Have you wondered HOW to get your book into the hands of a book publisher? Start with a FREE appraisal! Most appraisals are offered for FREE. This will not only tell you if your book is publishable, but also what might be needed in the way of editing. It’s often not as much as you…
It is amazing how quickly and easily manuscripts can become confused, especially with different versions of the same one. If you have more than one copy of a manuscript, make sure they are all well labelled and even dated to ensure mistakes will not happen. There would be nothing worse than sitting for hours, writing or editing, only to find that you have been working on the wrong version. I have a system which I find works quite well:
1. When adding the file name to your original manuscript, make sure you add the word ‘original’ into the title. And then put that copy away if its complete, keep it as a reference. It will also safeguard against any unexpected happenings. Make a new copy to work with and number and/or date it. (I prefer to number it).
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Its a worry. Spam seems to invade and infiltrate everything, including WordPress. Once one gets a blog up and going, in come the bots and away they go – merrily running along, creating havoc and a lot of hard work to be rid of the rubbish they spew out. Makes you wonder if these people have anything better to do than create problems for others. It appears not. I have found a way around the problem for the time being by using WordPress En Spam. Lets hope it does the trick, or I will have to resort to using a captcha and those can be a little tedious for people who would like to make comments.
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Many new authors turn themselves inside out trying to work out ‘how’ to have their story flow, write about each character in their turn and how to bring them into the story, kill them off, or keep them all going at the same time. Sometimes, a story can loose its way and the author has to bring it back on track, or not notice anything wrong if they become so embroiled in the drama of events taking place in the story.
Creative writing teacher Mary Caroll Moore is an accomplished author of eleven published books. She has created a video on how to ‘storyboard’ your novel. Mary’s books range from Romance to health, lifestyle to creative writing. Mary makes writing look easy, as though it just flows from beginning to end. But, there is a secret. That secret she shares with the world on her video.
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Track Changes! Simple words for a simple way to edit your documents. But for those who have no idea where to find Track Changes, let alone use it, that is easier said than done. It’s amazing how many people do not know how to use Track Changes, or have never even heard of it.
For years making changes to any type of document was a nightmare – Back in the typewriter era was the ‘carbon paper’; that was hard work, erasing two, three, four or more copies if a typo was made. Then came the electric typewriter and ‘whiteout’ – which smudged everywhere if it wasn’t properly dry before over-typing the corrected character. After that we arrived at the Word Processor – a little easier as deletions were make easy with backspacing, delete key and over-typing, but still tedious.
Then the arrival of The Computer. Windows 95 followed closely on its heels. The beginning! But, oh, still such a long way to go…
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Where does it come from? What happens when one suddenly gets a ‘lightbulb’ go on? You can be anywhere, and it can happen at any time – day or night.
Although I am an editor and publisher, spinner and knitter, I have never considered myself a ‘writer’. But there are occasions when inspiration just happens and a whole lot of words will appear in my head, crying out to be documented on paper. Writing for me is a thing of ‘inspiration’ and hopefully, I’ll have pen and paper handy to write it down as once its gone, it never seems to reappear. Or at least, not in the same way. It comes and goes, and usually very fast. One minute its kind of just tumbling out, then next – whooosh, gone. I envy those authors who can just call it up at will, its something that many of us would love to be able to do…
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