Writing on Wednesday: Fumbling, Tumbling and Finishing

Okay, I have no idea what I’m doing, but I just signed up for Tumblr. My page is here: http://susancushman.tumblr.com/.

I don’t get the purpose of the site, so if any of my readers can enlighten me, please do! I only signed up because I wanted to see something that was on there, and suddenly, it was asking me all these questions and saying to click here to download pictures and bam! It’s done. But I wrote captions to go with each picture and now I don’t see the captions—where are they?

Meanwhile I seriously don’t need another site to manage, so I should probably just ignore it, right? Because what I should be doing with my time is FINISHING MY NOVEL! My friend, River Jordan, had a great post on Monday called “The Art of Finishing.” Reading it yesterday morning inspired me and I spent several hours on the novel. I’m writing a brand new chapter flat dab in the middle of the book, where the plot was sagging. I think I like it so far, but the changes affect everything that happens in the second half of the book, which means more revisions to do. Hard work, but if I don’t finish it, it won’t be a book. And it’s worthy of finishing, so thanks for the kick in the butt, River!

Back to fumbling… in addition to my confusion over how to use Tumblr yesterday, I ran into a technical problem with Word that I experienced a few months ago. The word count and page numbers used to appear at the bottom of each page automatically (not as a footer to be printed, but in the background), and they aren’t there now. I’ve looked at “View” and “Format” until I’m blue in the face and I can’t get it back to the way it was? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, folks!

Today I’m off to physical therapy (for my neck) and to my massage therapist (she’s also doing myofascial release work on my hip flexor) so I don’t have time for a long post. But I really would love to hear back if you’ve got answers for the Word question or the Tumblr question. Thanks!