Gardening, Scrivener, and Standard Manuscript Format

Let me take care of the past month in that order. I DID plant a tree in my back yard. The hole I dug was WAY too back, so I may have it staked for longer than the year the nursery guy recommended. Particularly if it insists on leaning. I also planted a Japanese Fireglow Maple into a normal size hole. And, after I started planting in the front yard...and got to work with the soil we started amending seven years ago...I couldn't stop. So, the front of our house is properly landscaped again. Let's see if I can keep it alive this time, shall we. (Seriously, where's Iris when I need her?)

Scrivener. My darling husband bought me this manuscript building program. It breaks the manuscript into chapters, even individual scenes, and then you click a button and it compiles it into a single file...in standard manuscript format...and plugs in your word count. Totally cool. The only think I haven't figured out (or to be completely honest, Rob hasn't figured out) is how to put the "chapter" line at the top of the page and the text on line 12. Other than that, the compilation files are beautiful. Can hardly wait to use it to build a new manuscript from scratch.

Standard Manuscript Format. Oh My God...if you are a writer and you have not seen Anne Mini's website, run, don't walk to her blog. I'll be adding her to my blog roll in a few minutes. She is incredibly verbose in all the right places about things writers should know about the publishing industry but don't. My favorite thing about her is that she explains WHY. About what, you ask? My answer to that is 'yes'.

I've gotten a few more rejections. After reading Anne Mini's blog, I'm neither surprised, offended, nor discouraged. I'm working on one particular submission right now and am not sure when I will send it out. I was planning on September but I may mail it sooner. That's right, as in US Postal Service. It'll be the first snail mail submission. If I've finally nailed the query and synopsis, hopefully it'll be the last. If not...whatever, right? It's never the end of the world.