How to fix a buggy Word document

You’re a writer, and that means you spend a lot of time — I mean a LOT of time —revising documents in Microsoft Word. Or maybe you work in Scrivener, but even so, at some point you have to work in Word. And one of the things we know about Word is, it loves to break your heart.

Documents that go through lots of edits and revisions — especially with Tracked Changes — tend to get buggy. Here’s how to avoid it, and how to fix it if you can’t avoid it.

The simplest solution: Avoid bugs in the first place with “Save As”

This is easy. You’ve trained yourself to hit CTRL+S to save your document every few minutes, right? Now train yourself to occasionally use Save As instead of plain old Save.

Save As rewrites your document from scratch, which helps clean out potentially bug-creating history and metadata. When you use Save As, you can use the same file name you’re currently working with, or make a version of the file with a new file name — doesn’t matter. Both work.

To Save As, use the key command CTRL+SHIFT+S, or choose Save As from the File menu. You don’t have to do this very often, depending on how complex your document is. Maybe once a week.

Use “Save As” when you get a document back from an editor with tracked changes

When you receive a document from an editor and it contains a lot of tracked changes or notes, use Save As to make your new working copy. And as you work through that new version of your document, use Save As occasionally to keep everything working nicely.

Help! My manuscript is buggy!

How do you know if your document is buggy? It starts acting sluggish or erratic. Sometimes both. It refuses to show red lines under misspelled words. Some pages may refuse to display. It also might take a very long time to save. No problem — we can fix this.

What’s happening? Well, Word saves a lot of document history information that you can’t see on the page. With a big document like a book manuscript, which gone through thousands of small changes, this can be a lot of unnecessary info. What you want to do is copy your document contents, without the metadata, and paste it into a new fresh document. Here’s what to do:

  1. Hit CTRL+A. This will select everything in your document.
  2. Hold down the SHIFT key, and hit the back arrow once. This will exclude the metadata at the end of your document.
  3. Open a new document and type a few spaces.
  4. Hit CTRL+V. This will paste your content into the new document.
  5. Hit CTRL+S and save your new document with a new name. This will be your new working document.

Now your new document should be working well. Depending on how the document styles have been set up, some formatting may be odd, but it should be easy to fix.

What if this doesn’t work?

Some documents are so buggy that this doesn’t work. In this case, you can use the same steps, except copy and paste the content as unformatted. text.

With a fiction manuscript, losing formatting shouldn’t create too much of a problem, since fiction doesn’t generally include complex formatting. You will have to redo all your italics and bolding, and any formatting for chapter headings.

Here’s the ultimate weapon:

  1. Hit CTRL+A. This will select everything in your document.
  2. Hold down the SHIFT key, and hit the back arrow once. This will exclude the metadata at the end of your document.
  3. Open a new document and type a few spaces.
  4. In the Home tab, click the arrow under the Paste icon. The Paste Special dialog box will appear. Choose Unformatted Text, and hit the OK button.
  5. Hit CTRL+S and save your new document with a new name. This will be your new working document.
  6. Go through the document and fix your formatting.

Good luck! Hope this helps!

My Super Huge 2018

2018 was a massive year. If fate gives me another year like this, I’ll be very lucky indeed. Here’s the rundown:

My first book (novella) came out
It’s a book, but it’s not a novel–it’s a novella! Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach came out in March, and the audiobook arrived in September. People like it, and of course it’s eligible for award nomination, should you be so inclined. (But always vote your heart.)

I published three other stories

  • A Study in Oils (novelette) in Clarkesworld, September 2018 (read it online or listen to the podcast)
  • Intervention (novelette) in Infinity’s End, edited by Jonathan Strahan, July 2018
  • What Gentle Women Dare (short story) in Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2018 (read it online or listen to the podcast (top right of the read link))

Two of my older stories were podcasted

Two stories made it into three Year’s Bests
“A Human Stain” was chosen by Ellen Datlow for her Best Horror of the Year, Volume 10. “We Who Live in the Heart” was reprinted in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection, edited by the late Gardner Dozois, and also in Neil Clarke’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 3.

I dipped my toe into foresight consulting
For UNICEF! It was fun. I got to write a piece of flash on the fly in the middle of one of their strategic meetings.

I found an agent
And the wonderful Hannah Bowman found me!

I won a Nebula
Oh my goodness, yes, I did. Still stunned.

I got to play with the big kids
I wrote a story introduction for the Best of R.A. Lafferty, out next February.

I made the cover of Locus
With a big big interview! I’ve been a Locus subscriber since the 90s so every time I look at the issue I think I’m hallucinating.

Me freaking out over having my name on the cover of Locus

Me freaking out over getting a big interview in Locus
This is one of the biggest things that has ever happened in my life

And I traveled to China
It was beautiful. So beautiful. Look:

Danzhai Wanda Village, Guizhou, China

Zangaogao Terraces, Guizhou, China

Rice terrace in Paizuo village, Guizhou, China

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach roundup

In March, my first book Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach hit bookstores.

Cover for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/

How do you encompass something as huge as having your first book published? Impossible — it’s too big. Which is why this post is so late. I just couldn’t face the challenge of summing up something that enormous. So I won’t try. Here are some of the best bits:

I cried.
Of course I did. Several times. In one instance, I was sitting on the couch with all my author copies piled in my lap, drinking a huge glass of rye and bawling my eyes out. Seriously.

I was overwhelmed by seeing my book in an actual bookstore. ALSO A LITTLE GOOFY.

I lost some copies.
Here’s what will happen to your first book: You’ll be so excited, you’ll show it to people — and they’ll think you’re giving it to them. One of the first people I showed my book to was my favorite barista. She thought I was giving it to her and grabbed it. I couldn’t ask for it back, because she was so happy and excited. Bye bye book!

My book launch was transcendent.
We held it at Toronto’s famous Bakka Phoenix Books. I made not one but two different carrot cakes. Tons of people came. We sold 70 copies. It was the best day of my life.

Me emoting at the Lucky Peach launch.

I read in Orlando and New York.
The week the book came out, I went to the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (which is a wonderful event), and then to New York to read at KGB Fantastic Fiction.

NY had a huge snowstorm the day of my NY reading! This is Central Park.

In NY, I read with the delightful Chandler Klang Smith, author of THE SKY IS YOURS — which is a very cool and awesome book, by the way.

People like Lucky Peach a lot.
Review have been fantastic! Here’s a few examples:

  • “Thrums with a delicious tension carefully developed among the wonderful characters.” Amal El-Mohtar, NEW YORK TIMES (link)
  • “Packs an enormous wallop of imagination and worldbuilding.” BARNES & NOBLE” (link)
  • “It’s likely to be one of the most impressive debut novels of the year.” – Gary K. Wolfe, CHICAGO TRIBUNE (link)
  • “There’s enough wicked cool tech to satisfy hard SF geeks, character development to please SF dilettantes, and fantastic storytelling to enamor everyone else.” – Alex Brown, TOR.COM (link)

People are buying it.
Lucky Peach hit the Locus Bestseller list! Check it out:

You might like it too.
Get it from your favorite indie bookstore, or:
Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Chapters Indigo
IndieBound | Powells | iTunes

People want more.
I’m working on the sequel right now, called Time, Trouble, and the Lucky Peach, and it’s going to be great!

 

How to use Bookmarks in Twitter

A few months ago, Twitter rolled out a new Bookmarks feature. It’s fantastic. I don’t know about you, but Twitter is where I’m getting most of my best research leads these days. Not just links, but nested threads by experts. It’s delightful, but hard to keep track of the gems. Bookmarks fixes this. The feature isn’t readily accessible on desktop yet, but there’s a work-around.

Setting a bookmark on mobile
1. Tap on the tweet to expand it.
2. At the bottom of the tweet, tap  , and choose Add Tweet to bookmarks.

Accessing bookmarks on mobile
1. Go to the Home screen.
2. Tap your user picture (upper left), and choose Bookmarks.

Desktop work-around
To set or access bookmarks on a desktop browser, you have to use the mobile version of the site. 

1. In the URL, insert an “m.” after the forward slashes (for example: https://m.twitter.com), then press Enter.
2. Now you’re looking at the mobile version of the site, and the instructions above will work, except that your user picture will be on the top left.

Snazzy, right? This function is my new favorite thing.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach out in a week!

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach will be out in a week! I’m so excited for people to read it. It’s already getting some very enthusiastic reviews, so I have high hopes it’ll get good reader love.

Cover for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/

Jonathan Strahan says:

“Rich, nuanced characters, deeply compelling story, and a powerfully conceived world make Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach one of the best novellas of recent times, one of the highlight books of 2018, and something to look for on awards ballots come 2019.”

RT Book Reviews says:

★★★★
“Robson creates a nuanced take on how time travel can be used in science fiction beyond the typical ‘prevent event from happening’ trope. Time travel is treated thoughtfully here, with rules and consequences that enrich the novel to the last page.”

Scifi and Scary says:

You’ll be missing out if you don’t read this.

Pre-order at your favorite indie bookstore, or:
Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Chapters Indigo
IndieBound | Powells | iTunes

 

March excitement for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach!

Cover for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/
Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/

Publishing is a waiting game. I’ve only been waiting for about a year since signing the contract for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, so I really shouldn’t complain. Most writers wait two years or more for their books to come out with a major publisher. Still, it feels like forever.

But now it’s nearly here! Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach hits on March 13. Reviews have been very positive and the book has a lot of buzz. Here’s two recent review quotes:

Gary K. Wolfe – Chicago Tribune says:

Robson, who has garnered major award nominations in a career of only a few years, builds both her future and ancient worlds with convincing detail for such a short novel, populating them with characters who are believable and engrossing, even when they have tentacles. It’s likely to be one of the most impressive debut novels of the year.

Scifi and Scary says:

You’ll be missing out if you don’t read this.

Second-time Nebula Finalist!

My Lesbian Gothic Horror novelette “A Human Stain” is up for a Nebula Award! How cool is that? I was a Nebula finalist in 2015, and it was a heck of a heady experience. Now I get to do it again! Whoop!

March is filled with STUFF. Here’s what I have on the go:

Intersection Comedy Show

I’m participating in the Intersection Improv Comedy Show on Wednesday, March 7. I’m going to be telling three of my most embarrassing moments, and then the troupe will make hay with my story.

Wednesday, March 7 at 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM
The Social Capital Theatre
154 Danforth Ave – Second Floor

International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts

I’ll be in Orlando at ICFA March 16-17, reading on Saturday at 4PM. ICFA is an academic conference that a lot of writers feel very romantic about because it’s so low pressure. Basically you just hang out with your friends. Alyx and I went last year and absolutely loved it.

KGB Fantastic Fiction Reading, March 21

I’m reading with Chandler Klang Smith at KGB Fantastic Fiction in New York. Can’t wait!

Wednesday, March 21, 2018, 7pm
KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs)

Book Launch at Toronto’s Bakka-Phoenix

The launch party for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach will be on Saturday, March 24.

Saturday, March 24 at 3:00 to 5:00 PM
Bakka-Phoenix Books – 84 Harbord St, Toronto

Cake – Live Reading – Music – Book Signing  – More Cake

I’ll be making BOTH of my famous carrot cakes. Come for the cake!

Speculative fiction writing workshops – a list

A list of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror writing workshops (updated March 4, 2020). Thanks @outseideNavah WolfePatrick Neilsen Hayden, Rebecca StefoffJennifer Marie Brissett, Sarah Berner, Cat Rambo, John Appel, Patrice Sarath, Nino Cipri, Erin Brown Conroy, Grayson Morris,  Karen Junker, and Kij Johnson for corrections and additions!

News about workshops can be found on this page at Locus.

Workshops for new, emerging, and established writers

Cascade Writing Workshops, Seattle, WA
Three days in July, plus one day workshops through the year

Clarion, San Diego, CA
Six weeks in June-August

Clarion West, Seattle, WA
Six weeks June-August
Also holds one-day workshops throughout the year

FutureScapes Workshop, Sundance, CO
Three days in April

Gotham Writers’ Workshop, New York, NY
Ten week classes, online and in-person

Gunn Centre SF & Fantasy Novel Writers Workshop, Lawrence, KS
Two weeks in June

Gunn Centre SF & Fantasy Novel Writers Workshop, Lawrence, KS
Two weeks in June

Locus Writer’s Workshop, Seattle, WA
Two days in June, bookending the Locus Awards weekend

Locus Master Classes, Oakland, CA
One-day classes are held throughout the year

Milford, Wales, UK
One week in September

Odyssey, Manchester, NH
Six weeks in the summer

Readerfest Writers’ Master Class, Tacoma, WA
Three days in July

Taos Toolbox, Taos, NM
Two weeks in June/July
I was at the first one (2007) and loved it

Viable Paradise, Martha’s Vineyard, MA
One week in October

Villa Diodati Workshop, various locations in Europe
Two five-day retreats each year, spring and fall

Writing Excuses
Runs courses and retreats (including a cruise!)

Workshops for youth

Alpha, Pittsburgh, PA
Only for people aged 14-19
Two weeks in July/August

Shared Worlds, Spartanburg, SC
Only for teens
Two weeks in July

Online workshops

Odyssey Online
Offers month-long classes through the year

Online Writing Workshop for SFF
Online workshopping community

LitReactor
Offers an array of online classes.

Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers
Live and on-demand classes through the year. Scholarships available.

UCLA Extension Program Online
Offers a certificate program in fiction writing. My wife Alyx teaches Speculative Fiction writing here.

Writing the Other
One day seminars, on-demand master classes, and weekend intensives

Post-secondary studies

Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction, University of Kansas
Offers courses in Speculative Fiction Studies (also MFA and PhD, see below)

UCLA Extension Program
Offers a certificate program in fiction writing

MFA programs

I’ll only list the MFA programs that are specifically friendly to speculative fiction. This list is surely not complete. More info at Michael Underwood’s blog.

Graduate Program in Creative Writing, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
MFA and PhD programs – Faculty includes Kij Johnson

Creative Writing MA, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK
Faculty includes Helen Marshall

Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing, Portland, ME
Low residency
Faculty includes James Patrick Kelly, Theodora Goss, Elizabeth Hand

Temple University MFA in Creative Writing, Pittsburgh, PA
Samuel R. Delany is on the faculty

NC State MFA in Creative Writing, Raleigh, NC
John Kessel is on the faculty

Seton Hill MFA, Writing Popular Fiction, Greensburg, PA
Lucy A. Snyder is on the faculty

Western Colorado University Graduate Program in Creative Writing, Concentration in Genre Fiction, Gunnison, CO
Fran Wilde is director

SF-related Masters of Arts

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL
Offers an MA in English with a concentration in SF and Fantasy

Other workshops

Many established writers are passionate about paying it forward. Check out the websites of your favorite authors. Chances are good they sometimes teach.

Many Science Fiction conventions offer workshops, master classes, lectures, and/or manuscript critiques from established writers.

The Surrey International Writer’s Conference embraces all genres. It’s a superb professional development conference that offers access to editors, agents, and superstar authors.

What have I missed? Email or tweet me.

Kelly’s eligibility post – 2017 edition

Fiction

Cover by Sam Wolfe

In 2017, I published two novelettes:

Lesbian gothic horror “A Human Stain” at Tor.com
At Locus, Paula Guran said, “…this spellbinding gothic novelette’s graceful writing and superlative atmosphere of dread alone are more than enough to commend it.” (10,000 words)

Far future SF “We Who Live in the Heart” at Clarkesworld
Gardner Dozois said, “The worldbuilding
here is fascinating, as is the intricately
worked-out detail of how the living ‘‘submarines’’
function and how it would be possible,
to some degree at least, to control them, but the
human relationships among the crew are equally
complicated and equally compelling. By the end,
the story has generated a great deal of suspense…”  (15,000 words)

I definitely think of myself as someone who writes short, not long, but these pieces pack a lot of story into the wordcount.

Also, both stories happen to feature lesbians. I didn’t plan that, but it’s kind of awesome.

Nonfiction

I also published two essays in Clarkesworld: “The Dream of Writing Full Time” (September 2017) and “Being James Tiptree, Jr.”
(April 2017). I’m proud of them.

Recommendations

Usually, I don’t do a recommendations post. I just tweet about good stories throughout the year, and add my recommendations to the SFWA Suggested Reading lists.

However, I’m compelled to super-push two works. First, Annalee Newitz’s novel Autonomous, because it’s just freaking spectacular (AND a lot of fun). I loved it so much. It’s got my vote for best novel of the year.

Second, please read and nominate K.M. Szpara’s terrific novelette “Small Changes over Long Periods of Time.” This is brave, bravura work and deserves to be recognized as one of the best stories of the year.

My SFContario Schedule

Cover for Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/
Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, out March 16. Cover by Jon Foster http://www.jonfoster.com/

SFContario is coming up soon, right here in downtown Toronto. Here’s my schedule:

How to Overthink Your Way Out of Writing
3:00 PM Saturday, November 18 – Gardenview room
Charlotte Ashley, Matt Mayr, Ira Nayman, Kelly Robson (M)
Theodore Sturgeon famously taught “Ask the next question.” Beginning writers everywhere are advised to ask “What if…?” as they develop their story. With a little research and some extra caffeine you too can come up with such a plethora of possibilities that your story becomes a dense jungle with no clear path – impenetrable and neverending. As denizens of the Digital Age, with its abundance of information and surfeit of attention span, we have never been in a better position to over-complicate our stories – and our lives!

Reading (30 minutes)
4:30 PM, Saturday, November 18 – Parkview room
I’ll be reading from my forthcoming book Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach.

Where do we go from here?
12:00 PM, Sunday, November 19 – Solarium room
Matt Mayr, Lawrence Schoen, Kelly Robson, Clare Wall (M)
Speculative fiction speculates, it’s all there in the name. In today’s rapidly changing climate – cultural, political, and scientific – where should we be pointing next? How can current SFF keep pace with the current developments, and still prepare the way to the future?

Quatloos and Credits and Latinum, Oh My!
1:00 PM, Sunday, November 19 – Solarium room
Alyx Dellamonica, Kelly Robson, Cenk Gokce (M)
Economics is frequently overlooked in SF. Do adventurers simply live on nuts and berries and what they can kill? What do they pay with when they visit an inn or buy a drink? How is trade carried out, particularly between species? Is there still a struggle for resources or has science advanced to the point where anything can be fabricated?

When good enough is not good enough

Young Woman Drawing (Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes) by Marie Denise Villers, 1801

Until yesterday, I was super happy with my current story-in-progress. The drafting went comparatively fast, and the second draft revision was smooth. The sentence-by-sentence writing developed a few lovely turns, and I was happy with everything I’d done until the third draft polish when suddenly—

I realized the last quarter of the story was dumb. Beautifully written, but dumb. I mean, it was okay. It was probably good enough. Someone, somewhere would have bought the story. Readers would probably go hmmm at the end.

But I’m not in this to make readers go hmmm. I’m in this to make their heads snap back.

I mentioned this situation to a friend, who asked, “How do you know the ending sucks?” Difficult question. Basically, my instinct told me. It simply didn’t feel right. So I sat down with my big sketchpad and did what I always do when I have story problems—doodle and sketch out my thoughts (why does this suck — this is so bad — I have no idea what I’m doing) until I figured out the problem.

The ending hinges on the main character’s reaction to a big dramatic public proclamation, and the person making that proclamation really doesn’t have a reason to do it. They don’t necessarily need a reason—they’re not the point of view character—but without a solid reason, the story rings hollow and false.

So I’m reworking the whole ending. Not quite sure how I’ll fix it. But it’ll be a good ending instead of one that’s just barely good enough.