Gettting Women of the Way onto Smashwords was not only easy but the process led to a better reader experience.
After my struggle to get the book into the Kindle format, I was dreading preparing the manuscript for Smashwords. That dread was needless. I used Mark Coker’s The Smashwords Style Guide rev 6.16.12. Because I had created my book using styles, I did not purge my manuscript of hidden Word corruption by using “the nuclear…
Getting Women of the Way onto Kindle was difficult, involving many iterations, and not at all satisfactory
I first published Women of the Way: Embracing the Camino on June 25th on createspace.com. It took just a few hours to prepare the book for Kindle format using the Building Your Book for Kindle guidelines. Since I wrote the book using styles, this part of the preparation was easy. I wanted a functioning Table…
Women need “sisters” to travel life’s journey
Biological: I have one sister. Doris is sixteen months younger than I and is very different from me. When we were young, she was slim and I was fat. Because she was pale, mom dressed her in bright colors, especially red; I was rosy so my wardrobe was drab. She was athletic and could hit…
Not having a vision resulted in a web of difficulties, lost time, and tedious effort
I started this post over a month a ago, but decided to stop trying to solve my problems with connecting Twitter to Facebook so I could finish the book. Today, I released the book and wanted to tweet about it. I worked all evening to find a solution and still my tweets from the Jane…
Yikes! My identity crisis resulted in the three faces of Jane: the personal, the public, and the book
After months of writing, I realized that the Women of the Way blog is really an author’s page, not a book page and that I needed to separate the two. Additionally, while converting Facebook to Timeline, I took a closer look at my Facebook presence and realized that I needed an author’s page to separate…
Keeping up to date on tools is a necessity for the independent writer/self-publisher. I guess I have my work cut out.
Lately I have been studying about marketing and publishing the book. I have attended webinars and forums hoping to understand social media as a marketing tool. From these, I have a plethora of information about defining the audience, using and developing alluring words, and interacting with the reader. If I were to try to implement…
To communicate in an effective manner, limit the use of weak adverbs.
I have been reading about pros and cons of using adverbs. Erick Emert says that “using “ly” ending adverbs is BAD WRITING for fiction writers.” His reasons to avoid using adverbs make sense. MyEnglishTeacher.net on the other hand, suggests adding adverbs to make the writing more interesting. I use adverbs. To see how frequently I…
Writing in the present tense is releasing the strangle-hold of the past tense
Based on a poll of my potential readers, I decided to change the tense of my upcoming book from past to present. It took a little more than two weeks to edit the first eight chapters. In the process, I found my voice. As a technical writer for more that 25 years, I never developed…
The present tense wins!
Thank you everyone for your replies. Ninety percent of you prefer the present tense. I am now editing what I have written to date to reflect your choice. The first draft is about 80% complete, only three or four chapters left to write. Then, edit, edit, edit.
Present or Past tense
First pass, I wrote the book in the past tense and now I am debating if the present tense is more appropriate. Does the reader want me to relate the a story of my walking the Camino (past tense) or to be swept along in the midst of the action (present tense). If the story…