It’s February! When did that happen?

Actually, I didn’t literally “lift them.” They moved themselves away from the computer monitor after a long formatting stint.

I’ve heard some writing gurus advise authors to “avoid wandering body parts.” Keep arms, legs, eyes, etc, in the body at all times. Don’t say, “He threw a hand up in the air,” or “She cast her eyes toward the open door where her co-worker stood,” or “His nose ran toward the scent of her perfume.”

But I did take a break and check the calendar. I’ve spent a month, off and on, preparing a book for publication. The originator is calling it Hari & Rudi in the Land of Fruit  and it’s an allegory along the lines of Pilgrim’s Progress, but involving two young teens. This story is actually the setting down of a dream the author had as a young lad in England back in the early 1970s.

I’ve been snailing along on this project for about eight weeks, but today I’ve finished formatting the manuscript, except for inserting the drawings. As soon as I have those, onto Amazon it goes. Stay tuned… And if you’re willing to write an unbiased review for Amazon, let me know. 🙂

The Word of the Day prompt this morning is LEARN. Very fitting. I have learned — and relearned — a number of things in the past month.
Like…
…how much time it takes to polish a manuscript. (Hint: you finally just give up.)
…once more, how to use WordPerfect to format the manuscript
…how much back-and-forth communication there must be between a writer and an editor.
…what differences exist between British English and ours on this side of the pond.

We’ve learned that pencil drawings do not work. They can’t be rendered clear enough to show up in an insertable file. However, when I said I needed pen drawings, the originator of the tale e-mailed back, “What do you mean by pen?”
(You British readers can tell us what a pen is called over there. In some books I’ve seen it called a byro. Pronounced like eye? Or like ear?)

My son-in-law did an excellent job with the cover graphics. I should write oodles more books to make use of his talents. However, the time involved in producing said books is rather off-putting. My original plan for January was to put my Sewing room to rights and finish projects there. 😉

I’ve learned how high the laundry can pile up in my clothes hamper and we still don’t run out of something to wear, and how much pasta you can eat before your noodle is fried. This all makes me think of Nano-Wrimo days. 😉

I’ve learned how one-track I can be. And maybe it’s necessary, because it would be so easy to push something like this off. I’ve taken time to read a few books for pleasure and a few books with British teen main characters for research, but most every day I’ve worked some on this project.

Thank to all of you who’ve been faithfully following my blog during the interim. I hope I can soon get some other things written. And I trust you’re keeping warm and/or enjoying the ups and downs of the season.