Well, Dang It

I woke up this morning to hear the antique clock chime seven times. Seven o'clock, perfect timing. I could eat breakfast and do the Wordle, and still be on time to watch CBS Sunday Morning from the beginning. Not so fast. I turned it on and it was already in progress. Somebody forgot to Spring Forward last night before bed. I am so over Daylight Savings Time. It doesn't save anything. It just takes an hour of light from one end of the day and puts it on the other end. Okay, no ranting. You all know how I feel about "fast time."

 

There must have been some open water in the birdbath this morning because this squirrel was very focused getting a drink at the very edge of the ice. It got up to 58 today so the whole thing thawed out but it looked all frozen this morning.

 

I spent a lot of time on Atticus this afternoon. First I worked on the front and back matter, you know, the dedication, books also by, acknowledgement, and about the author. Then I watched a YouTube video about how to use Atticus and learned a few things. The most valuable thing I learned was to look at each and every page. That's where I found the chapters I thought hadn't transferred over. They were there, just attached to the previous chapter. I must not have put a page break at the end of the first chapter so the next one just tagged along. Not finding that stuff would have been a disaster.

 

I also learned how to format the pages. For example, choosing the font and first chapter page style, picking the scene breaks style (with an image like asterisks or without), and making sure to choose the correct trim size. It's interesting that when Atticus first came out they touted it as a place to write and then format your books. Now most of the talk is the other way, all about formatting after your manuscript is written and sort of preformatted on Word. I still don't know what I'm going to do about book covers since only one of them has the blurb, author bio and author photo already on it. The others don't. I add those in Kindle Cover Create. Maybe I'll have to take advantage of GBB's guy after all.

 

Today's flower is Cherry Blossom. I colored them with two shades of pink but in the photo it's kind of an orange pink. Also the paper is really white. Maybe I'm growing more confident but I didn't get all bent out of shape when I saw it, I just buckled down and drew.

 

I had a very difficult time resisting diving into the Manuscript Analysis I printed off yesterday. That was the impetus for spending so much time on Atticus. I even buried the pages under another sheet so it's not right there in front of me when I'm sitting here. Although I did do a little research and found someone I can make a murderer so that storyline doesn't just dangle unresolved like it does now. I picked the guy who just about burned Seaview down in the first book of the series. I never liked him anyway. I can totally see him sliding into more serious crime. Now to figure out how Rose learns about it or figures out that it's him. No big deal, right? I'm making this up as I go along.

--Barbara