Lexie Conyngham's Blog: writing, history and gardening.

Tuesday 26 May 2015

Who needs to track changes?

Well, once upon a time there was a radio play. Nothing ever came of it, and no actors ever spoke its lines, so one day its author, who was putting together a collection of short stories and had always liked the plot, decided to rewrite it as a short story. So she started to rejig it, using track changes. The whole layout was of course designed to be a script, not a narrative, so there was a great deal of red ink over the screen, but of course she could hide that any time she liked - or so she thought.

But the demons lurking behind the track changes button knew otherwise, and no matter how well she thought she had hidden all that red ink, they had the power to make it resurface, with all its crossings out and italics, any time they liked - particularly when she cut and pasted the document into the larger document of the short story collection. It looked all right to her, but when she published it on Amazon ... then the demons chuckled, and reinstated all the nasty bits all through that short story!

So I apologise to the readers who were quick off the mark and bought Thrawn Thoughts and Blithe Bits! and thanks to Kath who pointed out the problem. It's now down until I have completely retyped the story in an uncontaminated document (of course it would be the longest one in the collection). If anyone who has bought the book would like a free PDF or other copy of that particular story, let me know!

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