From Microsoft Word to Mac: A not-so-sweet-romance mid-manuscript odyssey

Why in the heck did I keep writing on this stupid computer so long?

Hi, guys. I have news! My new sweet historical romance, The Playwright and the Duke (The Lost Slipper Society, book 3) is available now. Isn't she pretty?

But wait. She wasn't always and that's where this whole troubling story starts. I began the manuscript in November of 2024, before even releasing book 2 ( Letters to Ellie) in February of 2025. I finished the manuscript of what would become book 3 in October 2025 and sent it through its first round of revisions and edits. Four edits all told. All was good by December, 2025…

…or so I thought. I ordered a proof copy (then called Marking Time With the Duke--I know, I know. Not the best title!), intending to release it.

Then I read it over.

Lines and whole paragraphs were in wrong places, some edits I know I made to the manuscript were nowhere to be found. Let me tell you, there was screaming, tears, and me balled up in a puddle. I nearly discarded the entire book, skipped over these characters, and started the next couple.

By the grace of my sweet family and editors who’d read the earlier versions, they talked me off the ledge and convinced me to keep the book and re-edit it. We bought a second monitor so I could open the files in multiple screens and figure out what got lost where.

It seemed as if everything had fallen apart in my inputs of the “was supposed to be final edit”, or…something.

Now, this sounded to us like this was my fault thanks to %$*! Menopause. And that was probably part of it, because I was dealing with that during part of that year plus. It was a logical, scientific explanation for why I thought I was going crazy. Because it looked like more than one thing happened: I inserted edits into the other three versions of the drafts, in some instances, and in others, the edits I made to the correct document didn't hold.

This last discovery sent me back through the most recent document to input the correct changes in the correct spots again. Saved. Control-s. Autosave, yes. Good. Shut down. Sleep like a baby. But the next morning, I opened the corrected document, and found no corrections whatsoever.

🤯

Yes, my edits were simply not there.

But, then my feed began showing me posts about Microsoft Word.

Other people reported edits not being saved. (!!)

What? I'm a longtime Microsoft Word user (and when I say longtime, I wrote all my books on Word 2010, and Windows '95, and Wordperfect before that). This is the first time I have ever had this kind of glitch. If it had happened during another phase of the book (like, the first draft!) I might not have been so enraged. But no.

(And this, friends, is why I don't like announcing release dates beforehand, or setting pre-orders while I'm writing, and will never ever, ever set a pre-order up before I have a working final draft!)

So what did I do (after the screaming and crying part)? I had to roll all the way back to the pre-edited 2nd draft, and find some new program to start again in. So I downloaded Scrivener 3 for Windows. (affiliate link included)

Omg, the learning curve! But I'd decided it might be best to retype the whole thing anyway (which does wonders for carpal tunnel!😮‍💨). So I downloaded it, read books, watched a ton of tutorials, and got to work. I was wary before this glitch, now, I was downright paranoid! I saved it as a Word doc every night and tossed copies into Google docs and an external hard drive, (and even emailed it to myself a f few times, just to be safe.

Then in May (or June, I forget which) 2026, I finished the book. And discovered I needed a second program for the process of re-editing the edited edits. 🤦‍♀️ So I downloaded Librewriter/LibreOffice and got to work (and GIMP for the cover edits for the new title, and Notion to try to keep the Scrivener hierarchy organized in my head). Again.

So in the midst of all this chaos, yes, I had to learn four new programs just to restore order. Four programs, for a workflow that worked perfectly with one for 31 years!

Finally in September 2026, we ordered another proof copy. Now called The Playwright and the Duke.

Beautiful.

Except. If you have the paperbacks, you'll know they are a particular size. When I got the latest proof copy, the italics were out of whack (my fault. Coming from Word I thought I had to do what we in the biz call “nuking” the book, which strips out all the junk code Microsoft Word secrets behind the scenes. More importantly for formatters, it removes the text styling, which you must then go and restore by hand comparing an un-nuked copy against the nuked copy, line by line. (*rolls eyes* Thanks again, Microsoft! 😮‍💨)

So, invariably, you miss a few. Okay, I got out my little paper notebooks and read the book for a seventh time. That’s when I discovered a whole new problem that never bothered me before in 14 years of indie publishing: the 5x8 paperback was so thick it was causing me pain to hold it open to re-read.

screams into pillow

But the rest of the novel was downright flawless comparatively speaking. So I fixed the formatting, resized it to 5.5”×8.5” , re-made the cover (because the size change facilitates a cover resize, of course), picked groundwood paper in hopes that helps, and sent it back through the printers. And, since the manuscript was otherwise ready, I uploaded the ebook files to Draft2Digital and KDP and you can get that now here.

I'm only waiting for the paperback proof, which should be here by the time you see this post. So, sorry. If you'd like the paperback, it'll be coming soon.

“Why don't you just upgrade to Microsoft 365?” everyone said. Well, we did consider it and do some research on that. But in their fine print, we discovered we'd have to pay twice as much to be allowed to publish any of my work, that they would watermark the files if we paid less.

They can bite me. Now when I mentioned above that I'm familiar with Librewriter (and LibreOffice), it's true. I'd had it installed on a laptop as far back as 2018 (I think) and so I felt I might be able to produce a good finished manuscript if necessary, but that laptop was decommissioned when Windows forced us onto the dreadful Windows 11.

The biggest question was could I format a paperback with it?

Honestly, even though I've written on it for years, switching easily back and forth between the laptop and my computer with Word 2010, I always formatted paperbacks in Word. It's what my formatting teacher taught me on 14 years ago; it just felt easier.

Meanwhile, Microsoft wanted to update the whole, bloody computer.

Infuriated, I called up my little brother, who has been using Mac products as long as I've been using Windows, and got me a MacBook under his gracious supervision. (Thank you, Jesus! No, literally. Little bro’s name is Jesus. :))

Omg, the learning curve on that! I've only had it for a week, but with the book (The Playwright and The Duke, available now!!) out of the way, I now have the space to learn how to write with Scrivener (and Pages) properly, and calmly. The good news is, aside from having to copy old files from one external hard drive to one formatted for Mac, I seem to be able to access everything. Learning where Pages put and called basic Word processes what is going to take some time ( for you home formatters going through this “change” to Mac too, see your Mac Pages sidebar).

So while I go off to seek out computer serenity, I hope you enjoy the Playwright and the Duke. To quote Taylor Swift, it’s been a longtime coming. And wish me luck that there will be no more computer glitches, as I plot out and write my next decade's worth (or more) manuscripts as ideas arise.

**Full disclosure: If you sign up for Scrivener using my link, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.