There's a lot I like about Word and we have a history (I worked on some software that used to be part of Word, I worked for a company that used to make the spell-checker for Word before Microsoft went internal, I worked on a Word file converter that was licensed to a number of software companies), but this bit where I press on a style button and it flashes to the right style and then reverts back to the wrong one, that sh*t ain't right.

I managed to work through chapter 9, with the cuts and tweaks. I'll be ready for chapter 10 now which will shorten a bit since I'm leaving out a scene, maybe merge into 9. Chapter 11 will be disposed of entirely and replaced.

Styles are the horror story of Word. Embedded things can blow up in your face, and you need to track through each style in the document to see which one is triggering the next one. "OK, remove the blue style." "Don't you mean the red style?" "No! The blue one--you idiot. "

I write in Notepad, then open the file in Word or WordPerfect (depending on the machine I'm on) to run Spellcheck.

I don't know how Word handles the document in memory, but the file format is so complex (before docx) that I can understand how documents can get frelled. Sometimes you could purge problems by doing a "Save As" since the file would be put in linear order unlike doing a "Save" where things are stored in a non-linear manner. (Which I haven't tried, maybe I should)

A good way to unfrell. Select all the contents of the document. Copy it to the clipboard. Exit word completely. Tell it yes you do indeed want to keep the contents of the clipboard available to other applications. Go back into word. Open a blank document if you have not set it to automatically do that on start. Paste the contents into that blank document. Correct formatting that does not carry over properly in the clipboard. Save under name that won't override your old document. Voila comparatively clean version of your doc. Right now I'm seeing problems in a document this may not fix, and I may have to take it over to Open Office for repair.

I got a bit more chopping, but didn't have time to get a whole lot done. I'm starting to feel discouraged, it's getting hard to find any free time to make significant progress.

Also, I've started developing another idea. Stupid time, why isn't there more of you?

Stupid time, why isn't there more of you?

Wrod

Yeah. I'm thinking of setting something on a world around a red dwarf star. Tidally locked, absolutely vicious weather, purple and black vegetation, extremely old ecosystems, people living where there is only day, only night, or always twilight. I think it could make for an interesting Science Fantasy setting.

That does sound interesting Gud. The world-building for that would be a lot of fun.

I'm feeling all verklempt. A competition I've been involved with since January is finally ending and I feel all futless not having a prompt to write to anymore.

I think Zelazny put Jack of Shadows on a world that didn't rotate, with a nightside and a day side. I don't know enough physics to know what the gravitation would be like.