Every Writer's Pain
When I started writing Project Lancet, I thought it'd take a year or so, maybe two, to hammer out a manuscript and start submissions. Boy was I was wrong - double that and we're closer to the mark.
However, while reorganizing the dozens upon dozens of backups I've made over the years, I started thinking about how far the story has progressed from initial concept to readable draft. So I did a thought experiment. Or rather a practical one. I took the first chapter as it existed in 2015 (back when I was working through my first revision) and compared it to what it looks like now. The results were not surprising - pages awash in red and blue (thanks to MS Word for its built in comparison tool).
So I thought I would share the combined version, not necessarily for anyone to actually read through line by line, but to illustrate just how much changed. So, if you're interested to see how much nitpicking goes into a single chapter, just click on the link.
Project Lancet: Chapter 1.pdf
Project Lancet: Chapter 1.doc (Not sure why Google Docs goes full purple, but there it is...)
Ps. You'll notice a lot of Formatting: United States bubbles. This is one of the more annoying aspects of long manuscripts in MS Word. I had to repeatedly change the formatting, otherwise it would revert to Canadian English. Even selecting the whole document had mixed results. Anyone know how to fix that?
However, while reorganizing the dozens upon dozens of backups I've made over the years, I started thinking about how far the story has progressed from initial concept to readable draft. So I did a thought experiment. Or rather a practical one. I took the first chapter as it existed in 2015 (back when I was working through my first revision) and compared it to what it looks like now. The results were not surprising - pages awash in red and blue (thanks to MS Word for its built in comparison tool).
So I thought I would share the combined version, not necessarily for anyone to actually read through line by line, but to illustrate just how much changed. So, if you're interested to see how much nitpicking goes into a single chapter, just click on the link.
Project Lancet: Chapter 1.pdf
Project Lancet: Chapter 1.doc (Not sure why Google Docs goes full purple, but there it is...)
Ps. You'll notice a lot of Formatting: United States bubbles. This is one of the more annoying aspects of long manuscripts in MS Word. I had to repeatedly change the formatting, otherwise it would revert to Canadian English. Even selecting the whole document had mixed results. Anyone know how to fix that?
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