Emily H. Bates's Blog, page 7

Setting your margins

Next up in our layout design class is page size and margins! This is fairly straightforward, but there are a few important aspects to consider.

First things first: you have to set your page size. Many self-publishing sites give you options as to how big your book can be, so pick a size off the list and open up your manuscript to set the page size.

Click the Page Layout menu, then the Size button. At the bottom of the list, click More Paper Sizes.

That will open a dialog box that allows you t...

“There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to...

“There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us [the Ghosts of Christmas], and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name; who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”(Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

Life’s easier with breaks and indents

One of my biggest pet peeves of Microsoft Word misuse is flagrant overuse of the Enter key and the Tab key. Useful in their own right, but NOT to be used in place of indents and page breaks.

So today, I’m going to help you give your keyboards a rest. We’re going to talk indents and page breaks.

Let’s start with indents. Remember how we set paragraph styles last time? Right-click on your paragraph style and click Modify to open the dialog box again. At the bottom of the box, click Format, then...

Stylin’!

With the end of NaNoWriMo, I’ve plunged back in for the final edits and design of Stone Alliance. It’s been a JOY. You have no idea. Writing is my first and truest love, but honestly, editing work is not far behind. There’s something so satisfying about nitpicking and fine-tuning, and I LOVE that I get to do my own layout design this time around.

As I go through this, I want to share a few tips for other authors who are looking to learn more about designing their own layout. Of course, you ca...

More than particles

“The world is made of more than particles. It’s made of things you can’t hold in your hand, like fear, love, loss, hope, truth. Or plural, truths, and you can take these by the shoulders and turn them around to face you. Or tilt them so you can see them in the light.

“And maybe truths are like horses on a carousel. You could keep running around, trying to catch one, or you could just stand still and believe, and wait for it to come around to you.” (The Cracks in the Kingdom, Jaclyn Moriarty,...

November’s lessons learned

I crossed the NaNoWriMo finish line today, wrapping up my draft (rather hastily) at 52K words. I expected more of a sense of triumph; instead, I just feel a little lost. What am I supposed to do now that I don’t have to wring words out of every second of every day?

Write more words, of course!

Next up on my plate is getting Stone Alliance ready for publication on March 2nd. (Hooray!) But before I move on to that, I wanted to put together a list of things I learned from my first NaNoWriMo exp...

Thanks for the fleas

“Thank You,” Betsie went on serenely, “for the fleas and for—”

The fleas! This was too much. “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“‘Give thanks in all circumstances,’ she quoted. “It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between piers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.” (The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom, 210)

One of my favorite stories of gratitude...

Hello, winter

Today, I am grateful for electricity, and for a house that is once again lighted and warm.

Today, I am not grateful for social media.

As such, I have compiled a list of all the things I can do instead of staring at people being obnoxious to each other over the internet:

Bake more cookies. Write more words. Read more books. SLEEP. (There has not been enough of this going around the past forty-eight hours.) Ponder. Pray. Meditate. Whatever you call that time when you sort out all the complicat...

Rocks and Barriers

“To be always peaceful is no more a part of progress than it is of a river, which piles up rocks and creates barriers as it flows; these obstacles cause the water to froth and humanity to seethe. This leads to disturbance; but when the disturbance is over we realize that something has been gained.” (Victor Hugo, Les Miserables)

Mountains of wearisome height

We have a poster hanging in our house of Thomas Cole’s “Journey of Life: Youth,” which shows a young person setting off in a boat, looking toward a beautiful castle in the sky. There’s so much between this youth and the castle–water, forests, plains, mountains–and as I looked at it, I recalled the words of Sam Walter Foss:

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead
And mountains of wearisome height;
The road stretches on through the long afternoon
And passes away to the night.
And still I...