Inventing Reality Editing Service

Writing Affirmation: I regret nothing I write.

All too often when beginning authors think about what they’re writing, they scowl and wonder why they even bother. Their writing, they surmise, is horrible – poor cadence, clunky dialogue, dull plotting, etc., etc., etc.

If that sounds like you, don’t be guilty of “third-eyeing” your writing. “Third-eyeing” is a term I borrowed from Hollywood acting coach Warner Loughlin; she advises her acting students not to “watch” their your own work as they give a performance. This only makes them self-conscious and so they second guess themselves. Likewise, authors shouldn’t “watch” your own writing of a novel or a short story as writing it; doing so means you’re criticizing a story before it’s even completed! There are still revisions to be made, after all.

Instead, just allow yourself to write, to be in the moment. If you finding yourself slipping into third-eyeing, remind yourself that you just want to enjoy the act of writing for its own sake.

Of course, realistically there likely are some issues with your novel or short story. But during the writing of the first draft – or even the second or third or fourth draft – is not the time to fret about them. Each draft is just like learning to walk; you didn’t walk perfectly on the first step you took, but with each successive attempt, you improved. Making a mistake, falling, and getting back up was part of the learning process. In much the same way, the low quality of what you’ve written and the work you put in to obtain that clunker is important, as it gives you the skills necessary to write a better book with less effort.

The time to analyze your writing for areas that need to be corrected is after you’ve written the draft. That’s when you proofread and write notes to yourself like, “Use active voice in this sentence,” “Tighten this dialogue,” and “Refocus scene so main character is trying to overcome obstacle.” Then start your next draft without third-eyeing yourself as rewriting that sentence, conversation or scene.

In short, when writing, don’t be afraid to stumble – just get up afterward!

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Employ right keywords to boost book sales

Among the most important marketing strategies you can employ to sell your self-published book is ensuring you use the best keywords. When uploading your book to Kindle Direct Publishing, you have to identify at least one and up to seven keywords that will help readers locate your book. Often authors overlook this part of the process until they reach this point in the upload.

Scrambling to come up with several keywords just to answer the question isn’t a good marketing strategy, though. In fact, you’ll likely list words that don’t help your book at all, even though they may be accurate words for a card catalog. For example, if you wrote about bicycle festivals and listed as keywords the cities where those celebrations occurred, unless they are quite populous it won’t help your book. Though listing such cities might be accurate, most people won’t look for your book via the city but instead through more general terms, such as bicycle festival.

There are a couple of schools of thought about how to determine which keywords are best.

One is to focus on how Amazon.com readers use a search engine to locate your book. For example, if you go to any Amazon.com page that peddles a paperback or an ebook, you’ll see a search engine at the top of the web page. If looking at an ebook web page, it says “Kindle Store” on the left side of the search engine. Your goal is determine what words people would type into that search engine to find a book like yours. Fortunately, you don’t have to do too much thinking.

Begin by deciding what would be the most general word that best describes your book. If I wrote a guidebook to bicycle festivals, for example, I would type bicycle into the search engine, and up will pop several different terms – such as bicycle touring and bicycle repair – for me to select from. These are the terms that others searching on Amazon.com have typed in. Write down the ones that are applicable to your book and continue this process until you have at least five but no more than seven words. These then are your keywords.

Another school of thought says to focus on the categories that Amazon uses to place books on its bestsellers list. So when using the search engine for bicycle terms, I might choose bicycle touring. This then brings me to a list of books that fit the search parameter; on this new web page’s left is a list of Kindle categories, which include such terms as Cycling and Travel Writing. Write down those categories that your book best fits until you have five to seven keywords.

Which method works better? I’ve experimented with both, and while each works, I prefer focusing on categories. Most readers using the search engine eventually click onto the categories to help them narrow the range of what they’re seeking, so getting yourself listed in a specific category is as good as using a search engine topic. Further, using such categories as keywords seems to help Amazon figure out which bestseller list to place your book when sales occur, and ultimately you want to end up on a bestseller list.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Ways Microsoft ought to improve MS Word

The primary software that self-published authors use to write and format their books is MS Word, a word processing program. While MS Word has improved over the years, unfortunately it still works like a glorified typewriter and so isn’t well-suited for book design.

MS Word isn’t going away, though there are better programs out there for both writing and designing books. This largely is because of three factors: authors are familiar with the MS Word program; other programs (particularly book designing software) is an additional (and often a great) expense; and because Kindle DP and Smashwords allow authors to upload MS Word documents as ebooks.

Microsoft seemingly has little incentive to alter its software or offer a variation of it to be more book designer friendly, but it ought to be proactive. It’s simply a matter of meeting consumer’s needs, and as IBM found in the 1980s when the average person wanted microcomputers, new and less expensive software soon may usurp it.

Given that, here are nine ways MS Word software needs to change to become more user friendly for self-published authors, as well as those writing long academic papers, such as for a master’s degree or a PhD. These suggestions are based on more than a decade of personally using MS Word to write and format books as well as editing other writers’ formatted books and academic papers.

Simplify page numbering functions
Several non-intuitive, often confusing steps are needed to start numbering pages after the document's first page or to change the Roman numerals used in the front material to Arabic numerals in actual text. An author should be able to directly tell MS Word to number pages 1-4 as i-iv and pages 5 through 200 as pages 1-195 without placing page and section breaks throughout the document.

Simplify header and footer functions
Doing more than aligning a page number the same way on every page is extremely difficult despite that most books don’t follow that structure. MS Word should have a button allowing authors to design both a left- and-right facing page header or footer that is used throughout the document. This would allow page numbers and different wording (such as the author’s name on the left page and the book’s title on the right page) throughout the document.

Allow the Insert Hyperlink and Insert Bookmark pop-up screens to expand
Especially for ebooks, most authors hyperlink their table of contents to chapter titles with the book. Currently, because these two screens can’t be expanded, constant scrolling is required when creating multiple links within a document.

Add automatic vertical justification
Pages in MS Word often are left with more than a couple of blank lines above the bottom margin of a page while forcing whole or partial paragraphs to the next page. MS Word instead ought to function more like InDesign, in which the text automatically fills the space on the page right up to the margin without significantly changing the spacing between the lines.

Improve hyphenation
When justifying (or distributing text evenly between the left and right margins), MS Word fills the line by expanding spaces between words on that line. The result often is abnormally large blank spaces between words on a line of text. Instead, MS Word needs to have a larger internal list of words it will automatically hyphenate words at the end of a line to make those large spaces go away.

Add an auto hide of corrections marks made in Track Changes
Unless going through a long stretch of commands, so long as Track Changes is turned on every time you open a document the red proofreading marks show up. Seeing the red marks is extremely annoying. Why not a one-stop auto hide button so that the corrected version without the red marks shows up each time an author opens the document?

Stop converting a string of underscores into a “border”
Ever have a line in an MS Word document that you just can’t get rid of? That’s because a long line is read as a “border.” Authors typically think of a long line as rule, however, that divides sections of text rather than part of a box that sets text aside as if it were part of a sidebar.

Fix the auto bullet system
A mess to use, once it’s on every time an author hits ENTER a new bullet appears; further, changing the tabbing between bullet and the text is difficult at best. A one-stop bullet button (with a drop-down menu that allows users to choose the kind of bullet – such a dot, an arrow, a square, etc. – to use) could be added. When the author hits ENTER, then next key to hit would be one for the bullet.

Add a two-page view
Authors want to see the left and the right side of a spread of their formatted book. That can be done by viewing “multiple pages” and then zooming in so only two pages appear. Why not just make “Two Pages” an option for viewing, however?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Figure out this one: Analyst vs. annalist

This pair of similar sounding words often is confused.

An analyst is someone who examines information or materials – it might be financial trends or chemical solutions – to answer some question. Because of this, an analyst analyses materials and makes an analyses. For example, Aunt Jane used to work as a business analyst for a Los Angeles bank.

An annalist, however, is someone who writes or keeps history records. The records they keep are called annals. To wit, Aunt Dawn wrote annals about important geological expeditions in Utah.

To remember the differences, try this little tongue twister: An analyst might review annals to make an analyses, but an annalist never analyses.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Four writing prompts: Out of one’s league

Good stories center on the clashing of characters’ goals and motivations. Sometimes a character’s goals and motivations arise from seeking something that is out of his league. Here are four writing prompts for stories that center on that conflict.

Man vs. nature
The main character is on a jungle (or a mountain climbing) expedition that suffers a freak accident, leaving many in the party dead. How does the main character survive in an environment in which he is out of his league and get home? What virtues does he possess that ensures his survival? What lessons does he learn during his effort to survive?

Man vs. man
How does the main character win the heart of someone who is out of his league? What is his motivation for pursuing this person? What traits does he posses that actually makes him the right person for the one who is out of his league?

Man vs. society
How does one win a position – e.g. a job or political office – that is out of his league? Why does he want to obtain this position, though doing so appears hopeless?

Man vs. himself
Our protagonist must suppress his attraction for another person who is out of his league. But that other person keeps showing up in his life, making the rejection of his feelings difficult. How does he gain the confidence to reach out to this other person?

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

What makes a story character interesting?

What makes an interesting story character for the ages? It’s more than just having them grow or learn something, and it’s more than just having them being be like a real person. While each of those qualities are important, they are no more than a tree or two when you’re looking for a forest.

Let’s suppose we have a character who is a British secret agent/commando who has been snuck into Nazi-occupied France to help form an underground resistance and coordinate efforts with London. He easily could be a stereotypical tough guy, and while that might be fine for a pure action-adventure tale, the story could be so much more with a little character development. To ensure he – or any character in any story – more intriguing, we should make our Captain Oliver Smith:

Three-dimensional or round
A real person has a broad range of behaviors and often conflicting emotions. Our Captain Smith wouldn’t always be no-nonsense tough. He also would have moments when he feels empathy for others and so is helpful even though being so doesn’t serve his mission. He would have moments when he needs a break from the job and relaxes at the local taverne, when he would feel doubtful about the chances of his mission succeeding, when he would be afraid despite his training. He does not behave the same way in every single scene. Most importantly, by stories end he might change his viewpoint or overcome some internal flaw based on his experiences.

Consistent
Though real people evolve and change, they also are creatures of habit. Likewise, a story character must behave in a way that the reader would expect them to. This can be done quite subtly; perhaps Captain Smith always orders gin when he goes to the taverne. More significantly, consistency must arise from the character’s motivations, values and goals. Perhaps he possesses a strong sense of duty and so even when he doubts the success of a mission, he goes through with it. Indeed, even if Captain Smith does something surprising in a story, that he would do it must make sense based on his motivations and values.

Flawed
Real people are imperfect. While a person may be more good than bad, a lone bad decision he makes can carry severe consequences, which in a story can lead to great suspense and tension. Captain Smith’s flaw might be that he’s increasingly dealing with the stress of his mission (maintaining his secret identity, loss of fellow resistance fighters, constantly being in life and death situations) by drowning himself in alcohol. Of course, this eventually will hamper his ability to carry out his mission or perhaps he talks a little too much one night when drunk.

Unique
Every real person has some memorable quality about them, some distinct habit, behavior or tic that sets them apart from all others. In a story, this unique quality should make them “cool” from the reader’s viewpoint. Perhaps Captain Smith’s quality is that he can solve problems by being able to find unique uses of the few, limited resources he has around him. While this ability to think outside of the box and improvise makes him a master saboteur, he also should demonstrate this talent in other instances; perhaps he is able to help repair a villager’s car or house despite not having the proper tools or parts.

Relatable
Readers always should be able to identify with the character. This may seem to be out of your realm of control, but many of us face universal issues and concerns; you want to find where those issues and concerns intersect with your readers and include those qualities in your character. In the case of Captain Smith, he might find that he often wants to take action but can’t because others oppose him or because some frustrating circumstance arises; your readers likely will relate to this sense of having one’s hands tied. Able to identify with Smith, they then will vicariously delight in the scene when he actually cuts through the nonsense and accomplishes what he (and they) knew had to be done.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Five Great Quotations about Originality

“I’ve heard so many people saying, ‘I want to be the next Wilbur Smith or the next Dan Brown.’ Well, I don’t! I want to be the first Brenden Gerard O’Brien.” - Brenden Gerard O’Brien

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos.” - Mary Shelley

“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that—but you are the only you.” - Neil Gaiman

“Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.” - Ann Handley

“Perhaps the hardest thing in all literature — at least I have found it so: by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it comes— is to write anything original. And perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.” - Lewis Carroll

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Client’s screenplay receives honorable mention

A long-time editing client of mine received an honorable mention at an international film festival for the adaptation of one of her novels. Jana Meador’s “Ribbons of Fall,” adapted from “Under The Magpie's Wings,” earlier this week was named Spring 2016 honorable mention for script writing at the Depth of Field International Film Festival. For her efforts, she’s been invited to pitch “Ribbons of Fall” to two producers through Hanhai Studio in Burbank, Calif.

Released in 2014, “Under the Magpie’s Wings” follows a family of an Italian immigrant farmer Vin Savelli and his grandson Marco, whose lives change forever thanks to a single decision during one night on their Montana ranch. Will the strong bond between generations be destroyed by the burdens they each have to carry? Marco’s quest to find the truth behind his family secrets is yet to be uncovered. The novel is available for purchase online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Editing client releases latest occult thriller

An editing client of mine has published his latest novel, the occult thriller “The Devil’s Oven.” L. Jordan James takes us inside the Devil's Oven – another name for Pawtuck Penitentiary – where dark things brew, grow and spring to life. The demon Petrocelli is one of those dark things brewing, waiting for his chance. Jonah is a convict, someone with a dark past, a man who should join Petrocelli to take over the world, but doesn't. It's because of Elizabeth. Elizabeth's embrace is where Jonah finds love and redemption. Jonah and Petrocelli are on a collision course. If Jonah loses then that darkness – Petrocelli – will escape Pawtuck, spill out into the world like a black cancer, and rule by anger and hate. The novel is available for purchase online.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

Tax forms self-published authors must file

As a published author, you’ll have to pay taxes on your earnings from book sales. As most self-published authors are self-proprietors, that means you’ll need to fill out some additional forms with the IRS.

A minimum of three forms have to be filed with the IRS:
• 1040 – This is the income tax form that you typically complete. You’ll have to fill out some new lines on the form, however, namely those regarding business income.
• Schedule C – This is the profit and loss form for sole proprietors. Numbers from this form are needed to completed your 1040.
• Schedule SE – This form is used to determine your self-employment tax, which is your contribution for Social Security and Medicare. Numbers from this form also will be used to complete your 1040.

There may be additional federal forms that you must complete, specifically for taking deductions, such as for a home office, or for health insurance coverage you might take out through your business.

For many first-time authors, federal taxes – thanks to the self-employment tax – comes as a surprise. Given this, always set aside a portion of your earnings from your sales rather than spend all of it. You can estimate how much you will have to pay in taxes by going to irs.gov and your state revenue department website to review tax rates against what you’ll likely earn. Short of that, a good idea is to set aside 30%-40% of your income for federal and state taxes; that amount is probably high for most authors, but arguably a windfall is better than a shortfall come April 15.

In addition, if you’ll have to pay more than $1,000 a year in taxes to the federal government, you’ll need to pay that in four portions, due two weeks after the end of each quarter (Federal quarters end on April 15, June 15, October 15, and January 15.). The payments should be in equal amounts, so if you owe the feds $1000 in taxes, each quarter you would owe $250. You may have to do the same for your state if it collects income tax.

IRS Publication 583 (available online for free via irs.gov) offers suggestions on starting a business and keeping records for it.

Many authors work from their kitchen table or den so slightly reduce their taxes by taking tax deductions for having a “home office.” If you wish to take that route, then check with the IRS on what it will allow for tax deductions; IRS Publication 587 (also available online for free via irs.gov) covers that topic.

When filing taxes, be honest! IRS audit rates are higher for sole proprietors than for corporations, probably because the opportunity to hide income is easier for self-employed individuals.

Final note: You also may need to pay state and county sales tax on books you sell at an event. Laws differ from state to state, so check with your state’s department of revenue for the correct forms to use.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.