Tuesday, November 23, 2010

So Much for That

A week ago Saturday I started typing a book into the computer and then again on Sunday. All together about 4 hours or so. I got 8 pages of the book done. Unacceptable. I wish I could pay someone else to do it, but I can’t afford it (a dollar a page) and it seems to me that defeats the purpose. I decided to go the scanner route and looked up some services. They charge 150 to 175 a book. Unacceptable. Then I thought I’d look into using my own scanner on my printer which I’d never used. Hours and hours and couldn’t make it work properly. Could hardly make it work at all.
More hours passed looking for a stand alone scanner online. Nothing seemed to take the scan anywhere but into Adobe Acrobat and you couldn’t manipulate the text. Pointless.
I finally realized that the scanner was meant to work with WindowsXP and I have Vista. Dead end. But wait...I have a laptop that runs on XP. I installed the printer software and there it was. I could scan easily. Then I did something (I’ll never know what) that screwed up the whole system on my laptop. You probably know what that means. I had to reformat and reinstall XP. Also had to reinstall the printer software and Word. Hours went by. Finally got a few pages done. There was lots to proof.
The next day (a week of trying and failing had gone by) I woke up and I thought "What am I doing? This is retirement? It’s a frigging drag to do this."
I wrote the books, they were published and some people read them and that’s it. Finished. To do this is taking over my life and I’m only on page 7 of the first book. No, this is not the way I want to spend my time. As we all know, life is short. I want to spend it with my partner and my dog and friends, and I want to read books and see movies. In other words, I want to have a life again.
Even a five year old child can do this, but getting ebooks online is not for me.