5/2/2019 Day 2 - Write a BlurbWhat is a Blurb?
At some point in the publication process, probably before you actually hit the Publish button, you will write the "real" blurb for your book (or find someone famous to write one for you!). At one time, the book blurb was the paragraph found on the back of a book or on the back dust cover that acted as a sales pitch for the book. Now blurbs are used all over the place including on the author's website, on social media sites, and in book trailers. You can find lots of websites giving recommendations on how to write a killer blurb and you should definitely check them out when you get ready to publish. I'd recommend any of the posts by Reedsy (https://blog.reedsy.com/write-blurb-novel/), Kindlepreneur (https://kindlepreneur.com/back-book-cover-blurb/), and Writers Write (https://writerswrite.co.za/how-to-write-an-irresistible-book-blurb-in-five-easy-steps/). The blurb you write here is not intended to be your final book blurb. This one is to give you focus for the editing process. It should help you nail down what you intended to be the essence of your story as you were writing it, including who is your main character and what is it the main character needs to do. Rather than read through your story to see if you wrote everything you thought you wrote (we'll do that later), first create the Blurb worksheet below and fill in the blanks. Exercise: Write Your Blurb If you are creating your notes in your OneNote Novel Editing notebook, follow these steps to complete the exercise:
Once you have thought this out and feel like you have figured out the essence of your story, write it on a sticky note or print it out in 18 point letters so you can refer back to it while working through the rest of your edits. DOWNLOAD: Blurb Worksheet Template Instructions Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 3 - Outlining (Part 1 - Character Attributes) Microsoft OneNote offers a nice way to save pages to share with others in the form of page templates. You can export a single page, a whole section or even multiple sections as "*.one" section using the File > Export options in the ribbon. Once shared, you can either open the page and add it to another notebook (though why not just drag and drop while holding the Control key, which copies the page to the new location when dropped), or you can share it with someone else so they can add it to their notebook. I've offered multiple page templates for download on the Office Warrior Connection pages. Download and Use the Page Templates from the OneNote
What is the OneNote Novel Editing Plan? During November's National Novel Writing Month in 2017, over 400,000 writers signed up at www.nanowrimo.org and committed to writing 50,000 words towards a novel. According to the website, more than 58,000 people met their writing goal. Many of these were first-time writers. And I suspect many of them were like me when I finished drafting my first novel. What do I do now? If you have an editor already, that's fantastic! Of course, even if you have an editor, you may still want to work through the exercises I've put together in order to hand off a copy that is as clean as you can get it because that might save your editor time which means that might also save you money. It's important to note that even though I'm providing a work-plan for editing, this doesn't mean I think you can or should forego an editor once you're done. Au contraire! An editor will be able to see things you miss because you are so "close" to your work. They will be able to point out spots that lag, inconsistencies in characters, and find spelling and grammar mistakes that you have overlooked the last 45 times you read through your work. The biggest question for someone who's written a novel for the first time is, where do I begin? It's a lot of words. It can feel incredibly overwhelming to have 50,000 words or more and not have any idea how to begin editing. That's where this OneNote Novel Editing Plan comes in. I'm going to give you strategies to get you moving in the right direction. Where Does Microsoft OneNote Come In? Microsoft OneNote is a completely free premier note-taking application. If you have Microsoft Office, you probably already have OneNote installed. On a PC, look under your Start button in All Programs > Microsoft Office. If you don't have it yet, you can download it from https://www.onenote.com. It will run on any operating system and any device you have, so you can edit anywhere anytime as long as you have access to your Editing Plan notebook and a copy of your novel. I will be showing you how to use Microsoft OneNote to store all your notes and checklists for editing your novel. The "Plan" part of the OneNote Novel Editing Plan includes setting up checklists and worksheets that will get through the editing process one day at a time. It will feel less overwhelming working in chunks than trying to tackle 50,000 words all at once! If you aren't familiar with using OneNote, I have written some posts to demonstrate how easy the application is to use. You can find a short list of instructions that will get you started on my Office Warrior page, the same place you will find the index to all the posts for this OneNote Novel Editing Plan. You will find instructions for each Exercise included with a bit of information about what type of editing you will be attacking each day. You can either follow the instructions included on the page and create the tables and checklists as you go, or you can find a download for each worksheet you are directed to create and add it to your Microsoft OneNote notebook. If you aren't familiar with Microsoft OneNote and how to use page templates, you can find instructions here. Do you have to use OneNote? Absolutely not! I've prepared templates you can download and open in OneNote, but you can do most of these exercises on paper in a notebook or journal, in Scrivener, or in any spreadsheet application o your choice. I've given you enough information in the exercises to set your worksheets up however you'd like. I'm just a huge fan of OneNote and so that's where I'm starting from. How Do I Get Started? I'm so happy you’re still with me! You'll find that most of the activities I present can be completed one at a time. In some cases, where noted, you will want to work on several of the exercises at once so you aren't having to redo steps and waste time. For instance, if you skip right to the grammar and spelling check, then find you have a gigantic plot hole that requires several chapters to be rewritten, you will need to do the whole grammar and spelling check all over again. Each activity has no set time frame for completion. One exercise may take you a few minutes while another one can take days. My first novel took 6 months to edit! After working a full-time job during the week, some nights I didn't have more than a half hour in me, but on weekends, I could usually get a couple hours in each day. (I took off holidays.) Working through all the steps of editing will make you a better writer because it will illuminate the areas where you make the most mistakes or have some weakness and you'll start self-correcting as you write your next novels. If you think you have a solid story without any plot holes, then I'd say go ahead and skip around to pick off the items where you know your story needs help. Your personal OneNote Novel Editing Plan should be created to suit your needs! Will I really get it all done in 30 days? There's a good chance you will not get all the editing done in 30 days, but it really depends on how much work your novel requires. My first novel was a train wreck. It had plot holes, weak character development, and so many more things wrong with it that I nearly gave up on it. In the end, I spent almost a full 6 months editing before I handed it off to beta readers. Then, after my betas gave feedback, I spent a couple more months revising. What is important to remember is that editing is not a race. It's a marathon. Pace yourself. Your journey into editing might take five days or it might take five months. The goal should be to turn your great story into a masterpiece. Don't compare yourself to others! Day 1 - Set Up Your OneNote Notebook and Create Your Editing Checklist starts tomorrow. If you want to see what's coming in future posts, peruse the OneNote Novel Editing Plan's Table of Contents. Anything without a live link is still to come. Days 3 - 7 will be posted all at once on May 3 because the exercises for those days can be done in tandem with each other. This doesn't mean you have to do them all at once, it's just an option since reading through your novel five times could be tedious. Best wishes and happy editing! Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 1 - Set Up Your OneNote Notebook and Create Your Editing Checklist Welcome to Day 1! The first step in the OneNote Novel Editing Plan is to set up your notebook for storing all your editing notes. If you aren't familiar with Microsoft OneNote, you can take a couple minutes to review the basic instructions I provided on the Office Warrior Connection page. Instructions are written for Microsoft OneNote 2016, but if you have an older version of the software, you will probably find the instructions haven't changed much. If you still have OneNote 2010 or older, consider upgrading OneNote even if you don’t upgrade the rest of Microsoft Office. Microsoft OneNote is a free application and it is a stand-alone version that does not require you to upgrade the rest of your Microsoft Office Suite. By upgrading, you will have new features not including in those older versions. One of my favorite new features is the ability to sort Tables. (Also note, you have until October 13, 2020, before Microsoft Office reaches the end of it's support cycle.) Step 1 - Set up your new notebook Step-by-Step Instructions to create a notebook As mentioned in the Introduction [link], you don't have to set up an electronic notebook to follow along and edit your novel, but if you are the kind of person who likes to work at all hours of the day and night, you might like having the access to your notebook on all your devices. In order to have this sort of accessibility, be sure to save your notebook to your Microsoft account. Consider naming your notebook with the title of your book and the words "Editing Notebook." If my story was called "Argent Glass," I would name my notebook "Argent Glass Editing Notebook." Better yet, create two notebooks. One for your current work in progress, and one to reuse as a template for your next novel. TIP! If you set up two notebooks and are downloading the templates rather than creating them on your own, you can drag and drop a page to one section in one notebook, then drag and drop while holding your Control key to make a duplicate in another section of a different notebook. Step 2 - Set up some Sections Step-by-Step Instructions to create Sections Once you have your editing notebook created, set up some sections. You can create the pages as you go, but it will be nice to have the sections in place for all the pages you will be creating throughout the rest of the month. These are the sections I recommend you create:
Step 3 - Create a To Do List The to-do list below lists all the exercises I have set up for the complete OneNote Novel Editing Plan. You can use the list as a checklist or you can combine the list with a table and make is a task list with a column for notes about what you need to do to complete the exercise and checkboxes to mark items complete.
DOWNLOAD: To Do List Template Instructions How to Use the To Do list In the notes field, you can keep track of the time you spent editing or make notes about what you need to do to finish the exercise. That way, if you get part-way done and need to move on to something else for some reason or need to come back at a later date to finish, you know where you left off. You could even add a hyperlink back to the webpage with the instructions or the links to the other resources in case you need to do more research about completing the task. The check boxes are "checkable." That means you can click on them to put a check mark in the box. If you click on them again, the check will disappear. Since you've now created the checklist, you can click that box and mark that item complete. Return to the Table of Contents Go to Day 2 - Write a Blurb
Heading styles can create visual cues for understanding where different sections occur on the page in a OneNote section. For instance, if you were writing notes about the different types of conflict that can occur, you might start by creating a list of the types of conflict first, mark the items all with a heading style, then start adding notes in the form of checklists or paragraphs of text. Add Headings to Text
OneNote has a feature called Tags which allow you to tag important notes in special ways that allow all the notes with a tag to be searched for at a later date or time. One of the most useful tags is the To Do tag which can take an ordinary list and turn it into a checklist with check-able boxes. Once you add the To Do tag to an item, you can check the box to mark the item complete, or click it again to mark it unfinished. This works nicely in a table in which you want to be able to track additional information such as notes regarding what needs to be done in order to mark an item complete. There is a bit of a trick for creating a list of check boxes in a table. You need to select the column - and that's the tricky part, because you can't just drag down through the column to select the items. Create a Check List In a Column of a Table
4/14/2019 Create a Checklist in Microsoft OneNoteThese instructions are written for OneNote 2016, but the steps should be similar to versions as far back as OneNote 2010. Checklists are great for creating To-Do lists. They can be created on the fly or generated by searching for the tag that is used to generate a checkbox on an item on a page. To create a simple checklist on the page with "checkable" checkboxes, first create your list, then convert it to a list with checkboxes. Create a List
Change the List into a Checklist
These instructions are written for OneNote 2016, but the steps should be similar to versions as far back as OneNote 2010. Tables can be used to organized like groups of information. For instance, you might keep a list of all your favorite songs. Information that might be captured in a table about your favorite songs could include: song title, artist, a short description of what the song is about, and length of the song. Each of those elements can be titles across the top of the table, then each row below would represent each song in your favorites list. Create a Table on a Page
Add a Column You can add a column to the left or the right of whatever column the cursor is currently in when it is in a table.
Add a Row You can add a row in the same manner as adding a column. Place your cursor in any cell in the row where you wish to add a row, then click the Insert Above or Insert Below button in the Layout tab of the Table Tools menu. Alternately, Ctrl + Enter will add a row below the current row. Sort a table Sorting is a new feature in Microsoft OneNote 2013. You will not find this feature available in the older versions.
Sorting rows in an older version of Microsoft OneNote Sorting rows in an older version of Microsoft OneNote is more of a manual process. One work-around is to copy the table into a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel and performing the sort there. However, if you only have a couple rows that need to be shifted around, you can move a row in the following manner.
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