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i could cry, really
TWICE I’ve read through and commented on a friend’s WIP – The twice is because I did it once up to page 100, then when I re-opened it, 96 pages had disappeared and I was left with six pages only. I swore, re-opened the original document and did it again.
this morning, I opened the document again, ready to finish it off, and ALL my amendments show as double words e.g. where I’ve corrected alright to all right – the text now shows this alrightright. And what’s worse – ALL my “sticky notes” have gone – about 50 of them.
I could cry. Really. I don’t think i have the heart to do it all again.
Does anyone know why this is? I’m using an RTF document in Open Office – I have “record” and “show changes” ticked. I don’t HAVE Word on the laptop, I can’t afford it, so unless I sit down at the desktop and do it all again, I don’t know what to do.
I managed 1060 words on my own novel at least, and deleted a good few that i’d written before, so probably 1500 words in total, but I don’t count it like that or you’d never get anywhere. The one snag about learning about one’s character (please notice i don’t call him a protagonist, although i’m sure he thinks he is) at the same pace as the reader is that as you get to know him (just as in real life) you discover things about him half way through the book that you didn’t know at the beginning. This is fine, but as it’s first person, I’ve had to do a little retrofitting to give a sense of what I do find out. If i don’t do that, people will be going WTF? As I did…If I do it, it’s ok. If the reader does it, not so much.
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no subject
Maybe it isn't you, but the file the other person sent.
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Also, it might help to take the initial document to some format that Open Office is comfortable with, like your latest version, and recheck if a few changes stick. over 100 pages is a big document, a lot of people would break that up into chunks, even in Word, which freaks at larger stuff also.
Were you saving frequently as you went, or did all the changes and then saved it in one go?