Got the errors for my book covers fixed. Whew! Had to search all over God’s beautiful World Wide Web to find simplified answers and the correct pixel format as well.
Found a few… goofs in my book Abide with Me. I fixed those as soon as I spotted them and re-uploaded newer versions on Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing. Now moving along to another book I’m currently in the process of wrapping up. Will I ever leave the keyboard alone and just go do something else? Yep, I do. I also run errands, get caught up on the laundry, housework and whatnot.
Writing in the ‘that’ trap. I use the word ‘that’ far too often in my stories and will I please knock it off? It’s not only annoying, but also a weak word much like “walked in” and walked over and went. As in ‘went into the store’ and ‘went across the room’, etc. Better words to use in their place, ‘saunter’, sauntered, gravitated, etc.
When taking the long way to describe (or ‘show’) the item in a story, I find I’ve used the word ‘that’ way too often to describe something in the story. All fine and good for some items, but--
What about antiques that aren’t tangible? How on earth do I describe them in such detail? For starters, I don’t own a Model T. However, I wanted my protagonist to own one brand new from a specific year so where on earth do I begin with the details of a Model T? How fast did they go, what top speeds can they do since I’ve never seen one in person or driven one for that matter. I bought an owner’s manual. Yep, a genuine piece of early automobile history and familiarized myself with basic FAQ’s and went from there.
I thought stories and books were supposed to be less about being detail-oriented and more about showing action, thoughts and using the five senses. You might think to yourself and yes, that is good. However, to be absorbed in a particular time era one has to do some extensive research like an archeologist and submerse themselves (if they possibly can) with items from that particular era.
Sounds like a major headache for most. What were the fashions, cultures and how did they communicate long before the invention of the internet in those days? For example, my protagonist in 1923 can’t just fire off an email, text while driving, or book a flight online using a credit card. My protagonist must find a telephone within phoning distance from a location to place a call with an operator. Land lines were once party lines and an operator would have a saying, “Number, please?” My protagonist must also travel on dirt roads.
I read an interesting webpage a long time ago about Hollywood. What we think of a paved Interstate in today’s time looked much different going out to California in the early days. The road comprised of planks of wood with an extremely small margin for a turn around point. The motorist often had to pull over and let the oncoming traffic by, then get back on the road. I can’t imagine how a person found road side assistance in those days long before call boxes were installed out West. Flagging down motorists was an option and so was walking for miles across parched desert in hopes to find a gas station. Tea parlors sprung up all over and yes, even Triple-A was in existence, originally established in 1902. Tea parlors offered refreshments while your Model T was getting worked on, often by individual(s) that would tow it back to their house. Tea parlors were also another life saver in the early days of automobile travel. Yikes! And we complain if we don’t have something “this very minute” in our hectic lives today. Way back in those early days traveling the open road and getting into mechanical trouble was scary before the inventions of cell phones.
Anywho—What was the most difficult aspect when writing Abide with Me? 1348 segment where it starts out was the most challenging for me. I couldn’t wait to get to the point where my protagonists spoke more modern because I never studied Shakespeare, but do realize from my Intro to Literature class I took in college the way they talked back when would make a modern day indie author cringe if they didn’t know where to place the ‘thys’, thee, thou and art, etc.
The word ‘you’ wasn’t spoken like we use it in our language. I caught this error in a few lines in my first few uploaded versions and went back and corrected them. I try my best to catch all the mistakes as I proof read before I ever upload my stuff. Sometimes though, indie author’s can fall into a numbed state staring at the computer glare for too many hours and this is where the flubs happen, especially sentences like this one for example, “struggles and strife were a into faded memory.”
Oopsy, there. I caught that just today and revised it in both copies. Whew!
I don’t advise trying to fix corrections in two different versions of the same story at once. That gets confusing! I was trying to do that last night and found that I couldn’t keep up. I’d lag behind in one segment, and forget what I added or deleted in another. Also, if you’ve written your story on an earlier program of Microsoft Word, then transfer it over to a newer version, the “ quotation marks will look funny and not curved. I can’t count how many of those I manually changed in my recent version to another book I’m in the process of completing. I don’t trust using the “replace” box found under the edit tab. I remember the first time I used it and it changed one of my words, “incarnation” to “intrucknation”. Exasperated beyond words, I had to then go through the whole story all over again and manually change this out. I was so infuriated with that “replace” box that, if it was possible, would have kicked it to the curb.
My best advice is to re-configure the “ quotation marks first, then go back through the story and start on the revisions and corrections. It will make the process go a little quicker. And avoid, if at all possible, falling into the ‘that’ trap of using the word ‘that’ when describing an item. It gets repetitive. So for now I’m going back clacking the keys to finish up my other vampire story that has nothing whatsoever to do with my first book.
Found a few… goofs in my book Abide with Me. I fixed those as soon as I spotted them and re-uploaded newer versions on Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing. Now moving along to another book I’m currently in the process of wrapping up. Will I ever leave the keyboard alone and just go do something else? Yep, I do. I also run errands, get caught up on the laundry, housework and whatnot.
Writing in the ‘that’ trap. I use the word ‘that’ far too often in my stories and will I please knock it off? It’s not only annoying, but also a weak word much like “walked in” and walked over and went. As in ‘went into the store’ and ‘went across the room’, etc. Better words to use in their place, ‘saunter’, sauntered, gravitated, etc.
When taking the long way to describe (or ‘show’) the item in a story, I find I’ve used the word ‘that’ way too often to describe something in the story. All fine and good for some items, but--
What about antiques that aren’t tangible? How on earth do I describe them in such detail? For starters, I don’t own a Model T. However, I wanted my protagonist to own one brand new from a specific year so where on earth do I begin with the details of a Model T? How fast did they go, what top speeds can they do since I’ve never seen one in person or driven one for that matter. I bought an owner’s manual. Yep, a genuine piece of early automobile history and familiarized myself with basic FAQ’s and went from there.
I thought stories and books were supposed to be less about being detail-oriented and more about showing action, thoughts and using the five senses. You might think to yourself and yes, that is good. However, to be absorbed in a particular time era one has to do some extensive research like an archeologist and submerse themselves (if they possibly can) with items from that particular era.
Sounds like a major headache for most. What were the fashions, cultures and how did they communicate long before the invention of the internet in those days? For example, my protagonist in 1923 can’t just fire off an email, text while driving, or book a flight online using a credit card. My protagonist must find a telephone within phoning distance from a location to place a call with an operator. Land lines were once party lines and an operator would have a saying, “Number, please?” My protagonist must also travel on dirt roads.
I read an interesting webpage a long time ago about Hollywood. What we think of a paved Interstate in today’s time looked much different going out to California in the early days. The road comprised of planks of wood with an extremely small margin for a turn around point. The motorist often had to pull over and let the oncoming traffic by, then get back on the road. I can’t imagine how a person found road side assistance in those days long before call boxes were installed out West. Flagging down motorists was an option and so was walking for miles across parched desert in hopes to find a gas station. Tea parlors sprung up all over and yes, even Triple-A was in existence, originally established in 1902. Tea parlors offered refreshments while your Model T was getting worked on, often by individual(s) that would tow it back to their house. Tea parlors were also another life saver in the early days of automobile travel. Yikes! And we complain if we don’t have something “this very minute” in our hectic lives today. Way back in those early days traveling the open road and getting into mechanical trouble was scary before the inventions of cell phones.
Anywho—What was the most difficult aspect when writing Abide with Me? 1348 segment where it starts out was the most challenging for me. I couldn’t wait to get to the point where my protagonists spoke more modern because I never studied Shakespeare, but do realize from my Intro to Literature class I took in college the way they talked back when would make a modern day indie author cringe if they didn’t know where to place the ‘thys’, thee, thou and art, etc.
The word ‘you’ wasn’t spoken like we use it in our language. I caught this error in a few lines in my first few uploaded versions and went back and corrected them. I try my best to catch all the mistakes as I proof read before I ever upload my stuff. Sometimes though, indie author’s can fall into a numbed state staring at the computer glare for too many hours and this is where the flubs happen, especially sentences like this one for example, “struggles and strife were a into faded memory.”
Oopsy, there. I caught that just today and revised it in both copies. Whew!
I don’t advise trying to fix corrections in two different versions of the same story at once. That gets confusing! I was trying to do that last night and found that I couldn’t keep up. I’d lag behind in one segment, and forget what I added or deleted in another. Also, if you’ve written your story on an earlier program of Microsoft Word, then transfer it over to a newer version, the “ quotation marks will look funny and not curved. I can’t count how many of those I manually changed in my recent version to another book I’m in the process of completing. I don’t trust using the “replace” box found under the edit tab. I remember the first time I used it and it changed one of my words, “incarnation” to “intrucknation”. Exasperated beyond words, I had to then go through the whole story all over again and manually change this out. I was so infuriated with that “replace” box that, if it was possible, would have kicked it to the curb.
My best advice is to re-configure the “ quotation marks first, then go back through the story and start on the revisions and corrections. It will make the process go a little quicker. And avoid, if at all possible, falling into the ‘that’ trap of using the word ‘that’ when describing an item. It gets repetitive. So for now I’m going back clacking the keys to finish up my other vampire story that has nothing whatsoever to do with my first book.