I wrote a book...

If you'll recall, my last post was about Nanowrimo and that I'd finally broken 50,000 words.  Well, in the last two weeks I've taken that bundle of words and disjointed dialogue, shaped it, molded it, and turned it into a book.  Playing Dirt, which can now be purchased as an Ebook on Amazon.com.

How did that happen?  Well, mostly with Pinterest.   If you're as old as I am (35) then you may recall The Little, Brown Handbook where you had to search out all of your questions for punctuation and grammar when writing a story or research paper.  This is what we had, there was no Google, and generally my teachers would never answer a question unless you could not find the answer in the Handbook.  It was frustrating.  Now though, there are some fabulous blogs and online articles about proper editing, and I'd like to take a moment and post some links for some of the best ones I found in my search.  No, I can't say that I hit the pinnacle of grammatical perfection, I'm sure there are still many errors, but it is definitely better than it was when I stopped at the end of November. 

First, The Editor's Blog.  As I was doing what I thought was my final edit, I had a vague niggling at the back of my mind about lower case letters starting after dialogue, but I couldn't remember why, or when I would use it.  This saved me, well, it caused me another run through of editing because I was doing it all wrong, but it was very clear and easy to understand.

Second, Writer's Digest: What To Look For When Editing Your Manuscript.  I loved this article, and it really helped me focus on the things I needed to look for.  Especially rule# 5 - The Audible Read.  If it doesn't flow well when you're reading it aloud, then you've screwed something up.  Go fix it.

This, from The Write Life.  Actually, everything from The Write Life, it's an excellent blog and I really suggest reading a few articles before you get started.

  

And finally, if you're going to publish to Amazon Kindle, you really need to download the free book from Amazon about how to format your work so that it will work on the Kindle platform, Building Your Book For Kindle. 

If you're really bored, or just want to waste more time while you're supposed to be writing something, I've got a whole bunch of tips, funny writing ecards, and other blog links on my 'Writing' Pinterest board.  http://www.pinterest.com/manderbet/writing/

Go forth, and create!