Human Textuality

I have no idea how it happened.

Typically when an editor asks that a document be resent, it’s a simple matter of having attached the wrong file or needing to recreate the same document as a different file type.

However, this week, I somehow managed to save and send something that appeared as nothing but Wingdings and white space. And when I dug around to find a clean version, I came up empty handed. I had an “o4 File Type” and an increasingly sweaty brow.

Fortunately, I managed to recover the text by opening with Wordpad, and relatively quickly get everything into a nice, and even slightly improved, second version.

Now, this is all pretty boring stuff for most, and an admittance of my imperfection as a human and a freelance writer. But it brought two things home to me:

1. I have a gem of an editor in this client. She is patient, communicative and highly organized. As I so often am, I am deeply appreciative of the professionals with whom I work.
2. Pay attention all the time, to everything. I’m still getting used to a relatively new computer, and am guessing my mistake was something stupid and completely avoidable. For now, I blame my ignorance of Windows 8, but that can’t last long.

On those days when we feel like inadequate versions of ourselves, and want nothing more than to be 10 or 17 or 23, it’s good to remember that now is what we looked forward to all those years ago, and a lot of good is welded to these fields of learning and monotony and anxiety.

With that, I sign off for the week and take myself to Craft Night with the girls. To your weekend!