Although some staff members are furloughed, Nightmares with the Bible is still going to press.Unlike many authors, I realize that Covid-19 has had a stifling effect on publishing, starting with bottlenecking books at printing houses.Printers (along with publishers) were non-essential businesses and since you have to be physically present to run a printing press, the virus literally, well, stopped the presses.Many publishers could work remotely, so the projects began piling up before printing houses reopened.All of this is preamble to saying I am gratified that work with Nightmares is continuing.Yesterday, however, it led to a nightmare of its own.
One of the reasons I don’t fight awaking early is that it is uninterrupted writing time.Most of the rest of your time zone is asleep at three a.m., so I can write in peace.Yesterday, however, I had to divide my manuscript into chapter files and resend it to the publisher.No problem, right?Technology, however, has made this once simple task a burden.I use a Mac, and so my word processor is Pages.Not only that, but the constant systems upgrades require me to empty space on my hard drive—really, the only stuff I keep on here are my writings and those pictures I snap with my phone.Still, I had to load my external drive to access the final file sent to the publisher two months back.With Pages you can’t select material from page-to-page in the thumbnails.No, you must “physically” go to the start of the chapter, click, scroll to the end of the chapter, and shift-click to highlight and then copy it.Then you have to open a new file, select a template, and paste.Save and export as a Word document.The process took about two hours.
Now, I get up this early to write and do a little reading.Yesterday I could do neither.Instead I was cutting and pasting like a manic kindergartener, trying to get my manuscript printed before the second wave comes and shuts everything down again.Talk about your nightmares!Technology has made the industry much swifter, no doubt.When I first began publishing articles you had to send physical printouts through the postal services and await either a rejection, or acceptance, through the mail.Book manuscripts required large print jobs and keeping duplicates (at least we didn’t have to use carbon paper!).All I lost was a morning of writing before the work bell rang.Still, nightmares come in all sizes, some of them quite small.