Foundations

It’s hard to believe really. Like all lasting projects or businesses, constructing a firm foundation to work on is essential. I have been working on MFP for eight months or so, and finally, I discovered yesterday how stable my foundation had finally become. With all my technology in place, all my contacts (most of them anyway) easily contacted and ordered from, and all supplies effectively figured, I am doing very well for myself. I am getting 5,000 sheets or paper for 35 dollars roughly. That’s enough for 100 books. My printer takes all the toner I damn well please, and toner itself can be gotten from anywhere and for any model, a reasonably easy find. My latest cover material, Bristol board from the bargain shop, gives me four covers for 77 cents. It’s wonderful stuff. I managed to download the test program for Microsoft word 2010. It’s called Microsoft Beta 2010, and it is a miracle worker for formatting. I can comfortably cram many more words per page, and my awesome Minolta is basically this program’s sole mate. This sting of facts came to mind yesterday, when I decided my latest book was ready to go.

This was an exciting time for me. This is, so critics say, my best novel yet, and I was looking forward to seeing it in print. I got myself ready for a fight, as is always the case when starting with a new book. I expected the dreaded ‘toner exhausted’ to somehow escape my SAMSUNG and crawl its way to my Minolta, dooming my efforts to failure. I was waiting to hear news of paper costs skyrocketing for no rational reason. I even daydreamed the police would come charging through my front door, shouting that printing cheap books on my own was illegal. With utter amazement, I formatted (20 min), I printed (5 min), I cut and pressed (30 min), then finally I bound and covered (20 min). Nothing failed on me. No supplies are even close to running low. Not a single piece of anything ignited out of spite or deactivated for the sake of money. Everything worked. I have a somewhat hard time believing how easy it happened to be, but I doubt that simplicity will continue. The fact remained that I have a foundation. I’m through the thick of it, and that’s priceless.