Tonight – August 10th – is seemingly the largest full moon of 2014. Be sure to check it out!
Continue reading “Tonight’s supermoon and thoughts on perspective”
Tonight’s supermoon and thoughts on perspective
Category: Uncategorized
My PenMonkey Evaluation: Six Questions
Today I am participating in the TerribleMinds PenMonkey Evaluation. Here are the answers to my writing survey questions:
- What’s your greatest strength/skill in terms of writing/storytelling? –> Dialog. The voices make me do it.
- What’s your greatest weakness in writing/storytelling? What gives you the most trouble? –> Description. I touched on that just a couple of days ago here.
- How many books or other projects have you actually finished? What did you do with them? –> Well, that’s a bit personal, isn’t it? Okay. Well. Finished? Can I count my one completed first draft that I’m still revising? I have several other first drafts that I’m still plugging away on, but that’s it as far as actually “finishing” a book. Unless you count my book of amateurish poems I slapped up on Kindle a while back. As far as other projects go, my blogs are doing awesome. Besides this one winning an actual award (as opposed to a Liebster or something like that,) I have been steadily gathering new readers each week. Continue reading “My PenMonkey Evaluation: Six Questions”
That moment when you realize you wasted too many hours of your youth on something that became completely irrelevant as soon as the internet was invented
Remember the days when you thought you needed to buy or record all of your favorite songs because some day you may never be able to hear them again? When I was a teenager, I spent countless hours sitting by my stereo on Sunday mornings waiting for my favorite songs to pop up on the American Top 40 Countdown so I could hit the record button and add another song to my personal music collection. I always hated it when Casey Kasem talked over the intro of a song.
My other way of obtaining music was to borrow cassette tapes from friends so I could set two tape decks next to each other and record from one to the other. Mine and all my friends’ 2 Live Crew tapes had been recorded and re-recorded so many times, by the time they got to us, they were all full of static and background noise. Continue reading “That moment when you realize you wasted too many hours of your youth on something that became completely irrelevant as soon as the internet was invented”
How to format your novel for Kindle Direct Publishing
If formatting your novel is the only thing that is holding you back from publishing it, then today is your lucky day. Formatting a novel for publishing via Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is about as simple as it gets. While there are a lot of online resources that discuss manuscript formatting, I get the idea that many of them seriously overcomplicate the process. If your goal is to just publish something already, then I recommend you start with KDP. You can always move on to the more complicated methods later, once you have a better understanding of how this whole eBook thing works.
The first thing you should do is purchase a few mainstream eBooks and study how they are formatted. Then you should KISS it (Keep It Simple, Stupid.) While some books may rely heavily on images and special formatting, most novels do not need them and should not incorporate them within the eBook version. If your book relies heavily on images or infographs, then this blog post probably isn’t for you. However, if you want to get your book out there in the fastest and easiest way possible, then scrap the images and fancy fonts, and just get to it.
Here are a couple of the most important formatting concepts I have come across in my research and publishing so far: Continue reading “How to format your novel for Kindle Direct Publishing”
You should really publish an eBook today. Let me tell you how.
Recently, I’ve been playing around with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) in an effort to “practice” publishing so I’ll be ready when I finally have a novel written. I’m a hands-on learner, so I figured the best way to practice would be to just do it. So, I pulled together some random poems and other materials I already had on hand and got to work.
Of course, there is a multitude of ways to publish your own work, but Kindle seemed like the simplest place to start. After trying it for myself the first time, I have a hard time imagining that it could get any easier than this.
The hardest part – for me – was the cover design. However, if you are design-impaired like I am, even you can create your own simple cover within the KDP system. With their free cover templates, all you really need is a good image. Yes, getting your image to just the right size can be a pain. But, it does get easier once you have practiced a few times and gotten an idea of the system’s requirements.
I used a KDP template for the cover of my poetry collection, and I was happy with the results. Yes, it is probably obvious that it is a template design, but I’m okay with that for this particular project. This is a starter piece. I didn’t put a huge amount of effort into it. However, I will likely hire someone to design the cover of my first novel when I’m ready to publish it. This is one of those situations where you will need to weigh the costs against the benefits and make the decision for yourself when the time comes. Continue reading “You should really publish an eBook today. Let me tell you how.”
Welcome Autumn: How to make blackberry dumplings
To welcome autumn today, my sons and I are planning our own little at-home harvest festival, complete with a variety of cool-weather foods. We started the day off with a pan of my favorite blackberry dumplings.
My parents can’t seem to agree on where this recipe came from. My mom swears she got it from my dad’s grandma, Wilma Webster. My dad insists he never ate blackberry dumplings as a kid, so the recipe had to have come from my mom’s family. Either way, this has been a favorite recipe in my family throughout my entire life.
When I was a kid, my parents would bundle us up in long sleeves and long pants on some of the hottest days of summer. They dragged us out into the woods and shoved us into endless blackberry brambles where we would pick (and eat) until our plastic ice cream buckets were full and our hands were soaked with blackberry juice. Continue reading “Welcome Autumn: How to make blackberry dumplings”
Staycay pictures from Madison, WI
I recently went on a little “staycation” to Madison, WI to celebrate the completion of my first draft novel for the Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge. Here are some pictures from my trip. Enjoy!
10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 7
Day 7 Prompt: Profile 2 books you’ve read and loved lately.
- Wool, by Hugh Howey: Read my recent profile here.
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston: Janie marries young to a man her grandmother thinks will keep her secure. But there’s no love in that marriage, and Janie is soon carried down the road by a smooth talker with big dreams. Janie’s second husband makes her a rich and respected mayor’s wife, but he keeps a short leash on her. She doesn’t grieve but a few months after his death before she falls in love with Tea Cake, a man ten years her junior with nothing to offer but “hisself.” Is it just me, or does no woman in this world (the story world or the real world) ever get more than just a very short, sweet time with “the one?”
- Delirium by Lauren Oliver: Continue reading “10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 7”
10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 4
Day 4 Prompt: Profile 3 to 5 top writing craft books
The following are three of my favorite writing craft books:
- Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Is it a memoir or a craft book? Well, it’s a little of both. Part I covers King’s early writing years, starting with the short stories he wrote in grade school and working his way through high school and college, and then on to his time as a struggling English teacher with a substance abuse problem. In the rest of the book, King discusses his own theories on the craft. It’s an easy read full of “ah-ha moments.” A must-read for every writer, from beginner to master. Continue reading “10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 4”
10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 1
I’ve been reading Vikki Thompson’s responses to Hunting Down Writing’s 10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge over on her blog, The View Outside and decided to partake in the challenge myself. So, without further ado, here is my response to the Day 1 Writing Prompt:
For this first post, I chose to use the alternative prompt, as I believe I have already shared a pitch of my current novel project.
Here’s the first prompt: Discuss whether writers should blog about writing.
And my answer: YES! I think writers should blog about writing for a variety of reasons. Continue reading “10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 1”
Write on the World 