The editor I hired to help me put the finishing touches on my manuscript just got back to me with his finalized version. He has suggested taking out around 10,000 words (out of an original 96,000), to make a leaner and quicker read. Now I must begin the cumbersome process of going through all his suggestions and comments, deciding what to change and what to leave the same.

Unfortunately, before I can even begin this process, I am faced with the problem of looking at his notes. Microsoft Word has a great feature where words, sentences, or paragraphs can be crossed out, but still read, indicating that they should be cut. Additions made by the editor are underlined. Unfortunately, when I try to open this file with Open Office (a free alternative to cost-prohibitive Microsoft Word), most of this is rendered unreadable.

A recently downloaded WPS Office fixes this problem, but the text is now filled with red markings.

Aha, by copying and pasting the final version to a new WPS text document, all the text is congruently black. Why must everything be so complicated?!

Ok, now that I’ve got that sorted out, all I have to do is review my entire manuscript, for the umpteenth final version!