I spent pretty much my entire day at work today pointing and clicking. And, no, I wasn't simply surfing the 'net. I was actually doing work.
The problem is that it wasn't really *my* work. You see, I was working on the second round of editing of a manuscript. In other words, I had worked on it a while ago and made tons of edits using "Track Changes" in MSWord.
Then I sent it to the author, who read through it all, made some changes, responded to my comments, tweaked it, fluffed it, and dinked around, and then sent it back.
The one thing he didn't do was clear out all of my Track Changes markings before he started. So when it came back to me, it was full of all of my original comments and changes PLUS all of his new comments and changes. Honestly, I think there were more pages in red and blue than there were in black.
It would be fine if I could have just opened it, done "Accept All" and moved on. But, of course, this author decided to respond to my comments IN my comments. And not just after what I'd written, but sometimes literally writing his comments in the middle of sentences I had written. So I didn't want to accidentally accept things that he had actually said "Leave that in" about.
I contemplated sending the entire manuscript back to him and telling him to do his work before sending it to me. But... yeah... that would have been bad.
Which is why I spent 2 hours yesterday, and 7 hours today pointing and clicking my way through clearing out my old changes but leaving all of his new ones.
When I eventually develop carpal tunnel, I'm going to look back on this day and shake my (carpal tunnel-weakened) wrist and curse his name.
Which will only be different from what I did for most of today in that I'll be shaking my fist, instead of just cursing his name and flipping him off via my computer screen.
No comments:
Post a Comment