Punctuations and What Nots!

It’s the end of the month, and I’ve got to knock out another newsletter. Oh my goodness, I am having another one of my episodes of literary brain freeze. If you’ll remember, I discussed ‘blog-block’ in a previous article? Well, in case you missed it… here we go again.I’ve got to confess that writing regularly sharpens my skills and hopefully my brain (is there any hope at all?), that’s part of my intent in doing this. It’s a good practice and it’s positive for my mind as well, but I’m always fretting about what to write about?

It’s like opening your closet and wondering what you’re going to wear. Right now, writing feels like having three closets full of ‘nothing to wear’.

In my case, I have ‘nothing to write’.I’m going to stick to the theme of my logo, ‘Journal of An Emerging Indie Author’ as a jumping off point. I do kind of want to share my trials and tribulations vis-à-vis punctuation, formatting rules, and file organization.BORING!

In my heart, I’d rather talk about how our lives revolve around our three Yorkies: Zorro, MeiMei and Juju, or rather how we’re doing in the training program they’ve designed for us! 😊 Juju is gnawing my ankle as we speak.

Example: how they kicked us out of bed in the early dawn to watch them savor their midnight snack, or how they bark like alarm bells at 4am to ensure they get their early breakfast punctually. Its so much easier to talk about, how Juju the puppy growls ferociously at MeiMei, her mom and the rest of the world to guard her treat with her life; how Zorro my senior dog yips at me when he wants to be carried because his misaligned hips are hurting. Believe you me, the hips don’t lie. Or how our sweet princess MeiMei prances, dances and jumps for the anticipated goodies. And how they all shiver and tremble at the sound of the impending thunderstorm or ‘grumble-purrs’ they make when their bellies are rubbed. As any dog owner can attest, we could talk forever about how much joy they give us. The ‘doggels’ are endlessly entertaining, but ‘punctuation’ is purely a necessary evil.Still, I’d better stay on topic. When you type ‘The End’ you would think that it’s the sweetest phrase of your entire book; you’ve captured your dreams, schemes, and imagination finally manifesting them on paper; its a carbon imprint on your heart.But only half the battle is won. When you finish your book, you go through the publishing process. That’s creating your cover, formatting your book, and endless proof readings. You’ve even got to make your book stand out from the millions of books already out there, like a speck of sand from the ocean; by launching a guerrilla movement to conquer the entire solar system. You’re rescuing your book from the abyss of the deep unknown. All the technical necessities of making your book market-ready is what a traditional publisher would normally have done for you, so of course, if you can’t afford an editor, you’re the one who will edit, edit, edit until your brain is fried.I’ve got to acknowledge my editors; you know who you are! But I still do a bit of my own editing, everybody does, especially before I send it to them, and I notice that when I edit, there’s something lost in translation between the British, the American, and the Australian English. Some of it is spelling and some of its colloquial phrases, but even if you’ve spelled it or written it correctly, the software stubbornly declares it wrong. Same with punctuation and commas.One of my author colleagues in my network with the best intentions, was very generous with her advice, telling me to shift commas here and there and I was like huh? Word docx tells me to put comma here to emphasize the word. OMG? Can’t you remove your editor’s cap for a second and tell me what you think of the actual story instead of skinning it alive? Bloody hell!Example from a Facebook post:

But of course, she was right, who knew?! Who loves criticism anyway? Not me!
Although I am truly grateful for the editorial nudges.

Worst are my issues with file organization. They say to keep your original drafts so if people try to claim your story as their own, you can immediately prove it with your collected drafts. But the problem here is with the hundreds of drafts I’ve compiled and edited I lose sight of the ‘final copy’ that I’ll need uploaded to publish! Where’s the effing folder I put it in! Does anyone else ever have this problem? Ugh, woe is me!

Worst case scenario, did I publish my draft instead of my final copy? It’s an author’s nightmare! Even mistakenly sending an unedited draft as an ‘Advanced Readers Copy’ for opinions and you’re sitting there waiting and wondering why no one’s responded yet!Enough of my ranting monologues, as we speak Zorro is yipping again synchronizing with his quizzical head tilts, reminding me I’d rather be on the brighter side of life. Anyone up for a ‘Yorkie-Yoga’?