Wednesday 4 June 2014

Today was the day



(Photo credit: Me)

Today was the day. 
She woke up knowing that all the little bits of dangling threads had to be tied  up or neatly clipped. She would do it. Today. She knew she would.

The little adrenaline monkey was squirming in her tummy.
So first things first:
dishes, sweeping, dusting, clean the toilet, pay the bills,
water the plants on the verandah,
put the washing on the line.

She always felt better when the daily chores were finished. No guilt. No pile of greasy dishes casting her dirty looks every time she walked past. No nagging 'must-do's' to distract her from the task at hand.

And she turned her computer on. She had 1 hour. Sixty whole minutes to finish a couple of last edits, compile her manuscript from Scrivener into a .doc and work out how to create a .mobi file.


Her friends were waiting for the moment. 

They had been waiting for a month. 
Today was the day. 


The phone rang, she answered it. 
The dog whined, she let her in. 
The postman stopped, she collected the mail from the letter-box. 

Agitation cursed her solar plexus. She smiled. 'I still have 45 minutes. I'll be fine' she thought.

She downloaded KindleGen. 


The internet was slow. Grindingly, annoyingly, frustratingly, slow. 
And now she could not find the .exe file to launch the program. 
She downloaded the users guide. She read the 'geek' script. 
She tried again. 
And again. 
And again. 
Darn-it!


Only 10 minutes left. The reminder text beeped on her phone. She swore. She kicked the floor. Times up.

She bit her lip, turned off the computer, had a quick shower and left for work.


(Later that day...)

It had been a long day. She smiled through her tired eyes, ran herself a bath and added drops of lavender to help clear her foggy head. Two candles sent soft flickers dancing across the bathroom wall, she breathed in the sweet healing scent of lavender and neroli and practiced her ujayi breath.

Wrapped in a cosy toweling robe, with her feet snuggled deep in soft woollen socks,
she turned her computer on, and closed the office door.

Before checking her email, opening files or re-trying to launch KindleGen she visited the Kindle Forums. 'Use Kindle Preview, it's much more straightforward for us lesser techno-illiterates.' (Yes, that is exactly what it said.)


Preview downloaded fast, launched with ease, she was quietly pleased. 
Neither rushed nor competing with a clock, 
she opened up the preview program and 
quietly browsed for the .ePub file then 
softly pressed the enter key. 


And in this gentle evening light, 
when all the days work was done, 

her first ever .mobi file 
appeared upon
her screen.


She attached the latest version to an email for her Kindle-reader friend, paused, took two deep breaths and purposefully clicked on 'send'.

Today was the day. She had woken up knowing.

My FIRST DRAFT. Out into the abyss. Well to two trusty writerly pals who are going to read it with fresh eyes and let me know if it makes sense.

And I've even learned a little about creating kindle ready books. (Just a little ;-)). One step at a time.

Love Dawn