I still use Microsoft Word extensively for my writing projects.

But first, I want to point out that this article is not about which writing software is better. I know some die-hard Scrivener fans, and some writers who like the simplicity of a no frills text editor. Writers tend to have strong opinions on their preferred writing tool, but I gotta say, I’m a big believer in just use what you like best. There is no ‘best’ software. I just happen to prefer Word.

If you like Word too, and want to get more out of it, then perhaps this article will be of use (or at least that was my goal for writing it).

Which brings me to main focus – using the Document Map feature in Word to quickly jump around the document from scene to scene or chapter to chapter.

I don’t write linearly – I didn’t with my non-fiction books, and I don’t with my fiction books. I like jumping around and ‘layering’ my books as the moods strikes.

For those that haven’t used this feature before, you can easily turn it on by going to the View tab, and clicking the checklist (it won’t be pink – I just highlighted it here so you can see it more easily).

This will open up a panel on the left hand side of your screen.

If you are in a new document, it will be probably be blank, but if you are in a current working document – depending on how you’ve set up your styles – you’ll see a whole bunch of headings and other notes here.

Here’s what my current WIP’s document map looks like:

You can see fairly clearly that I’ve listed all my chapters sequentially and I’ve also got notes of what happens in the scene, and sometimes other notes including things I still need to do.

How do you get your document map to look like this?

Heading Styles.

As I’m writing the document, I attribute my chapters and notes to different headings.

Chapter 1 (for example) will get the Heading 1 style. Scene description will get heading 2 and sometimes I’ll write extra notes using heading 3.

This is a quick guide of which styles I personally use, although you should play around with it for what works best for you:

Heading 1 attribute: ACT #, Chapter #
Heading 2 attribute: POV, Scene Description, Scene # (if more than one scene per chapter)
Heading 3 attribute: Notes, Word Counts, To Do’s

The hierarchy of the Document Map shows Heading 1′s first, Heading 2′s indented under that, and Heading 3′s indented further again.

You can also open or close anything under the Heading styles using the tiny + or – box next to the main heading. This helps if you have a lot of notes, and just want to skip quickly around to each chapter.

I like using the Document Map so that I can quickly jump around my manuscript by clicking on the left which then brings me to the correct place on the right side of the screen, so I can continue writing.

It’s much better than scrolling through your document trying to navigate to earlier or later chapters which can be a pain for large books. It’s also a good method to see at a glance what’s going on – to see the big picture.

 

You might be wondering by now, what happens to these notes once you’ve finished your manuscript. I delete them.

Using the document map like this is only useful in your drafts (and I keep a few draft versions), so you will need to delete anything that isn’t necessary in your final clean document before you upload to stores.

I do keep the notes in until the very last-minute though. They are even included when my editor goes through it. She likes that she can see a good overview of the book at a glance and says it makes her job easier, too.

Using Commenting to keep track of details.

Another small tip I do is write notes such as character hair color and so on, by using the commenting feature of Word.

 * No laughing at the story – it’s still very rough first draft

Usually I do this for minor characters only (as I prefer to have a separate scene and character document for major characters and locations).

It’s a quick way to find out what hair or eye color you’ve made for one of your characters as you can view all of  your comments at once by opening the Reviewing Pane (from the Review tab). You can either open it in place of the Document Map or at the bottom of your working document.

I hope you’ve found these tips useful for using Word to write your next book.

Happy writing,

Tracey

It’s true.  I’ve never done NaNoWriMo before and this year I’ve signed up and I’m super excited about it.  The reason I decided to do it was for one reason, and one reason only – it sounded like fun.

What could be more exhilarating than sitting down every day to write a story?

Now I have no illusions that whatever I write during next month will be any good (but perhaps I’ll surprise myself anyway), but who cares.  It will be FUN.

I think I’ve prepared adequately, I’ve done my outline (I even purchased a brand new pretty notepad to do so) and have written the basic plot points I want to cover and a rough guide to where everything goes in the story.  I know most of the characters names (except the male love interest whose name I can’t seem to figure out yet), and how they relate to each other.

It’ll be set in 1943 so I’ve done some research on music, food, clothing etc of that era.

I even purchased Chris Baty’s ‘No Plot No Problem’ (he’s the founder of NaNo) which I’ll be reading alongside the challenge each day.

So I’m as prepared as I can be.  Or at least I think I am.  I’m a  NaNo newbie remember?

And of course if it’s anything like the novel I’ve just finished (yes I really did finish my zombie novel – yah me – it’s currently with my editor) I know that nothing ever goes to plan and characters seem to have a mind of their own.  So really how prepared can you be?

There’s only a week to go and I can’t wait!

Who’s with me?

The lure of writing a novel is something that most people dream of, and it is said that everyone has a novel inside them bursting to get out, so I guess it was inevitable that I decided I was going to write one too.  I’d written a handful of short stories and I was getting the hang of this fiction thing, it would be easy right?

Not so fast soldier …

I was under the naive assumption that writing a novel would be just like writing the short stories – just with lots more words.  Nope.  Not even close.  They are two completely different beasts and like it or not, so far the novel has been both exhilaratingly fun and painfully frustrating.

You see, it’s not just about the amount of words you have to write.  I probably write the word count equivalent of many novels a year when it comes to the blog posts, articles, stories, and emails claiming I’m a Nigerian prince.

Instead it’s about writing something that’s interesting, unique, structured, compelling.

The bright-eyed naivety of a new novelist …

I was very gung-ho when I started, all full of eagerness to begin.  And the first chapter or so went fairly well too.  I was on a writing roll!  But by the second chapter I had started to falter.

I had a plan.  Didn’t I?

I knew what was supposed to happen next.  I had compiled an outline of how I wanted the story to go and had it all nicely mapped out including word counts to aim for each chapter, where I wanted to bring in new characters, where major plot points were to happen.  In outline form it was perfect.

But, as I was soon to discover, writing isn’t really an exact science and having a plan doesn’t mean your characters want to go there.  Those pesky little people that I had made up started to take on a mind of their own.  They were overtaking my lovely outline and bringing out their own personalities apart from those that I had written for them.

And here I was thinking I was the one in control!  Nope.  It seems that sometimes I’m just the typist.  Talk about putting me in my place.  (Note: Non writers will right now start to call the authorities because they think I’ve gone mad – writers will be nodding their heads – yep yep – told you so.)

For example: I wanted a kick-ass knife wielding female protagonist – a real tough cookie.  The character that I’ve written however is sweet, caring, and cares about the plight of small animals.  And although I’ve made her keep the knives, she came up with her own sad back story as to why she prefers knives over guns.  What the heck happened?

First Drafts Are SUPPOSED to Suck.

Another thing I’ve discovered is that all first drafts suck.  But they are supposed to, so don’t stress I get on with it.  (I don’t want any writers commenting here how their first drafts are perfect because for most people this isn’t reality – it only comes good after the 2nd, 3rd and 4th drafts in the following months).

Chris Baty said in his book No Plot No Problem that a good first draft is like bread.  You need to bash the shit out of it for it to rise to something delicious.

I think this is the reason so many people give up writing a novel.  Because they start writing and the characters start taking things in different directions, or they write a chapter or two which isn’t working and bemoan the fact that they can’t write.  So they give up.

I read somewhere that only about 5% of people who start a first draft of a novel ever finish it.  I’m not really sure about the statistics because I can’t find any proof to back that up.  The closest I’ve come up with is the results from last years NaNoWriMo in which around 14% of the participants ‘won’ (that is they finished their 50,000 words within the month) – for those that like stats – 256,618 participated in 2011 and 36,843 finished – source: http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/mediakit).  That doesn’t of course count those that finished it at a later stage, and of course that competition is biased towards those that are probably experienced writers to begin with (which kind of skews the results favorably or not depending on which way you want to look at it).

Knowing that I don’t have to write a perfect (or even a good) first draft is freeing, and has allowed me to keep slogging at it.  I’m determined to finish it (and if my writing schedule goes according to plan I’ll be typing the words THE END on my first draft on 25 September).

Then I can start the weeks or even months of rewrites, cutting, adding, and shaping – before it’s anywhere close to being publishable.

Writing Fiction Changes Who You Are

When I started this journey into fiction I thought it would be a good way to make some extra cash using the throwaway writer method.  But something changed during the process – I began to want to be a better writer – it wasn’t just about the money anymore (although don’t get me wrong, I still obsessively check my kdp report more than once a day to see if I’ve made a sale and then do happy dances if I do).

I now devour books such as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.  I’m not longer in a rush to get things published before they are ready.  My whole mindshift has changed – and writing fiction has done that to me (and I’m not even halfway through the first draft yet – yikes! what is going to happen to me by the end of this?)

What I’ve learned so far.

• Writing a novel is hard.  Much more difficult than I thought it would be – no wonder people give up!
• The characters seem to have a mind of their own.  A good structure can help you – but don’t expect things to always go to plan.
• Know that the first draft will suck.  It is supposed to suck.  Probably you will only use about 50% of what you first wrote anyway, as the rest will be added to, cut, polished and exorcised during the rewriting process.

I’m looking forward to see how all of this all plays.  Each day my routine is blogging, promotion in the morning then writing one hour of the novel in the afternoon (usually about 1,000 words – sometimes more, never less).  I’m taking it one day at a time.

I can’t seem to write more than 1,000-1,500 words a day on the novel.  I need that other time for the story to speak to me at the times I’m not at the keyboard.

Am I becoming a real writer or just completely insane?

Only time will tell.  I’ll keep you informed of my mental state (and the novel progress) in latter posts.

Keep writin’

Tracey

Yes.  And here’s why.

Most self published writers (and I was one of these) believe that they can do everything themselves.  Writing, marketing, editing, cover design.  A true independent author needing no-one except the words that flow from our soul.  Ah, living the dream …

But I can tell you from personal experience – it’s a crock.  You just can’t do everything yourself and be taken seriously.  I know – I’ve got the 1 star scars to prove it.

You see readers expect to get a good product when they hand over their hard earned 0.99 cents, and if you disappoint them in any way, by say putting a comma in the wrong place you can bet they are going to cry to the world.

But I can’t afford editing, it’s too expensive.

Ahh the self pubbers catch cry.  I can’t afford it.

But can you really afford not to?

Case in point.

I have one non fiction book that was priced at $4.99 that was selling over forty copies per month.  That one book was earning me approx. $140 a month in royalties.  I did have a beta reader go through it before I published, but it wasn’t professional edited.

After a one star review pointing out how ‘badly’ self published it was, my sales have since fallen to around 15 copies per month (and I’ve had to lower the price to $2.99 to entice buyers back).  That book now earns me approx. $32 a month.  I just lost well over $100 PER MONTH by not getting this book edited.

This book has now been edited (it cost under $90) but the damage has been done.

Another example, this time fiction.

The first fiction book I ever wrote was again unedited when I first published it.  Goodreader’s have slammed it.  It has since been rewritten slightly and also edited.  I can’t believe the difference – it’s now actually pretty good.  And reviewers are coming around and giving me higher stars now.  It cost me around $20 each to get the short stories edited, which I have no doubt I’ll earn back easily.

Editing is not as expensive as you think and may well help your book explode off the shelves earning you more money in the long run.

What exactly do editors do?

Good editors don’t ONLY find spelling and grammar errors, they also find continuity errors (did your character start with brown hair and then you describe it as blonde later on?), point out what isn’t clear, fix minor formatting and so on.

They’ll also make suggestions with structure for your non-fiction if they think one section would do better somewhere else.

You can also get some editors to give you advice on plot and characterisation, if that’s what you are after (although that usually costs more).

For indies though, and especially if you’ve never used an editor before, it’s probably best to just start with basic editing/proofing.

They don’t change your voice though.  That’s still all you.  But they will help YOUR book look and read more professional, and that, in my opinion, will help it sell much better and make you more money.

Can’t I just do it myself?  I’m good at finding spelling errors.

Maybe you can.  I thought I could too.  Check your reviews.  Has anyone ever commenting that it could do with a good editor?  Ouch – sales killer.

But where do I find good editors?

I regularly read the forums over at kindleboards.com and often other authors recommend their editors.  It was how I found the ones I use.

I think you’ve convinced me but I’m still unsure

Yeah.  I get that.  I was too.

Hiring an editor means that you are taking your writing to the next level.  You are becoming PROFESSIONAL.  And that can be scary.

So that little non fiction guide that you threw up on a lark to see what would happen, or that story that you weren’t sure whether you had talent or not but published anyway – you didn’t expect to care about them, you just wanted to make some money.

But you could make so much more if you invest a few bucks in good editing/formatting/cover design.

And once you start making good money, you’ll see the investment was worth it.