Cascades

I was forewarned. It’s going to be a “slow, laborious process.”

Choose the page size. Set up the indents. Choose a font and a size. Set the margins. Create headers and footers which differ depending on the section. Ensure there’s consistency in all the headings, sub-headings, the text body and quoted passages. Create hyphenation parameters. 

All this and then some. There’s much that goes into the interior design of a book. At times, it borders on drudgery. But, that’s fine, because I’m slowly and steadily moving closer to publishing my first book.

I’m telling you this for one reason. There’s something I’ve noticed during the process that is helpful to keep in mind.

Cascades.

I’m one hundred pages in. But looking over the intro, I notice a formatting error. The margins are bigger here than in the rest of the book. So I remedy it. I then continue to scroll through the work I’ve done so far. OH SHIT. My quick fix has created ten other problems. My first page has been shifted forward, so the book begins on page two. There are sections which end with one word at the top of a page. Where I’ve left extra space after a passage to move it to the next page, it’s now just sitting awkwardly in the middle. 

Isn’t that how our life goes? 

You apply for another job because you don’t like the one you’re at. But then everyone finds out and treats you differently because they think you hate them. Which causes you to look for more jobs so you can leave faster. And because you want to leave, you end up taking a position you don’t really want just to get out.

A single change initiates a cascade of further, unexpected changes. One small alteration starts a tidal wave.

You shouldn’t be scared of this. Knowing it shouldn’t inhibit you from making changes and experimenting. Everything is interconnected. You can’t affect one thing without influencing another. But it’s something to keep in mind. Every action, every change, initiates a cascade.