Yay!

For those of you that don't know me very well, I am a technical dunce. Seriously, when it comes to anything done on a computer, I am a complete ninny. I usually get there in the end, but the end can sometimes feel like it takes forever.

I have tried, over the last year or so, to format the mess that is the first draft of Cardiffella. As you can imagine, the speed that it was written meant that spelling errors, typos, and general formatting went right out of the window. Plus the fact that I only had basic Wordpad to use to begin with meant that my first draft was a complete dog's dinner (as we say here in Cardiff). Anyway, up until yesterday I was completely overwhelmed by the huge task that awaited me. Aside from adding the extra ten thousand words that I need before I can submit to a publisher, I needed to make my draft readable.

Now, I don't know what happened today, but I awoke with a renewed determination to not let Word beat into submission. I have spent the last few hours going through my manuscript with the aim of correcting all of the spelling and typos - at least, those that Word helpfully highlighted to me at any rate - and, through a great many trials and errors, doing all those pesky formatting things that have to be done in order for me to have a professional looking manuscript.

I now have a manuscript with real chapters (instead of seven chapters of ordinary length, and half of the book falling under the heading of 'Chapter Eight' *shifty*), page numbers, author name and book title on every page, and the text itself in double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman.

*faints*

I'm inexplicably chuffed to beans with myself! All of the tedious stuff that has frustrated me for so long has been done! Now all I have to do is edit in those last ten thousand words.

Guess I'd better crack on with the writing then, eh?