Too little content? Too much? Lopsided content? This post explores how a simple spreadsheet can help you wrangle your book into being. Whether you’re just starting or nearing the end, adding some number-crunching to your wordsmithing can bring clarity and structure to your writing.
Word Tip: The Navigation Pane
Word’s navigation pane can be a handy tool for working in large documents (like books). Discover how to use it to check structure, hop around, and move whole sections of text.
The Prick of New Growth: On Writing and ...
A few words of encouragement: Writing a book is more than a project—it’s a personal growth effort. It might be uncomfortable, but hang in there—the transformation is coming.
How to Begin Writing a Nonfiction Book
It can be hard to know how to begin writing a nonfiction book. Here, we cover three elements to align up front–purpose, audience, and subject–with concrete examples to get you started.
Word Tip: Creating En and Em Dashes
You can use Word’s autocorrect feature to automatically create en and em dashes. Here’s how to check your settings, use the right keystrokes, and look like a pro.
Proofreading Oversights You Don’t Realiz
You want to self-publish your book, but you don’t want your book to LOOK self-published. Do these proofreading oversights give you away? Yes? Learn how to fix them.
The MS Word Editor: Going beyond Spellch...
The MS Word Editor can do way more than check your spelling and basic grammar. But you may need to turn on the options. This article shows you how.
When the writing process feels hard, can...
Sometimes the writing process is easy; sometimes, not so much. Does it matter to the reader what your writing process is like? Learn why waiting to feel inspired before you write doesn’t really work.
Match Your Nonfiction Writing Approach t...
Choosing the correct writing approach for your nonfiction project—self-contained or emergent—can increase efficiency or relieve pressure. Here’s how.
Crisis Writing: Paying Attention To and ...
When we’re in crisis, whether societal or personal, writing about it can be tricky. Here are 3 considerations for your crisis writing, and how to decide whether it should be published.
One Word Conversation: “Discover”
In this 45-minute One Word Conversation, William Brown and I talk about the word “discover”—what we are in search of and what we want or fear to find. We touch on some surprisingly weighty writing issues: voice, procrastination, process, avoidance, and more.
A Comprehensive Guide to ISBNs
ISBNs cause new indie authors significant confusion. What are they? How do you use them? This Q&A guide to ISBNs can help demystify them. With 40 comments, this post is one of our most popular.