Today Was the Day ...

… when Word shook its head, threw up its hands, and said “There are too many misspellings for me to keep cleaning up after your profligate ignorance, I quit” (… or something of that nature).  It’s the “How in the name of G-d you live in this filthy pigsty you call a room” moment of my writing – and for those who caught that wonderful reference, congratulations but I am afraid we have no bananas today for prizes.  Bask in your pop-cultural knowledge.

Anyway …

If I went to the trouble of adding all the ancient names for my characters to its database, Word wouldn’t have to go through all this trouble with me.  **Oh, and the guilt, she is so great**.  Hee.

But at this point in the game, the manuscript consists mostly of (public-domain) images I want for reference and inspiration, timelines, notes, transcriptions and broken scaffoldings imported from Gaul, and scraps of writing here and there which may or may not ever become “actual writing” as the embryonic mess evolves its sloppy way out of the protoplasm.

It is perhaps a perverse part of my glee that the very mess is its own mess now, coming into being, even if flailingly so and yet so unformed.  As a mark of “progress” – this Word warning is decidedly indicative of how EARLY in the going the WIP still is.

But it’s GOING.  And that is the point.  Punctiliousness can wait. (And if you could start a band or write a song or release a big-budget flop with that for a title, I’d be mighty grateful.  Thankee.)

The point is, to set this pile up with the dignity of its own terms – well, I am either too lazy, or I suppose I haven’t enough respect just yet for my own creation.



It seems like a long time ago that this happened with The Ax and the Vase; and now here we are, the WIP finally reaching this milestone, having lain dormant almost since I conceived the first novel.

I feel a bit like Mr. X did when his son got a McDonald’s toy for some movie tie-in and said, “But dad, it’s not to scale” and X prompltly dissolved in a puddle of choked-up, model-making nerd dad pride, all “That’s my Special Little Guy.”  My second baby’s hit a milestone:  Word *already* can’t even deal with it anymore.

I couldn’t be more proud.