How Soon We Forget

Now, I'm in the throes of finishing a book. Generally, since I'm electronically published, I just zap the finished MS to my publisher and go on to my next book. This time, I want someone with more specialized knowledge than mine to check over the manuscript, tell me what is wrong and comment in general. It meant -- horrors! -- turning on the printer, loading it up with paper, and for economy's sake, printing on both sides of the paper.

I'd forgotten how to do it! I enlisted Son's help. We divided the chore into three segments and started off, more or less confident. Then -- of course -- we made an error in judgement and had to go back and figure out -- well, to err is human, as they say. But we did get it done -- and in less time than we thought it would take.

Three pages from the end -- the computer said we were running out of ink. Ah, well!

My first printer was a dot-matrix monster that was slow, almost unreadable -- and weighed a ton. It would take two days to print out a MS -- and then I had to tear the pages apart and be sure they were in order. Back before that, I had a Smith-Corona Office Selectric. Both heavy and noisey. When I finished my first book, it took a month to produce a presentable manuscript to submit to a publisher.

I much prefer sending the MS to the editor as an attachment to an email -- which reminds me -- I have to get back to work!