I realized about ten minutes ago that I forgot to post to this blog. I have one blog, how the heck could I forget about it? Thus, the GAK!
Okay, I've been a little busy this week, not writing my new story, but getting LC ready for the ABNA contest. I figured that as long as I was messing with it, I'd snail mail about 8 agents I haven't foisted this story on yet.
Of course, in the final hour, I decided to change the heroine's name. No one liked the acronym Puck, and over time, I got over myself and decided to change it. I changed it to Devin.
Yeah, yeah, it could still be a boy's name, but it is also Gaelic for defender. I liked it.
Now I had to do a 'find and replace' in my manuscript, synopsis and pitch. Find and replace is EVIL, pure and simple. Oh, I've had dealings with F&R and I've lost every single, freaking battle.
Oh, no, it isn't as simple as find Puck, and replace it with Devin, because it would place Devin in the middle of any word that has Puck in it--any word. So you put a space before and after and approve each and every change--oh, and don't forget to do the space thingy with the replacement word, because then you get a bunch of ,Devin . Then you have to leave out the space in front and not behind for the times when the name begins in a sentence, and go through it all again.
This isn't too bad with the synopsis and pitch, but when you have 350 pages, it becomes time consuming. After all this, you must check it once more to see if you missed anything.
So I finally subbed my entry to the ABNA and realized that I'd missed the beginning word change in the manuscript that I had downloaded.
CRAP!
Luckily, the contest allows you to fix things until the deadline. So I fixed and now I'll forget about it because I really, really doubt that I'll make the next round, but it is good practice.
How do you feel about entering contests? Do you worry about them or just forget about it and move on?
Write on!
Margaret, good luck with the contest!
ReplyDeleteYes, I worry about them. I want everything to be just right. It takes up way too much of my time.
F&R - is my friend.
ReplyDeleteYa know, if you do F&R, click MORE, mark match case AND find whole words only, you won't find DEVLIN in the middle of words. This comes from personal experience where my hero is NATE. I had NED in some place, so F&R to the rescue, except I needed up with NATE in the middle of everything! ACK!
Great suggestion, Arkansas Girl. I'm gonna use it!
ReplyDeleteSusan