Two Days Page Numbering – Arrgh!

For the last week to ten days I’ve been focused on getting The Mouse and the Microlight set up for self-publishing in paperback with Createspace. I thought I was doing really well, and had got as far as the cover design which actually wasn’t that difficult. I decided to use the same design as I used for the e-book. The main difference with a paperback is that you also have to create the back cover and the spine – and do it all in one go on a template. I was really pleased at how well it worked and sat back in my chair feeling a sense of relief that I was now nearly at the end of the journey.

There was just one more thing to do, put the page numbers in the manuscript. Surely this wouldn’t take a minute? It took two days and my hubby nearly divorced me! To start with I needed to number the pages as in a book, so they need to be alternating for left and right pages. That took a day to figure out! I’ve only ever made minimal use of a word processor so new things take far longer than expected, and sometimes I don’t even understand the terminology. It really was a hair tearing out process. But I did it! Great! Ah … but hang on, I’ve suddenly realised that I don’t want page numbers on the introductory pages, I want numbers to start at chapter one. Back to the drawing board. It took another whole day and most of the evening going around in ever decreasing circles before, having lost even more hair, I managed  it. Talk about a sigh of relief.

I have learned something through all this – patience! I like things to work, and work now, and getting annoyed and and frustrated doesn’t help at all. It was a case of trying things over and over again between constant searches on LibreOffice sites on Google. Around and around and around I went like someone lost in a maze, often ending up right back where I started, utterly brain-fogged and despondent. But I did get there, and the book is finally prepared and ready to upload to Createspace.  I may do it today!

In the meantime I decided I’d like my own logo to go on all my books, and after much doodling I ended up with this …

I’ve always doodled mice, and two of my books are about Mouse Formidable, plus there’s a mouse who plays an important part in The Sleighriders. So a mouse it had to be.