It's Monday--what happened to Friday??

Yeah, I missed posting on Friday somehow. Got involved in various and sundry things early in my day and completely forgot.

I forget how much I like to be busy. Not too busy to breathe, but busy enough to have to prioritize.

I even ended up getting two inquiries regarding proofing services, although I'm not sure I'll actually get the jobs. I hope I do even though they'll cut into some of my conference prep time. But I could use the extra cash they'd provide. **fingers crossed**

The weekend was productive too. I did some proofing for that anthology I'm participating in. It's always an interesting endeavor to read other authors' work. You see writing ticks, if you will, that bother you and you have to ask yourself if you do that. If it bothers you in someone else's work, then eliminate it from your own.

For example, the use of italics, ellipses, and em dashes. I like these tools, but as I was reading along, I kept asking WHY? Why did the author choose to use the tool? Did it really do the job it's meant to? Most of the time the answer is no.

When I read italics, sometimes it's straightforward, and yes, that word or phrase needed to be italicized. Sometimes though, I think I would have italicized a different word. When I read my own work and I go back and forth between words, I end up not italicizing anything. The reader will often emphasize the word that makes the most sense to them while reading.

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Book blurbs are a challenge. I've come up with a bit of process that seems to work well. I finished the one for the anthology book. I like it a lot, but it's long. Considering the book itself is only 15K words and I usually struggle with writing these for longer books, I had to laugh.

I sent it off to my trusted writer peeps to see what they thought. I got back a few suggested tweaks, which was great. And then-- I got a request from the anthology coordinator for a 300 character or less blurb for Amazon. I really had to get down to the nitty gritty of what was important info to impart to a reader. That was a challenge.

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I did a bad, bad thing. I inadvertently deleted the file for the book (Snowball) I'm just about done with. Because of the software I use (Scrivener), once it's gone, it's gone. It doesn't go to the deleted-items folder. (Bad programming on their part.)

Luckily I had compiled/exported the entire thing to send to a friend, so the text itself is not lost. Thank the good Lord. That was 42K words I would not have had the heart to re-write. All I have to do is create a new Scrivener project and copy/paste the text back in. WHEW!

Hope you had good weekend.