Simple Things to Interefere with Writing! Fifteen Minute Chores that Take Four Hours....

Has anyone worked with Microsoft Office, Mail Merge? I know it's an awesome tool to use for printing labels in a jiffy. My point? The Excel spreadsheet to use can drive you to drink. You think you have all of your columns and data in the right format. You've painstakingly gone over everything, right? You run your Mail Merge and....only thirty out of your seventy labels show up. Huh?

Okay. I can do this. I look over it again and see, ah ha! There's a line out of sync. Let's try this again. I get an additional ten more. Grrrr. I ask for another set of eyes and they see something out of whack. Try it again. Nothing. Now I notice this process has taken me two hours which should've only taken me fifteen minutes. An additional two hours later, using two different spreadsheets to get the data since Mail Merge doesn't like the one document, I have my labels. I am exhausted!

Then I wonder where went my time to work on my book?

Good news! Edits will begin on my next book, For the Love of Par!