I'm a sponge. Yes, a sponge.

In the past few weeks that I've been networking and hawking my book online and to agents, I've become a sponge soaking up this wonderful culture of writers and editors until I'm fairly brimming with formats and function keys! I look around the house and find formatting notes scribbled in corners of sticky-notes on the fridge and margin dimensions written on receipt edges in my wallet.

So now I've got serious questions rattling around in my head: Courier New or Times Roman? I've got serious format issues to correct: like underlining all my italicized words (errrghhh...) and changing the line spacing to ensure 250 words on a page (irritating!) Let's not even mention that I have to find a way to cut 15,000 words (all of which are essential, of course!) But I guess it's not surprising that writing as a profession has been forced into all the same boxes as other industries...where has the love of creativity and admiration of art in its purist form gone?

Some days it seems unfair that a writer can't just write - why do we have to be responsible for packaging and formatting too? Isn't the computer genius side of the brain completely separate from the creative side? Hmmm...

Although if I'm being honest, on other days, it seems like a relief to have a task with a clear beginning and end. A task with an absolute right or wrong to bring me back to reality. So maybe the editing and formatting side of writing a novel is a good way to bring all us writers back down to earth once in a while. Maybe it's a good give and take after all.