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My first post. Let me start by saying thank you for coming by and buckle up, Buttercup.
Right now, I'm figuring out how to make a nice table of contents with hyperlinks for my book. It's the last piece of the formatting puzzle to put in place before I upload my book to Amazon and get a release date.
It sounds like it should be easy. I mean, I'm not trying to write code here. YouTube makes it look easy, but my table doesn't turn out quite like those in the videos. Mine looks like an ugly convoluted mess. After hours of how-to articles and videos and trying out their advice yesterday, my husband came home from work to steal our desktop. And there was no way I was going to do all the necessary scrolling through a book's worth of pages and highlighting with the laptop track pad.
You see, I steal my husband's gaming computer while he's toiling away at work bringing home our bread and butter. It's built for gaming, so it has a large screen, massive memory banks, great graphics card, and is super fast. Plus it's at a desk with a computer chair I picked out for long term sitting. I'm old school; I like having a desk and bulky computer. But it's his baby, one of them anyway, so he usually gets first dibs. Also, it forces me to take a break from working, which I usually need when he is home.
If I really want to continue working, however, I do have a couple of other options. Our kids each have their own computers I could commandeer, but they are my husband's cast offs and their desks are messy and sticky. No thanks. So, that leaves me with the laptop. My husband's portal to his games in his time off when he's deployed. Did I mention I'm married to a military man? Anyway, so the laptop is better than the kids' desktops.
In theory, a laptop sounds great. I like the idea of it being portable, being able to hang out on the couch while I write or whatever, and using a track pad sounds like it'd be easier than using a mouse. In reality, my arm is at an awkward angle to reach said track pad, which is sometimes too sensitive clicking on things I don't want it to and other times frustratingly slow. I'm using all my USB hubs for my thumb drive, the thing that wirelessly connects the laptop to our router, and a cooling fan stand thing so it doesn't over heat. Therefore, no spots left open for a mouse. Not that I would have anywhere to use it anyway. The couch arm doesn't seem too great of a surface for a mouse. Also, it's not that comfortable sitting on the couch for long periods with a laptop on me. Last, I don't really need the whole portable option in my house.
So, it's a pain, extra time-consuming, and uncomfortable trying to format or make cover art on the laptop. I actually kind of hate the thing. I suppose I could use it at the dining room table, but those chairs are horribly uncomfortable too, and I don't have another more comfortable one to drag over. Maybe at some point I will pull a little table or something in front of the couch to use and put in a usb hub extension thing, so I can plug in a mouse. Not quite the lounging situation I imagined, but maybe it will be more comfortable than having the laptop on my, well, lap.
Anyway, I came up with this blog idea taking my youngest to school this morning. My husband is otherwise occupied, so I am taking a break from that infernal table of contents to set this up. Then it's back to work. I think I found some really useful articles to solve my problems after I was kicked off the computer yesterday. So much for taking a break from working even though I was only using my phone at that point. Ha. I will try those new tips out and hopefully conquer my adversary, so I can finally get my book uploaded and published. Wish me luck.