Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

Books and blogs

I couldn’t sleep, so I got up & blogged

by

So I crawled into bed, prepared to settle in quietly and not wake my husband.  I shut my eyes and then they opened again. I did not post my Wednesday post.  So I roll off the bed, body lengthwise, (learned that trick while very pregnant; it doesn’t shake the bed at all) and out the door of that dark, quiet, cozy room.  I am now downstairs working on this post.

To my surprise, my blog was actually viewed today, twice.  Little ghost feet came and went.  I don’t know whether to jump up and down or wonder how the accident happened, and lightening struck twice or it was more along the lines of a vortex and one person was sucked in twice.  A friend and I went driving to Portland, Oregon, once, can’t remember why, but I recall we became very lost, and I took over navigating using a Portland map. Even so, we went by the same dark, lonely building on a one-way street at least three times.  Part of me is certain someone didn’t read the Google blurb right on their search list or hit the mouse accidentally sending them here, twice even.  Hope it didn’t have that same dark and lonely look as the street we tumbled into and giggled nervously about realizing it wasn’t the best part of town and 11 PM was probably not the safest time to visit either.  Oh, let’s look positively.  Two people intentionally visited my blog, looked around, nodded sagely and left closing the door gently. 

It has been an interesting journey this getting my book epublished. Essentially, I am a shy person.  I don’t roust about grabbing people’s attention; I am not hiding in the corner either, but I do tend to be the second person to say hello, not the first, so this whole get out there and make yourself known deal is just not my costume (yes costume, not custom, though it is not that either.  I just meant I can’t put on that kind of appearance).  I know about persona, not the writing one (well that too, but that is not what I am referring to), the one a person creates to cover up the real individual underneath. Not easy being a teacher when shyness is the natural tendency. I just slip on that teacherly persona and teach.  But what is a writer’s persona?  Or rather this writer’s persona.  I know my teacherly one is unique to me, so what should this writer’s one be?  I guess I’ll just have to wait until it grows on.

Some aspect of this has to do with writing; I am certain of it.  Well, it is Wednesday and I couldn’t sleep because I blog on this day each week, and I hate feeling guilty when I miss it.  Next week I am going to write about a lovely little app I found for my iPhone that is great for mapping out a story when I am away from my computer.  How’s that for suspense?

For users of WordPerfect who want to publish on Smashwords

by

Since this is my first time having a blog, I have decided that Wednesday will be my scheduled blog day.  I still may enter other posts, but once a week I will definitely post.  Since writing is my focus for this blog, my posts on Wednesday will always relate to publishing and improving writing.

Smashwords.com is where I published my book, In Times Passed, and one thing that was very much emphasized in the formatting of a book to ready it for the meatgrinder (the program that turns the uploaded manuscript into several varieties of ebook format) is that it must be in Word, preferably 2003 or 2007 versions.  I have a preference for WordPerfect (WP), though I use Word at work.  All my writing is in wpd format.  So for those writers with the same preference as I, I wanted to share how easy it was to make the final preparation on the document that would be uploaded, while still using WP for the original document.  The writer does have to have Word for the final step, though. 

I completed my book in WP as well as put it through a final content edit.  Then following the Smashwords’ guide for publication formatting, I used the recommended “nuclear method.” The name sounds terrible, but the process truly is the easiest way to strip out WP formatting.  I used the select all menu choice in Edit, copied, and then pasted it into Notepad.  I saved the text in Notepad format.  Since I have the programs on separate computers, I used a flashdrive to transfer the new Notepad document to my laptop which has Word on it.  I then opened Notepad on the laptop, selected, copied and pasted it into a new Word document.  From there on, I followed the Smashwords’ guide on preparing the program to avoid it inserting formatting, and then I followed remaining instructions for fonts, chapter headings, scene breaks, styles, etc.

I put my book through one more final edit using a strategy I always tell my students.  I worked from the end of the document, sentence by sentence back to the beginning. This keeps me from falling into the story and losing track of the fact that I am looking for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors.  Other things catch my attention that way, too.  If I ask myself, “Who said that?”  I recheck the dialogue and make sure it is clear who is speaking as I don’t always use tags.  Ultimately, I did go through the document with a close eye for formatting codes that were not allowed.  The guide is very clear about how to do this and what to look for, so I leave any writers reading this to read it.  My main point here is feel free to use WordPerfect when creating your work, as a quick trip through Notepad clears away any formatting which could have turned the whole endeavor into a nightmare.  As it was, I had no format errors to correct after the upload and made it into the Premium Catalog without issue the first time.

yWriter software is a tool worth downloading

by

When I decided in the spring of this year to go through my books gathering digital mothballs, I knew I was going to have to find a way to visualize the plot better than I had in the past.  I tried to think of ways to use my word processing software but could not think of anything that wouldn’t be more trouble than it was worth. I searched my iphone for an app already existing but found nothing.  I searched for writing software and found a few, but they were spendy.  I decided to look and see what writers were saying about such software.  And that’s is when I learned about yWriter by Spacejock Software.

I don’t want this to sound like a paid ad, so let me just say, breaking my story into scenes and taking the time to enter the goals, conflict and outcome (for plot) helped me ensure there was purpose for each scene and know how each scene drove the story forward.  There is much more to the software, and most of what it offers has greatly improved my redrafting for content as well as time invested.  The writer can decide what she wants to use and to what extent she wants to use.  And it’s free but well worth showing gratitude by voluntarily sending in a monetary pat on the back to the developer.

Today I published my first ebook

by

I got sidetracked by blogging, and I think I let it happen on purpose. Today I uploaded my first book (In Times Passed) to Smashwords.  It was one of the most exciting things I have ever done.  Researching blogging let me settle into the fact that my book was now available.  I have been redrafting it for the last three months with a deadline date I set for August.  I beat that deadline by one day.

I searched for where to publish my ebook, and though I considered B&N and Kindle at Amazon, when I tripped over a reference to Smashwords and checked it out, I felt that I had arrived home.  Each step was scary but easy, as Mark Coker at Smashwords makes it easy.  When I downloaded my book onto my iPhone and flipped through the pages….euphoria.  I ran and showed my daughter, flipping the title page into view, then the table of contents and a few pages of the first chapter.  She said I looked scary and a little weird.  I think I am going to go see if I still look weird to her.

It only took an hour.

by

I decided to go ahead and dive into blogging.  I had no idea how to go about it, so with Robert Lee Brewer’s post on writers and when they should start blogging under my belt, I proceeded to run in circles on the site for awhile, an hour maybe. I am not certain of the time, but when I last looked at the clock at the bottom of my screen it was after 1:00 pm and now it is after 5:00 pm.  I hope it was just an hour.  I spent a lot of time reading blog responses to his post and looking at stuff to get oriented.  I am a writer, a closet writer who just opened the door.  Boy, it’s really big out here.  I think I will just gaze for awhile.