Editing…

Wednesday 1st

A month ago Macmillan sent me the edited typescript of The Departure to go through. Precisely at that time the Greek tanker drivers went on strike to protest about their closed shop itself being closed down. The result of this was a petrol shortage and that typescript ending up in some DHL store room at this end. DHL, in its wisdom, then send it back to Britain, claiming that my address here didn’t exist, which is odd considering how they’ve brought stuff here before and how everything that comes via the post also arrives here. Macmillan then used airmail and at last this well-travelled typescript has arrived. So, no more work on Zero Point, no more word counts until I get this turned around.

Thursday 2nd

Okay, the laptop nearly took a short flight off the front terrace. After receiving the typescript the day before yesterday, we went down for our ‘Internet day’. During our short time on the Internet my laptop acquired an update or two. Fair enough. Yesterday I sat down to get on with some editing, but my laptop wanted to apply these updates. I kept putting it off and at one point applied the maximum delay of four hours. At 2 o’clock after I had worked through the editing for six hours, it suddenly decided to apply the updates without asking my permission. Word blinked off, everything blinked off, the updates were applied and the laptop then turned itself off then back on again. Now despite the autosave loading bar operating every ten minutes while I was working, everything I’d done in the previous six hours was gone. I lost the fucking lot. Nothing in autorecovery, nothing to be found anywhere. Somehow, the delayed updates prevented autosave/autorecovery from working. If a Microsoft salesman had been to hand he would have received a laptop suppository. I was fucking livid!

Eleven hours of editing today to try and catch up a bit. This got me to page 93 of 446, and now my neck is as stiff as granite.

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