Ryleigh Berkenpas's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

I've never actually plotted, schemed, or planned a book before writing it, but, seeing that I know my characters already, decided to try it for the sequel I'm writing for The Fallout From Finding Emily, and I've got to say, I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying it. True, nothing ever goes exactly as planned, but because I have a plan I am not finding myself avoiding writing because I've hit a block and have no idea what to say. I do avoid writing certain scenes that I just don't feel like tackling, but all in all, when it comes down to it, I am feeling extremely good about how productive I've been - six weeks in and I already have over 40,000 words to my first draft! Yay! That doesn't mean I'm anywhere near done, as the first draft is extremely rough and the entire thing will most likely require a re-write, but just the fact that I'm getting it all on paper is super encouraging - every time I hit an additional 10,000 words I feel like celebrating! Whooo-hoo! I am loving the pre-planning thing! Now I just need to add the additional scenes to my cue cards and sort everything out - and write the rest, of course. This is me, wishing you more and more happy reading (and writing)!

I had it easy when I formatted my book for Kindle and posted it on Amazon.com, I realize that now, after I've spent 8+ hours trying to successfully format my novel, The Fallout From Finding Emily, for publication on Kobo Writing Life. I've changed the format numerous times trying to find success and just can't seem to get it right - first there are page-long spaces between each paragraph, even the paragraphs that are only one sentance long, then I figured out how to rectify that but now there are no spaces or indents between any of the paragraphs. I figured out how to fix this, again, not the correct way, but hey, it was fixed - but when I looked through the sample ePub Kobo provided, realized while converting, it randomly entered page breaks in the middle of random words in 5 different places in my book. Confusing much? Yes. I'm about to pull my hair out - and I really, really like my hair. But never fear, dear readers, if you don't have a kindle or the kindle app, I do not plan to give up - I just hope I can figure this out in the next months. The anticipated release date for The Fallout From Finding Emily on Kobo is May 5, 2013; hopefully it will be ready by then. And until then, I'll be reading, formatting, and writing my pretty little heart out. ~Ryleigh <3