the sooner we make friends with interruptions, the less frustrated we feel. And really, some non-writing times are important, like meeting an author friend with extraordinarily writing skills and an equally amazing mind. We are well nourished by such time-outs, and these rare friends help us grown.

Still, I’ll probably spend most of today, too, on the formatting project. All that work for a $3.95. Ah, but the next time an order comes in, it’ll be all ready to print and ship!

That is all to say, regardless of how exciting your current writing project, life still interrupts a lot.

Now back to playing with Word doc margins ~

Linda

*Next (really): Those New Chapter Topics