The Hapless Writer
Writers Blog 181114 Week 8
My worst fears have been realized…
The novel is back from the editor and she hasn’t been able to do anything about the stain.
No it is mostly good news. I might’ve mentioned she didn’t like the rewrite to the start, but the good news is she has told me how the original start can begin. It’s all good. A couple of tweaks and a servere reprimand concerning over writing and it’s all good.
Now the story is out in the world being read so while that is going on I’m commissioning the cover. I am told the cover is more important than the work inside. That readers do tell a book by its cover and then there’s the testy task of writing the blurb that doesn’t turn people off reading the first preview chapter
I remember when I was running a pub called the Hampshire Hog in West London there was an Irish bird running the the Ravenscourt just up the road toward chiswick and she told me, in themidst of recovering from a serious hangover, that so long as she controlled the drink, didn’t take the piss her life would be just fine. You see she looks forward to the piss up. She looks forward to loisng it and singing and dancing and puffing on cigarettes or weed and making a right old fool of herself because that’s needed in life. But it has to be controlled, eh?
Of course I am speaking in the midst of a bad couple of weeks with the drink. I mean I’m not getting hammered nightly but I don’t seem to be taking the breaks anymore, the days off and I’m blaming NaNoWriMo for my current predicament, because my favourite place to write is the pub and I am on a right old streak at the moment getting 2.5 words a day done.
Come December we’ll take a break. Give the liver a rest before the festive season commences.
Listen I’m not much good at this stuff because my life has no real structure, but I do believe control is all important. An alcoholic is person who can’t be bothered with the control. We drunks have still got the ability to say no, once in a while. Long may the ability to say no remain within my will.
1. Proofread, proofread, proofread. It’s an obvious first (and last) step. Check for proper spelling, grammar, and syntax. Once your book has been converted to ePUB or .mobi format, it’s too late to fix a typo — and if you use a service such as BookBaby to handle your eBook conversion, we won’t be proofreading your book (though we will handle your conversion with lots of human attention and care).
2. Use consistent formatting for paragraph and line spacing/indentation throughout the document. You can use tabs or your program’s paragraph or alignment formatting functions, but do NOT use a mixture of both of those methods. Also, do NOT use the space bar to format/indent paragraphs or individual lines.
3. If you choose to include the publisher’s name and address, the date of publication, copyright information, your book’s ISBN number, or any appropriate collaborative credits, please do so within the first two pages of the document.
4. Use a standard font for your document (Times New Roman, Courier New, etc) — and remember, many eReading devices allow the user to customize their font preferences, so a fancier font — in addition to complicating the conversion process — will probably just get “lost in translation” anyway.
5. Don’t use very large or very small font sizes. I’d recommend 12pt font size for your body text and 14-18pt for chapter titles.