Rob Bignell's Blog, page 293

Recent editing client releases his first novel

A recent editing client of mine has released his first novel. Jay Chalnick���s ���Finding Buddha��� tells the tale of five-year-old Hubert ���Bode��� Price, who is too young to recognize his life���s purpose. But one thing is certain: People have been searching for him since the day he was born. Narrated by his father, ���Finding Buddha��� follows Bode on a cross-country road trip complete with adventurous hikes, encounters with Mexican drug lords, and intimate conversations about love, loss, life, death, and rebirth. As Bode struggles to remember the mother he never knew, his father discovers what she left him���a boy in her likeness, who meditates, quotes philosophers, and practices yoga and Reiki healing. A story of enlightenment for both father and son, Finding Buddha ends with a discovery that will change Bode���s life forever. The book is available in paperback and a variety of ebook formats.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Fort Worth, Texas, or a small town like Tightwad, Missouri, I can provide that second eye.

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Five Great Quotations about Rules of Writing

���There is no satisfactory explanation of style, no infallible guide to good writing, no assurance that a person who thinks clearly will be able to write clearly, no key that unlocks the door, no inflexible rules by which the young writer may steer his course. He will often find himself steering by stars that are disturbingly in motion.��� - E. B. White

���There is no method except to be very intelligent.��� - T. S. Eliot

���Occasionally, there arises a writing situation where you see an alternative to what you are doing, a mad, wild gamble of a way for handling something, which may leave you looking stupid, ridiculous or brilliant - you just don't know which. You can play it safe there, too, and proceed along the route you'd mapped out for yourself. Or you can trust your personal demon who delivered that crazy idea in the first place. Trust your demon.��� - Roger Zelazny

���There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are.��� - Somerset Maugham

���There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.��� - Ernest Hemingway

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Bakersfield, California, or a small town like Mosquitoville, Vermont, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Writing Inspiration: Finding time to write

Do you dream of becoming a writer but always have an excuse for not actually writing? If you���re excuse is ���There���s no time,��� think again. For the next week, keep track of times during the day that you were free to think about a story or to sketch a scene in your notepad. How many minutes did this add up to over an entire day?

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Atlanta, Georgia, or a small town like Atlanta, Idaho, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Add hashtags to your social media posts

Among the best ways to increase your social media visibility is to use hashtags. This involves adding a pound sign (aka as a crosshatch or a tic-tac-toe sign) before a keyword in your post or adding the sign/keyword at the end it.

For example, two hashtags are used in this tweet:

Suffering from #writersblock? Self-doubt about your talent? http://www.amazon.com/dp/0989672379/r... #writing

Just about every major social media site allows hashtags (sometimes simply referred to as tags) in their posts.

Hashtags offer a way for others on that social media site to search for keywords. Suppose while on Twitter someone wants to locate tweets about writers block. That can be done by typing #writersblock into the search space or by clicking on that hashtag if used in another post. So long as you use the hashtag, your post will show up in their search. This increases the chances of someone purchasing your book, heading to your blog, or retweeting/sharing you. In this sense, hashtags are a way to better reach your target audience.

Hashtags do work. Twitter states that posts with hashtags are 55 percent more likely to be retweeted than those without. Most social media report that posts with hashtags receive more hits, more shares, and more comments.

Before using hashtags, you���ll need to determine which ones work best for your book. That usually can be done typing ���top hashtags for (topic of your book)��� into a search engine. You���ll probably come across an article or blog entry in which someone (usually another author!) has already done the research for you and made such a list. Barring that, simply scan through the mini-profiles of your followers/friends and list what hashtags they���re using and that best apply to your tweets/posts.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Dallas, Texas, or if you come from a small town Why, Arizona, I can provide that second eye.

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Writing inspiration: After-action review

Experience alone doesn���t make a great teacher. A good learner also observes how he���s handling the experience, processes it afterward, and incorporates lessons from it into his life.

Given this, think about one of your recent writing sessions. What writing difficulties did you face during it (Maybe it was coming up with a plot twist or writing pithy dialogue.)? How did you handle them? What did you learn from the way you handled those difficulties? How might you address those difficulties differently the next time you write?

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or a small town like Slap-Out, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

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Spell as you speak? Miniscule vs. minuscule

Probably because most of us pronounce this word���s second syllable with a short i instead of an u, it���s been giving writers spelling problems for some time now. 

Most stylebooks, including Chicago Manual and Associated Press, recommend using minuscule, and for a long time that has been the standard spelling. However, due to growing use of miniscule between the 1930s and 1980s, many dictionaries and word processing spell checks now recognize either spelling.

This word apparently is one of those in transition, and perhaps one day minuscule as a spelling will go the way of alack and other now archaic words. Until that time, however, stick with the standard spelling.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like New Haven, Connecticut, or a small town like Bullfrog, Utah, I can provide that second eye.

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Writing Inspiration: Your Dream

What is your dream? In a few sentences, describe what would most make you happy ��� that is, what would make you feel whole and content, as a writer.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like El Paso, Texas, or a small town like Wanderoos, Wisconsin, I can provide that second eye.

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Three great ebook formatting tips, part II

Ebooks follow different formatting rules than books printed on paper. That���s because a book made of ink on paper is a different platform for presenting information than a book made of digital bits on an electronic screen. Even though the same content (your book) is being presented, the platforms will need to be handled differently, just as certainly different production methods are used for a play presented on stage and on a television screen.

Because of that, there are a number of things you might do when formatting a paperback but never would do when constructing an ebook. Following are three tips about what to differently.

Drop caps
Usually drop caps won���t work in ebooks, so they���re best avoided. As the reader can alter the font and font size, the drop cap typically will float above or drop below the line it just appear in front of. As most ebooks don���t support text wrap, converting a drop cap to an image isn���t viable either. You can create a poor man���s drop cap by making the first letter of a chapter boldface and two or three points larger than the regular text, but this generally doesn���t look as good as the elegant drop caps used in paper books.

Font size
Most ereaders will allow you to vary the text���s font size (aka point size) but within strict limits. Because of this, the paperback might be able to handle a font size of 48 points, but the ereader won���t. That���s because ereaders and tablets have a limited screen size, so going too large means all of the letters of a word won���t fit on a single line. If varying the font size, do so only with the headers and limit yourself to just a couple of changes. Typically, 18 points is the largest (and accepted) size that looks good in an ebook. So the title of the book might be 18 points boldface. After that, the most important heading ��� say for a chapter ��� would be 15 points boldface. The next heading ��� say for a section of a chapter ��� would be 12 points boldface with the text 11 or 12 points regular font. Subsections of a chapter section might be the same size as the text but in italics.

Footers
Don���t place text, such as page numbers or the book���s title, within the footer section of a word processing document. Typically this information won���t show up in an ebook, making your work for naught. Sometimes (and worse) it will show up, placing text where it shouldn���t appear in the ebook. Remember, ebooks don���t use page numbers, and most automatically will place the title of your book at the top of each screen page that the reader of you ebook sees.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Albany, New York, or a small town like Ding Dong, Texas, I can provide that second eye.

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Five Great Quotations about Why We Write

���I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.��� - Ana��s Nin

���We tell ourselves stories in order to live.��� - Joan Didion

���I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me.��� - Hunter S. Thompson

���A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself.��� - Daniel Wallace

���I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.��� - W. Somerset Maugham

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Greenville, South Carolina, or a small town like Cocklebiddy, Washington, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Writing Inspiration: Read trashy writing

Do you dream of becoming a writer but find yourself questioning your own ability to write? You night just need a little inner encouragement.

Begin by not comparing your writing to great authors. They spent years developing their skills and talents. Instead, read extremely trashy works by hack authors or in a genre that you dislike. You���ll begin to think of your writing as comparatively good and will recognize overused literary devices that you should avoid in your pieces.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Knoxville, Tennessee, or a small town like Lick Skillet, Virginia, I can provide that second eye.

 

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