Seven-ish years ago, I worked for my church helping proofread the latest edition of our scriptures for publication. It was the first time all the text was being put into the XML programming language, and a lot of things can go wrong when you try to write the various transformation programs to get the text to display correctly for print vs. iPad vs. internet vs. Android, etc. So our team of ten to twelve proofers had the important job of making sure that for each format, none of the text disappeared, the footnote markers showed up correctly, and a million other things all turned out right.
One day, our team leader and only male teammate, "B," called all of us together to discuss a troublesome page in the print scriptures. Our typesetter had discovered that when he corrected one issue on the page, he'd cause others. E.g., if he tried to fix the page's hyphenation problems, either he'd have to make the word/letter spacing super loose (which looks terrible) or he'd create stacks of the same word at the ends or beginnings of consecutive lines (which can cause mixups for readers). If he tried to fix the word stacks, he'd still end up with the loose lines and/or the hyphenation problems. There was no way to fix all three issues, so we knew we'd end up stuck with at least one and possibly two of them.
Naturally, this frustrated our entire team. To make matters worse, we didn't agree on what was most important to fix, so the meeting started to get heated. Finally, "B" called for a vote on what to do. We were all sitting on chairs in a circle, and our teammate "A" was (coincidentally) next to "B." As he was saying, "All opposed?" she tried to slide her chair into a better position. Unfortunately, she slipped and accidentally kicked "B" right in the foot. She turned red, and the rest of us lost it. 🤣 It was exactly what we needed to break the tension, but poor "A."
Thankfully, "B" wasn't hurt and had a sense of humor. He said something like, "Well, I've heard of voting with your feet. Is that how you do it?"
I don't remember how we resolved the issues with that page. But somehow we figured it out.
So what does this goofy experience have to do with writing? I've taken a few lessons from it:
Sometimes one change creates problems in other parts of your book, just like fixing one issue on the page caused others. Try making at least a rough outline of your plot/argument and updating it as you write. Having this overview handy can help you see how a change you're considering might affect the rest of your piece.
Take time for laughter. You can't think clearly when you're frustrated.
There are times when you can't fit everything you want into your book and still have it work. It can be tough to let go of characters, plots, favorite passages, arguments, or whatever. This is where having an editor can really help.
If you're at #3 right now, I'd love to help. Click here to schedule a call with me so we can get your book moving!
Write on,
Candice
(Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash)
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