Reedsy for Marie? Italic dilemma

I have been a member of Reedsy for a while. In fact I have some books half-written there in the marketing hub. But, I recently found a branch of Reedsy called Discovery and am finding it very interesting. To date I have encountered about 20 new "friends" who are also authors, readers and reviewers. I feel a good vibe here and will post a bit more when I work through their offerings. I could not choose 5 people, so I clicked "all" and am now following 501 people! (A novice at work) I have uploaded my latest book, Quest & Crown but found I got confused when the first chapter did not load properly and it ended up with over 4,000 words, which alerted me because I purposely designed my chapters to be 2,000 words only, or thereabouts. I still have not worked that one out. Another problem I encountered was uploading my full interior or story. It had to be a PDF file, which is fine. Immediately their checker wanted to change my opening lines to italics, which is a possibility for this book, but I had not chosen it. Now I am in a quandry about many sections of this book as it has a good deal of internal dialogue because of its nature, a lone horseman who has a mission. Having read up on this subject, I find that it is the author's choice whether or not to inform the reader that these words are internal or spoken. It was a rather interesting lesson I picked up and I agreed with it. If I use italics the reader may be distracted somewhat from the story, but to clarify its intent, it needs to be clear to the reader. So, back to basics, I am taking the advice of the tutorial and changing certain internal dialogue or thought patterns to italics. Now that I am on this track, I find it is not a simple: he though, he mused, he cogitated, or wondered, because much of the dialogue does not contain the words listed, so I need to read right through the story 61,000 words or 430 pages, which makes it a bigger job. I shall do so, as of course I wish the reader to enjoy her experience and not feel confused. Already my proofreader (darling hubby) read through and picked up one section he was not sure about. I took this advice and changed the wording a little to ensure clarity. Wish me luck with this project. I am as usual going it alone, by prayer and song, and of course, inspiration from above. It is not a Christian book per se, but has good morals entwined in it. After all, people have good and bad things inside and it is more interesting to read about a person who mirrors reality. So far, I spent about one and a half hours yesterday, but was interrupted by a long telephone call, which I did enjoy. Also, I had to a quick shop for something, so that took about two hours. I got to page 105 by nightfall when I was tired. I find editing the most tiring of all jobs in writing and have to fight writer's fatigue the whole way. I put this down to age, but I know it is also boring to read something over and over again, detecting errors. But, it is necessary. If I had a bucket of money I could, perhaps, ask someone to run through the text, but they would need to be a thinker, even a writer as well. I have paid for editing previously, and I was disappointed. I just don't have money to throw here and there into mist. Unfortunately it may be my pride or determination, or doggedness. I have written this story in past tense and present tense, also present perfect tense, so is tricky. Be back soon. Love M