blogging at eleven p.m.

Put the baby to bed at 9 p.m. so I could catch up on my reading, writing and do some blogging.

This Writing Life

Looking back, I have to laugh when I think about how I never excelled at essay writing. During elementary and high school, my essays came back with bold red marks telling me my margins weren't aligned. I thank God for the advent of computers. At least I don't have to fold the sides of my bond paper when I want the margins to align properly. Hallelujah for work that's automatically centered/marginated/left or right justified.

I still haven't got the slightest idea how folks manage to create headers with their names and respective page numbers on them. This is something I still do manually (because I am so lowtech and don't know where under help topics I can find this information). This also probably explains the notes I received from Ideomancer, way back when I was still submitting like crazy, telling me that I had formatting issues. I never understood what they meant, since my computer always told me my ms was properly configurated. So if someone can tell me how that almost invisible header thing works, I will be eternally grateful as I have decided I should really start thinking of sending out work again.

I sometimes wonder what it is with us writers and publication. I mean, here we write to the best of our ability, stretching our minds to the limit and then *boom*..."sorry this isn't for us" arrives. We must be masochists of a very special kind.

But when we get telephone calls from editors who have paid long distance fees in order to tell us that our work is being published and we are getting creditted as co-author of a book that's going to be sold in local bookstores where people who were our classmates in elementary, highschool and college will see it, well...I suppose that nullifies all the red marks telling me my margins are not properly aligned.

I hope my former english writing teacher gets to see that book. I really do.