Posts Tagged ‘Writing’

Give Your Story A Great Beginning

Monday, July 27th, 2009

I’m still in research and planning mode – I really want to make sure I understand what I’m getting myself into when starting out to write a book.

As a complete novice in the area of book writing, I find my nights are now typically spent trawling through hundreds of sites thrown at me by Google as I continue searching for advise on book writing and how to make sure that what I put on paper will count.

Every now and then Google spits out a real gem of a site such as the Writers’ Editing Workshop. This site is managed by a freelance editor, Angela Harms, and she describes it as

“… a place for writers. It’s intended to help authors revise and polish their novels, and prepare for publication.”

The site is full of great articles including, Give Your Story A Great Beginning, Writing Non-Fiction: Write an Outline.

I can see I will probably be spending a good few hours here, now and well into the future.

Book writing with Open Source Software

Sunday, July 19th, 2009

So I’m in the very early stages of looking into the what and how of writing my book. The first thing I wanted to address was what technology is out there that I can use?

Considering that all the computers in our house run Linux (mainly Ubuntu), I have been thinking about utilising Open Source Software to assist me in my writing.

So my computers are running Linux, what about a Word Processor? Immediately Open Office comes to mind, and appears that it would fill this role perfectly.

With the basics sorted, I now need to understand in a little more detail about how I need to layout the pages of my book – how does my Open Office document need to be formatted?

A quick Google search lead me to a nice article on the Make Tech Easier blog – How to Layout a Book with OpenOffice.org: Part 1. I expect this will help me sort out the formatting and layout required for my book.

I think I will continue to post about how I am getting on, and the little tips I come across.