Finding the _ref
That doesn’t exist!! A fierce fight goes on, each and every time! (that’s me throwing everything up in the air, jumping up and down – it’s happened again! again!)
The MS is complete, all the checks done, looks good, passes the validator – then wham! Some funny looking _ref marker comes up where it doesn’t exist in the document!
How can you fix a ghost? Because it doesn’t exist anywhere in the document at all until AFTER it becomes an epub!
I know it happens. It happened last time, and because that wasn’t that long ago (the Narrung Sagas) I remember it clearly. And the solution then – atomic reformat – means it takes a loooooonnnnnggggg time to get it all back together again! A whole day wasted (when I could be: gardening to reduce the weeds [they are a bit rampant], dusting or vacuuming the house – and sweeping the spiders out and mopping the floors and . . .).
Maybe I do prefer doing this stuff (NO – I like to write, not to tech-edit the e-versions!).
The dander is up, the ruff is lionised, and I go back in for the next round of, you guessed it, the atomic reformat!
Can I put a swear word in here?
I follow the rules (well, mostly – sometimes things get forgotten in the heat of the writing, but . . .), and I was once considered an expert in the field of editing and text stuff (word processing , e-formats, all that stuff).
And I waste days and days doing it at the end of the REAL work (the writing stuff, the story, the craft of story writing).
So what gives? Epub validation should show these things up – but it DIDN’T! So why does it happen post-validation?
Akonono – that’s I dunno! in myspeak.
What next? Yeah, I said it before. I’m trying to find a way to avoid doing the atomic reformat. It takes concentration and effort and picky little pedantic moments, otherwise – SOMETHING GETS MISSED – like that bit of italics, or that bit of . . . Each and every line of the MS has to be thoroughly read, back to front, front to back, sideways horizontal and . . .
Crap!! Crap!! That’s a double Crap!! There really is no choice. When the Ghost of documents decides to give your writing a cramp, a dose of the horrible hidden holo’s, you just have to get on with it!
No! No! No! (A triple! no less). I don’t want to do this, not again! Please, save me!
And the answer – really and truly the answer – is (if you use Word) create and save your doc as ONLY a Word 97-2003 doc. AND don’t do the hyperlinks until the VERY END. AND check each and every one – as you do it and after they’re all done. AND check the bookmarks (the hidden ones, by location) and validate each and every one of them.
I did all of that -except one – I forgot to CREATE the original doc in the 97-2003 version, so it really is ALL MY OWN FAULT!
So now I go back to work, wasting time doing something that (this is where the head wobbles, the tongue hangs out, the bum aches, the eyes roll and swirl, etc., etc., etc.,) is MY OWN FAULT for not being VERY careful in the beginning.
I’ll be back, though. Once this is finished, and out there, I’ll be back. But next time (cross fingers) I won’t forget!
