Welcome, everyone, to day 15 of the 28-day writing challenge. I want to report to you what has been taking place, and to tell you about some new software that I found that has been very helpful.
As you know, I had mentioned that in writing this new book I had a few chapters from a previous book that I wanted to put into this new one. I found the file on an older computer as a PDF file. I tried to send it to the computer that I’m using now. The other computer had an older version of Windows on it that is no longer supported so I was not able to send the file.
Switching it Over
I had an external hard drive, and I plugged it in I got the file put on the external hard drive, came back and put it on my computer. I have Libre Office on my computer. When it opend the file, it opened in Libre Office Draw. In other words, it was just a series of pictures that I could not edit.
Then I was able to export it as a PDF file and save it on my computer as a PDF instead of an odf. (If you use Libre Office, you’ll know what I’m talking about.) I did I search on how to convert PDF files to Word documents in Libre Office.
Cloud Convert
The first result that came up was a YouTube video about Cloud Convert. It’s free software.
You can convert up to 25 files a day. So I went there, I found the PDF file on my computer, and I clicked on convert. It gave me the choice of doc or docx among other things, so I saved it as a docx file. It worked, and it happened really quickly!
So now I have a new docx file on my computer of the whole book that I had before. I was able to copy and paste from the chapters that I had in the book over into Libre Office. So I’m happy to report that. So I was able to add in four chapters from the earlier book.
I got chapters 15 and 16 completed as well.
The Blog Entries
I had original plans for three more chapters to be put in from previous posts from my blog. So I went to my blog, went to the “marriage” tab, and found the post I wanted to add to the book. It was one about humility. I have been able to copy it and format it. I clicked on the whole document and clicked “default paragraph style” and the program went through and formatted it really well because what I copied over at a different style. So I was really excited about that.
Now all of the new chapters that I planned are completed, the four chapters from the original book are put in, and one blog post. I just need to put in two more, and that will complete the book. tell you a little bit more when we do that,
We’re on day 15! Within the next few days, I have a bit of a challenge. Because of the snow last week, I’m going to have to go into a couple jobs at an extra day this week to be able to make up for the work missed last week. That’s going to take some extra time but I can still work an hour and a half a day and I think that will help.
So I have two more chapters to get copied, pasted, and formatted. I can either plan on getting both of them done tomorrow, depending on formatting issues, or at least the other one by Wednesday. That will mean the entire book will be completed.
I’ll have a couple of extra chapters, like an introduction and conclusion and some things like that. But the book will be done and then I’ll move into the editing process.
Getting to Editing Early!
Normally I wouldn’t be done until day 24, so by being done this early in the process, I can do some of the editing that I ususally do in the second month if I were to do the traditional route of publishing.
You can follow along with me as I go through that process. Again, you can go www.randysblogs.com and click on the “marriage” tab and you can see some of the blog posts that I’ll be adding into the book
Have you started your book? I hope you have. Maybe you’ve been keeping up with me. Maybe you have anywhere from 10 to 15 chapters done. If you do that’s great.
If not, and you’d like to learn more about this process, you can follow this link and get “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.” Until the end of the week, (today is 2/7/2022) both the print version and the Kindle version are half-price. I encourage you to take advantage of that deal.
I hope you have a good day and remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!