More Reasons to Continue…

I am beginning to think that becoming a successful author must be as difficult as winning the lottery. Either that or you have to be born lucky.On my quest for a brilliant book and perfect cover, I have had to stretch my brain quite a lot. Not for the writing, that’s the easy bit, but all the rest of it. All that hunting for the right cover image, not to mention the marketing and promotion.All of this of course, involves that demonically possessed box of tricks on my desk. You probably call yours a computer, but I am not so polite!That thing that crashes or freezes at just the wrong moment, usually when I have spent what seems like hours trying to do something, only to lose it. That place where all knowledge lies, IF you manage to find it and have the kind of brain that can first decipher and absorb most of it.I am not computer literate, but I do enjoy a challenge. The fact that I have managed to learn so much is testament to my stubborn streak and in dominatable patience, remarkably well demonstrated by my latest endeavours.
So, back to the one problem I cannot seem to resolve, which is manipulating images to come up with new and exciting covers and pictures for the blog.I had read somewhere that removing boring backgrounds and substituting better ones was easy, even without Photoshop and I was determined to learn how.I spent more time than I could spare, watching endless demo’s and tutorials, only to try it for myself and fail miserably, cursing my brains inability to understand what must be simple for most people.
I gave up for a while, admitting defeat and resigning myself (and my books and blog) to mediocre images. However, the bit was still between my teeth. I had to learn how to do it, somehow there had to be a way. YouTube is a wonderful place for learning how to do almost anything your heart desires, and it really is amazing what you can find when you look.While I was browsing, getting annoyed that all I could find were Photoshop posts, I suddenly realised that the word PowerPoint sounded familiar, so I investigated. Sure enough, it was included in the Word software I have on my PC. I discovered I could remove the background of any image that I had, and it was sooo easy.So who needs Photoshop anyway? I hear it is expensive and complicated, so that rather excludes me. I try to stay away from things like that.
Who am I kidding? Since then, I have discovered Canva and Picmonkey, both brilliant sites for mucking about with all those images, and managed to learn all about Buffer, which is invaluable if you want to be effective on Twitter.
So the beat goes on, and I’m not finished yet, as I suspect I am barely scratching the surface of what I could learn if I try…