Ich spreche weder fließend Deutsch noch Word...

Here's a fun fact! I have five years of German lessons under my belt resulting in the triumph of a GCSE at grade C. Impressed? Yeah, course you are. Take that, World! Or should I say 'Nimm das, Welt!' Despite my quick usage of Google Translate in the last sentence, my German grade C makes me feel utterly fluent almost all of the time. I'm bilingual. A proper German speaker. You'd be forgiven for mistaking me for Angela Merkel or Steffi Graf. Or Dr. Ruth.

Back in the days when we 
paid to see the photos we
took, this was my best effort
 of downtown Zurich.
Switzerland, I can only
apologise.

I do have evidence to back up my self-proclaimed German fluency. Honestly. In 1999 I successfully navigated myself out of Zurich airport via the rail network by remembering that hauptbahnhof meant main train station and that I should head there for my connection. You can't put a price on knowledge like that. I floated on a cloud of achievement for the rest of the day.

I can make out a couple of beers  
and some sausage. And THAT is my
kind of weekend! Ba-dum tish.

Sadly there is the odd counter argument to my German expertise. Years ago, in a restaurant in Austria, my travel companion ordered a pudding as a main meal, after I had translated the menu for him. (Obviously, when my meal arrived, it was fine.) When I remember the confidence with which I had translated each dish, a few doubts creep in. Perhaps I'm not as fluent as I think. The linguistic areas I'm confident about are really quite small. Look, German is definitely still my second language, but there may be a few gaps in my knowledge. I know all the buildings of a town, (rathaus, bibliothek, kino!) and I know how to order ice cream (erdbeereis, himbeereis or zitroneneis?) But when I got a German language TV series on DVD (by accident for Christmas, ask my brother) I could only make out a few words of most sentences. Good morning, the, a, but, big, small, yes, no, wardrobe... You get the drift. The plot of the drama moved on from those basics immediately and I was lost. German. I think I'm fluent but when it comes down to it, I'm anything but. My grade C mocks me at every turn.

 

Just me, sitting by a Salzburg lake, 
pondering all the German words
I know.

So now we come to the point of this post. I know. Can you believe we're not there yet? What am I like? It's not really about German I'm afraid. But it is about thinking you know a topic well, but then being reminded that you haven't got a clue. What am I talking about? Word. No, I'm not doing youth speak like saying preach or bae - even though I use those phrases when I don't understand them. No. I'm talking about Microsoft Word. Bill and Melinda Gates' Word. That simple-looking virtual blank page with the B I U icons at the top. That Word. That's the German language in this analogy. 

73 pages of a
foreign language. 

I think I am fluent in Word. I use it every day and access many of its features regularly. I'm always underlining or italicising. I often copy and paste, or insert or zoom. I can add a header and a footer, I can include a text box or a shape, and I like nothing more than pimping up a boring document with a snazzy border. But when we compare all that fluency with my German example, I'm still on the town hall, the library, and the ice cream. I only know the basics. And right now, I'm at the point on the book publishing treadmill when I have to know a whole lot more than that. 

But let me squeeze in a quick book update whilst you're here. It'll make sense in a minute. I'm still editing the story; still changing words all the time but I've also moved onto the next stage. The next stage is to format the interior of the book. That means, the inside pages need to look like a book's inside pages and not simply a typed and stapled sheaf of A4 paper. Books are not typed A4 sheets, FYI. This is the 3rd time I've been through this process so I remember some of it well. Other bits, not so much. So far, I've bought my template. This is a life saver and takes out a lot of the faff. But it also requires someone who has a better working knowledge of German Word to use it. 

My pre-formatted template worked great the past two times. Eventually. When I had Googled every single aspect that was required of me, and resorted to trial and error and crossed fingers. But I got there. I managed to transfer my own Word document novel onto the the pre-formatted Word document template that would eventually be turned into a PDF interior. I have done it twice before. Let me repeat that. I have done it twice before. I know I will do it again. But it's still clear I'm not as fluent in Word as I thought.

This is Styles. Or Bloody Styles, as I prefer.

The big issue I'm struggling with right now is getting to grips with Styles. Not an aspect of Word I've ever given the time of day, but now I must. If I want my chapter headings to link to the list of chapters at the front (essential for ebook-age), I have to make sure I've got the right Style. If something is highlighted in the wrong Style, it screws everything up. I don't understand it, I just do it. (Like when I Google Translated 'Take that, World!' earlier and hoped for the best.) I also have to get a handle on my Page Breaks. Some chapters have to start on a right hand side page. If the previous chapter also ends on a right hand side page, I have to add Page Break (Opposite Page) to the end of it. If I want the next chapter to start on the left hand side (like if it's a normal next chapter and not a chapter after a new part of the book) then I have to insert Page Break (Next Page) after the preceding chapter. The problem is when I accidentally insert the wrong kind of page break and try to correct it, without knowing whether I've accidentally inserted several blank pages into my eventual book, or if I've got it right. None of it becomes clear until the whole thing is converted to a PDF. The process is horrific. I could go on with a list of my pet Word peeves but I'll spare you. Hopefully you've got the hair-tearing drift of my frustration.

There is never a wrong time to insert this
Gif into your life.

There'll be computer geniuses out there who'll be laughing at me. Or perhaps just people born after 1990. They'll read the last paragraph and think I'm ridiculous. Everything will make sense to them, and they won't understand how in the dark it feels to be crap. Just like there are actual Germans in the world who'll know lots more words than ice cream and municipal buildings. And I'm not stupid. I realise my real problem is how my inflated bubble of self-worth has been burst this week. I don't like finding things hard. It makes life less fun. But sometimes things are literally, just hard. I need to persevere and keep going. I'll have to remember the stuff I used to tell kids in my class when they found concepts tricky. So far, I've ignored it, distracted myself, and got drunk at the weekend. I'm pretty sure none of that was my teacher advice back in the day.

 
For now, however, another week of frustrating technical shizzle is about to begin. I've got four and a half days ahead where I'll stare at a screen, be fully aware of my limitations, and hopefully stumble through the process until the end. I've had a good rant and I can look forward to when this is just another faded memory. Like the last two times. 

Habt eine schöne woche, Leute.