Writing | Randy's Blogs

June 21, 2022June 21, 2022

Writing a How-To Book: Simple Steps to Get Started

Be sure to check out the video that accompanies this blog. You can see it here.

Sam wanted to write a book but he didn’t know how to go about it. Then he came across his friend Jim who had written a book before.

When Jim found out it was a how-to book, he told Sam, “Well, you can write a how-to book. What you need to do first is to figure out what the problem is. Then define that problem. Then come up with some steps to a solution for the problem.

“So when you write your book, you talk about the problem first. Next, you talk a little bit about the plan for accomplishing the problem. Then show the steps to the solution. Finally, at the end, you summarize what you did to get to the solution and suggest a next step for the reader.

I want to start off by talking about writing a basic how-to book and then I’ll talk a little bit more about how you can expand that.

Getting Started

First of all, define the problem. Then picture the solution to the problem and what life would be like when the problem was solved. Then brainstorms some steps that it takes to go from problem to solution. Sometimes those steps will be in order, but sometimes they may not be chronological. Either way, figure out a number of steps to get from problem to solution.

The Steps

We think of seven as being the perfect number, at least in my circle of friends. Our Christian worldview and our Biblical worldview, think of seven as being the perfect number. So I would urge you to reorganize what you come up with in your brainstorming into seven steps.

That’s not set in stone. You may not be able to get everything done in seven steps, so maybe you would have eight or nine steps. Or maybe you can cover it in six steps or five steps. So somewhere between five to nine steps, but aim for seven. You may be able to combine some of those steps to make a chapter or split up a step if it looks like it would take longer than the other chapters.

While having done that then you can come up with a basic book. So you may have a little attention-getting introduction at the beginning of your book. But then in your first chapter, you will be introducing the problem, and then it’s a good idea to agitate the problem. For example, “What will life be like if we don’t solve this problem?”

This will get the reader wanting to look at the book and the steps that it will take to solve his problem.

Chapter Two

Then, in chapter two, describe the plan. You’re going to go into detail with the plan in chapter two. Give a brief description of the plan and what they can look forward to in the rest of the book.

Chapters 3 – 9 (ish)

Then chapters three through nine, especially if you had the seven steps as your perfect number, describe the steps. Those would be your chapters three through nine.

Finishing Up

Finally, you come to chapter 10. There, you will summarize and visualize what life is like with the solution to the problem and give the reader the next step.

That’s how to come up with your basic how-to book. These are simple steps to get started.

Roadmap to Success

Now, my roadmap to success in coming up with a great book is to follow these four steps:
1. Come up with a basic book like I just described.
2. Make your basic book, your a good book, a great book. A fabulous book. Take a period of time, (not too long) maybe a month or so. to make your good book, a fabulous book. You will do this by adding stories and examples from your own life. Look at other books in your field. See if you’ve left anything out. If you have then you could add some chapters. You will have trimmed your book and then you will have expanded your book. Then you’ll go back through the editing process again and trim it until you have it where you want it to be.
3. Step three is publishing your book. We will look at the different options for publishing books. There are basically three options for publishing. I guarantee that you can get a book published in this day and age.
4. The fourth is to monetize that book. Get royalties off of it. However, there are also other ways of getting income from a book.

So I urge you to write a basic how-to book and then turn it into a fabulous book. A book that will help others and a book that will fulfill you.

New Coaching Opportunity for You

I also want to let you know about a cool new coaching program that I have, instead of a traditional coaching program which has set times maybe an hour or so per week where we meet together, you can now have unlimited access to me where I coach you using support just like this.

Now the price of this program is much lower than my normal coaching program, and there’s a reason for that. It’s because you can reach out to me and I can reply to you at any time of day. That’s convenient for each of us. This helps my calendar not be so full, allows me to have more time for my own personal writing projects, and it allows me to get back to you within one business day.

I'm offering a new coaching opportunity! — I’m offering a new coaching opportunity!

Plus, you can do it not just once a week, but throughout the week. You would think that unlimited that would cost more, but not actually because it does help free up my calendar.

If you’d like more details on this, just let me know. I’d be happy to make a quick video personally explaining my programs.

Well if you would like more tips like these, then click here to be taken to Randy’s Blogs. If you would like a book that explains the writing process. in great depth, click to get my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death” on Amazon.

I’m Randy Carney wishing you the best. I want to remind you that YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

May 6, 2022May 8, 2022

Writing Your First Book – 8 Tips to Get Started

In this post, I’m going to talk about writing your first book: eight ideas to get started

Vlog

Writing your first book: eight ideas to get started.

All right, ideas to get you started.

Will Your First Book Be Fiction or Nonfiction?

First of all, figure out what kind of book you want to write. Do you want it to be fiction? Or do you want it to be nonfiction?

Length

Secondly, figure out how long you want your book to be. When I say how long you want it to be, I mean, what is the length of the book is it that you want to write? You can look at books in your genre and see how long they are.

Newer books are shorter than they have been in the past. Since you’re writing for the first time, that may be good news for you. It keeps you from being intimidated by the number of words that you need to write.

As a general rule of thumb, it should be somewhere between 100-200 pages.

Now is the time to figure out how many chapters the book will be, as well. An easy way to do that is to use a number anywhere between 6 and 10 and divide that by the total number of pages in the book. That will give you the approximate number of chapters your book will be. For example: divide a 100-page book by 6 (pages). That would tell you that you need 16 or 17 chapters in that case. Further, If you divide a 200 page book by 8 (pages), you will come up with 25 chapters.

If It’s Nonfiction

If your book is nonfiction, figure out a problem and figure out eight steps to the solution.

Now, these are not hard and fast ideas, but general guidelines. So figure out eight steps to the solution.

It’s like you’re on one side of a stream and you’re trying to get to the other side. You have stepping stones that will help you to get across to the solution on the other side.

If It’s Fiction

If your book is fiction, you still will want to present a problem. Have a main character who has a problem that he or she needs to be solved. In order to get to the solution, they go on a journey. On that journey, they may come across a guide.

Many times the guide will be someone who has successfully completed the same journey or someone who will help your main character to bear the journey. If that’s the case, then the guide will challenge them to action.

If they don’t have a guide then it will be the situation that will challenge them to action.

So you have a character with a problem, and either a guide or a challenge of some kind.

Then you want to place obstacles along the way for your hero or heroine. It looks like they’re going to succeed and then it looks like they’re going to fail and so forth. Add in some ups and downs. They will go through those until they reach the ultimate victory that you had in mind.

A more in-depth blog about writing fiction can be found here.

So that was the fourth idea.

Method of Writing

The fifth idea is to figure out your method for writing.

Now if you are pretty good at writing, just do regular writing. That is where you sit down and you write sentences and paragraphs and just keep going until you have your rough draft done.

There are some other methods, however, that you might want to consider. Some of these are even faster!

You can come up with a list of questions, and you can have someone interview you and record the interview. Then you could have it transcribed.

Another option is to speak your book: you could do a speech about each chapter and then have that transcribed. It’s not all that expensive to do nowadays.

In fact, there’s a program that is called Otter.ai. With that program, you can have a certain number of words per month transcribed for free. So you can speak your book and have it transcribed.

Using that method, you’ll have to clean it up because your written speech will be different from your spoken speech. But you can do that.

There’s also dictation software. When you do that, you speak your book but you do have to speak in the punctuation like commas and periods. Sometimes though, you can do a combination of both. I do this sometimes using dictation software. I will also use the return key instead of saying. “New line.”

Any way you choose to write is fine, just figure out what method you’re going to use to write your book.

So now you have figured out what kind of book you want to write. You’ve figured out a problem or problems to be solved, either in fiction or nonfiction. You’ve decided how you’re going to write.

Write Every Day

Now the key is to write every day except maybe Sunday or Saturday and Sunday. Figure out what your workdays are, and write each of those days.

There are two methods of doing this. The first one has time as the constant and the number of words is the variable.

So when time is the constant, you’ll set a timer and you write for a specified period of time, and when the timer goes off, you either put ellipses there or you hurriedly finish up your thought along that line.

Then you go to the next timed section. I have found great success in writing in five-minute segments, sometimes six-minute segments, and sometimes as much as 10-minute segments. Whatever time segment you use, just set a timer and write. I like this method.

The other method is to have the number of words as a constant. That means that time is going to be the variable. So if you have the number of words as a constant, then you know how many words per day you’re going to write. Are you going to write 500 words a day? 750 words a day? 1000 words a day? 2000 words a day? Maybe even 3250 words a day?

Figure that out and write that number of words every day.

Rough Draft

The next idea is to get the rough draft done. You can’t edit something unless you have something to edit.

Now for some people, writing the whole rough draft first just drives them crazy because they are really perfectionists, and they want to have a good product the first time. Well, the way to do that is to write quickly one day, the next day, start off going back over what you wrote the day before, and do the editing there. That will satisfy most people who really like editing as they go along.

After that, then you would have either your timed session or you would have your session where you’re going to complete your number of words.

But at any rate, get the rough draft done.

Edit and Publish

Once you’ve done that, you can get into the deeper edit. You can get in and put in more interest factors or you can get into tweaking it to your delight. Keep going till it turns out how you would have it to be.

So the final step is to edit it to the best of your ability or decide whether you want to hire an editor and have it done that way.

Edit and publish.

If you’re going to Self Publish then, of course, you’re at that step already. But if you are using a traditional publisher, you’re going to have a professional editor going over your book.

Even when you’re self-publishing many times you will want to hire an editor who will go over the book for you.

Here you have eight ideas for writing your first book.
Figure out what kind of book you want to write.
Figure out what length of book you want.
If your book is nonfiction present a problem, and come up with eight steps to the solution. It could be 6,7,9, or 10 but try for eight steps to the solution.
If it is fiction, you need a character who has a problem and meets the guide who challenges him or her to make a change and solve that problem. Include some obstacles along the way and then give your character the final victory.
Figure out your method for writing. Do you just sit down and write with just regular writing? Or is it better for you to maybe speak your book and have it transcribed? Or would it be good for you to learn how to use dictation software? Maybe you can think of another method that you could use to write your book. Then get a rough draft.
Finally, edit and publish.

Well, I hope these ideas have been helpful for you. For more tips on writing, go to my blog at www.randysblogs.com and look for the “writing” tab. For the best advice and resources, check out my book on Amazon: “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.”

Always remember, you can write a book!

April 11, 2022April 11, 2022

Writing Fiction Step by Step

Today I’m going to be talking about writing fiction step by step. I want to talk about basically five steps that you can take in order to write your fiction books or stories.

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The first step has to do with characters, the second one has to do with types of stories, the third one has to do with where you’re going with it, the fourth one has to do with obstacles, and the last one has to do with tying it all together.

Step One – Characters

Step one is determining your characters. Of course, you will have the main character; a hero or heroine. It’s good if you can also display some flaws within that character.

Then you will have a villain or a villainess. It’s good to make that character more complex. Try to show something good about that character.

include a guide to help your main character succeed.

You may sometimes, not always, have a guide in the story who helps the main character become the hero or learn the techniques of becoming the hero. Think about the story of The Karate Kid. He had a guide who helped him to learn karate. In Star Wars you had Yoda who was a guide to Luke Skywalker. Gandalf in Lord of was a guide along the way. You may not have that but often it is good if you can include it.

So first of all, you will determine your characters.

Step Two – Types of Stories

Secondly, you will determine what types of stories you’re going to be writing. These are stories within the story. I have mentioned them before. If you haven’t watched some of the previous videos or read the blogs, I encourage you to do that.

There is the external story that deals with the circumstances that can be seen. It has to do with the setting where the character is and it has to do with the external problems that can be seen.

But then there is often an internal story where the main character has his or her own struggles. The hero may save the world but he also may save himself. In Christian circles, he would not be saving himself but he would find salvation through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. But an internal story that may be going on even without the religious overtones that are just part of life. Internal struggles that the main character would have some victory over as well as a resolution to the external problems.

Then a third is a story within the story, which may not take up a whole lot of space, which will be an overarching concept of that story. That is a philosophical story. An example I would give would be that you have good versus evil. Most of us in the Western world would say that good triumphs over evil. Most of us who have heard the fairy tale stories, like happy endings.

You don’t have to have that third one explicitly stated. It may not even be on your mind. But in many cases, you do have these three types of stories. So you have to develop your characters. You figure out what types of stories you’re going to write and

Step Three – Climax of the Story

The climax is where it all comes together for your main character.

Next, you need to figure out the climax of the story. This is where you have the resolution of the problem. You might even write out that chapter first, or at least rough it out, although you do not have to do that. But you do have to know where you’re going and sort of how the problem is going to be resolved before you flesh out the words dealing with the climax and the resolution to the problem.

Now you say well, you skipped a step. Well. when you’re writing it, yes. But it’s best to know where you’re going when you start. Some writers don’t do that. They just paint a problem and keep going until finally, they figure out what the resolution is. But it’s much easier to write towards a resolution.

So you have your characters, figure out the types of stories, and you figure out what the climax of the story is going to be.

Step Four – Obstacles

Next, you need to figure out some obstacles along the way. As you’re writing, you may come up with more obstacles than what you had originally planned and that is fine. But you should plan for some obstacles and some little victories for the hero to have along the way. Problems and victories.

So your main character may get this one thing resolved, but then there is a new problem. Then he gets that resolved, but there comes a new problem. Each time, though, there’s a little bit of progress toward the resolution of the story.

Add obstacles to make the story more gripping.

Or, it may be a continual descent until one great moment of triumph where the hero rises above it all. Either way, you want to have obstacles along the way. Most fiction writing has obstacles, so you want to include some of those.

Step Five – Epilogue

The last thing would be the epilogue. You don’t have to plan this out in advance, and you don’t even have to title it “Epilogue.” But after the resolution of the story or climax, you probably do want to go back and explain some of the things that weren’t clear. and tie the loose ends together.

Including an epilogue can be helpful in tying up the story.

So there you have a great story.

Writing Fiction Step by Step

Determine who your characters will be.
Think about what types of stories you will be telling within the main story: What is the external story? What is the internal story? Possibly, what is the philosophical story?
Determine the climax: How is this problem ultimately going to be resolved?
Then you determine some obstacles along the way.
After you have written your story and have come to the resolution that the story you can tie the loose ends together and you have produced a great piece of fiction.

Well, I hope this is helpful to you. I would encourage you to go to Amazon and look for “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.” As my friend Tim Parton says, “Go buy it now. Go get it now.” With that book, you will get much more information similar these tips about how to write fiction.

Another way to get more tips like these, is to visit my blog here to read more about writing.

I would also encourage you to subscribe to my YouTube channel and/or my Rumble channel. There are a lot of videos on both of them. If, in the future for some reason, one might get taken off one of those platforms there will still be on the other platform.

I hope you have a great day. Until next time, I wish you the best and remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

April 2, 2022April 5, 2022

Rules for Writing Fiction

I hope you’re having a great day. Let’s talk about rules for writing fiction. I guess you could say these are Randy’s informal rules for writing fiction.

Walking with Randy Video

I have written a longer fiction book, which I have not published yet, but most of my fiction writing involves providing illustrations for sermons and other nonfiction writing. However, I have picked up a lot of tips along the way.

1. There Are No Rules

Rule number one: remember there are no rules. In other words, you can be creative. Have fun as you’re thinking about fiction. You may come up with a new technique that many people in the future will be following. So first of all, there are no rules.

2. To Your Own Self Be True

Rule number two: to your own self be true. This should take a lot of pressure off as you’re getting ready to write fiction. Just have fun as you’re doing it.

Your story can be a reflection of yourself

3. Balance Being True to Yourself & Finding Out What Readers Like

Even though there are no hard and fast rules for writing fiction, you want to balance being true to yourself and finding out what readers like. Well, that is if you want to make money from your writing, or if you want to have a wider audience for your fiction writing.

Then balance being true to yourself, but also do market research. Find out what people like, and then do a lot of reading yourself. Find out what you like in fiction writing

4. GO! When You’re on a Roll

Number four: go when you’re on a roll. When you’re writing, there are those days when it’s just coming easily and just so much fun. On days like those, just keep the words flowing. Now, I would encourage you to have a goal to get the story finished. Get it done.

You may be very analytical and a perfectionist, and you may edit every day. Well, that’s fine, but I would encourage you to be sure that you get your story written down.

While you’re on a roll, just go with it. Don’t worry about correcting everything; even if you’re one of those perfectionists. Then at the end of your writing session for the day, you can go back through and do the editing.

When you're on a roll, keep going! — When you’re on a roll, keep going!

Now many of us, or at least some of us, can do well by just going through and getting the entire project done and then going back and doing the editing. But either way, daily editing or editing when you’re all done will work. But when you’re on a roll, go with it! That’s when writing is the most fun: when you’re inspired.

Although if you force yourself to have a daily goal, several weeks later, you may look back and not be able to figure out which days you were on a roll and which days you just did the discipline of getting the words down on paper. That always amazes me.

5. Find a Good Editor

Rule number five in my unofficial rules for writing fiction is to find a good editor or learn the skill yourself. It really depends on how you’re going about doing it. If you’re going to be self-publishing, then you can either find a good editor editor, or you can learn the skill yourself.

It may be that you’re already good in certain areas. For example, you may be good at proofreading or you may be good with punctuation and grammar. If not, then you may need to find someone to help you. So you need to either find a good editor or learn the skill yourself.

Now as far as the flow of the story, and the overall theme of the story, you are the best editor for your own book. You know it inside out. You know the message that you want to be presented.

6. Develop Interesting Characters

Number six: develop interesting characters. How can you make your characters interesting? Well, they’re interesting to you. That’s the first clue. But you can start by developing a certain type of character. To build interesting characters, you will want them to have some flaws, a backstory, some quirks, and an inner struggle. So the sixth rule for writing fiction is to develop interesting characters.

7. Have a Goal

Rule number seven: have a goal. The story is going somewhere. You’re trying to save the world: you’re trying to solve a problem, you’re trying to get somewhere in the story. You want to have a goal.

Write your story with an ultimate goal in mind

You also will want to have obstacles to that goal. Include the ups and downs and overcoming of obstacles.

Of course, you want to have an ultimate victory, or at least those of us in the Western world want to have an ultimate victory. Like the old fairy tale genre, we want to have happy endings.

As I said earlier, there are no rules. You can do it differently. But these are Randy’s rules for writing fiction.

8. Have an External & Internal Story

The last “rule” is to have an external story and an internal story. The external story involves the circumstances, the settings, and things you can see outwardly taking place in the story.

Then the internal story involves the struggles that are within the main character or some of the other characters. It’s good if you have these elements in your stories.

One More Suggestion

An additional idea is to add a philosophical point to your story. That is if a certain philosophy is important to you. Again, remember, there are no rules for writing fiction. An example of a philosophical story is, “Good overcomes evil.” You may have a philosophy like that that you want to present, even though you’re writing fiction.

Well, those are my eight rules for writing fiction, plus a bonus suggestion.
There are no rules
To your own self be true
Balance, being true to yourself with finding out what readers want
Go! when you’re on a roll,
Find a good editor or learn the skill yourself
Develop interesting characters
Have a goal
Have an external and internal story
BONUS: Add a philosophical point

I hope these eight rules for writing fiction will be helpful for you. For more tips like these, go to the top of the blog and click on “writing“. Or, go to Amazon and get my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death”.

Until next time, I’m Randy Carney and I want you to remember YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

March 27, 2022March 27, 2022

Tips for Writing Fiction

Hello everyone. I’ve been away for a while but I’m back! Today I’m going to give you some tips for writing fiction.

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In the past, I have talked about the power of a story and the hero’s journey.

Hero’s Journey

The hero’s journey was first developed by a man named Joseph Campbell, and it involved about 12 steps. Down through the ages, many writers have used those techniques and have changed the number of steps in the story of the hero’s journey, making it less than 12 steps.

Donald Miller’s Approach

Here, I want to talk about Donald Miller’s story brand. He has utilized the techniques of the story for marketing and businesses and branding them. So he’s combining techniques of fiction and using them as nonfiction marketing for business. but we’re talking about writing fiction again.

He has boiled it down to seven steps. Those seven steps can be found in a single sentence.

Hero's journey by Donald Miller — Donald Miller’s Hero’s Journey

Now I’ll break down each part of the sentence.

Step 1 – Someone

This is a character. Of course, you want characters in your story. The main character is your hero.

Your main character can be anyone! — Your character can be anyone!

Step 2 – Has a Problem

So someone (your main character or hero) has a problem. This problem can be an external problem. That’s something you see, a situation that the person is in, or the circumstances that are around him or her. It could be an internal problem that the hero or the heroine faces. Those are the thoughts that are going inside the individual. He also talks about a philosophical problem. For example, good versus evil, with good triumphing over evil of course.

Step 3 – Meets a Guide

You’ll see a lot of fiction stories where the main character will meet up with someone who’s had the problem before and come through and is able to guide him or her to success.

Step 4 – A Plan

So someone who has a problem meets a guide, who gives them a plan. Maybe there’s some training that goes on. Think about the movie The Karate Kid where he’s painting a fence and he’s doing all kinds of things he doesn’t understand. But, later on, that training will help him to solve his problem. So, the guide has a plan and then the hero is challenged to utilize this plan.

Step 5 – Call to Action

This is where you’ll see the ups and downs. In most fiction stories or screenplays, the character is going on the journey towards success but they have a lot of ups and downs that they face.

Step 6 – Avoiding Failure

The call to action in step five helps the hero to avoid failure. There are obstacles in the way but the hero keeps working to conquer those obsticles.

Step 6 – Success

The hero keeps working the plan and overcoming the obsticales in his path and the journey finally ends and success.

You can see how these seven steps here in Donald Miller’s story brand can be used very well in writing your fiction stories.

How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less WIthout Stressing Yourself to Death — How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less

I pray that you would utilize the seven steps to write a good story of your own. If you’d like more tips like these, just find the “writing” tab on the blog here. Beter yet, for a more in-depth discussion on wrting, go to Amazon and get my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.”

Until next time, I’m Randy Carney, and I want to remind you that YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

February 25, 2022February 25, 2022

28-Day Writing Challenge – Day 28: We Made It! Back Cover Copy & Next Steps

Welcome, everyone, to day 28 of the 28-day writing challenge. We made it! We have a book.

Day 28 vlog

The book is about 200 pages. My definition of “book” for this challenge was a rough draft and a good first-round edit. I have completed that.

The other thing that I did today was work on the back cover copy.

Back Cover Copy

“The Secret to Having a Fabulous Marriage by Using the Valuing Your Spouse Technique
“Discover how cultivating the most important attitude you can have in your marriage will cause you to be closer to your husband or wife than ever before
“Here is just a sample of what you will uncover in this book:

Recognize what an amazing creature your spouse is, so you can mentally overcome thoughts of his or her shortcomings, which means you can instantly improve your marriage by changing your focus
Discover how men and women think differently, so you can understand each other better, which means you will improve your communication tremendously
Find out how valuing will affair-proof your marriage, so you can live without fear, which means you will enjoy each other with a wonderful sense of freedom in your daily lives
Improve your marriage without talking about it, so you can utilize a technique that is better than verbal communication, which means the husband will get on board more quickly than he would otherwise
Commit to daily practical habits that will reinforce your closeness, so you can use simple actions to show your spouse that you value him or her, which means that you will feel connected and enjoy each other throughout the remainder of your marriages

“… Plus Much, Much More:
“And, the great news is, this simple principle can rescue a marriage that is falling apart and can reinforce and strengthen even the best of marriages.”

Next Step

So, I have completed the book and done the back cover copy, and then there are the next steps.

The next step will be getting the book ready for publication. I will be continuing to tweak the book as I do that.

I will also be putting together a launch team. Perhaps you would want to serve on my launch team. I will ask you about that here in a few days.

Normally, this would take about three weeks. However, my wife and I are going to go on a vacation for one of those weeks, so it’s going to go out to four weeks from now. That will still be getting the book published in the next month, as I had mentioned two or three times in my estimates.

You Can Do It, Too!

If you have joined me on every day of this journey, maybe you wrote your own book as I did this. Maybe you just wanted to see whether or not it can be done. Well, it is done. The final proof of that will be when it actually does appear for sale. So you see that it can be done.

There are a couple of ways that you could go back and do this yourself if you wish. You could decide whether or not you wanted to try to do it in 28 days. Maybe you want to do it in two months. In that case, just take each day and make it two days when you’re going through that process.

All of the steps are at RandyCarney.com.

Another way of getting all the techniques is to go to Amazon and buy “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death“.

I encourage you to do your own book.

Keep in Touch

I hope you will keep checking in on me and on the blog. You might want to subscribe to my YouTube channel. I’m also on Rumble so you can you could subscribe there. You could check in on RandyCarney.com from time to time.

It’s been good to be on the journey with you. We have made it and that is great! Just remember, until the next time we talk, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

February 24, 2022February 24, 2022

28-Day Writing Challenge – Day 27: Workin on the Ranked Paragraphs

Good day to everyone. This is day 27 of the 28-day writing challenge.

Day 27 vlog

I spent my time today working on the ranked paragraphs.

Backstory

So the last two days I went all the way through the document (a printed version of my book). I numbered all the paragraphs. Then, I evaluated each paragraph.

These are subjective evaluations that the writer does just for himself or herself.

Today’s Work

I assigned each paragraph a rating on a scale of one to 10. Now I’m going through the document and working on those paragraphs that are rated from one through 10.

On this pass through, I’m skipping over those that are rated seven or higher. And those that are rated three or lower, I am eliminating any rated three or lower, and I am especially working on editing the ones that are rated four through six.

Now, it’s not that I will not work on the other paragraphs. I will have to figure out a transition between the previous paragraph and the new one where something has been eliminated.

Almost There!

Anyway, that’s where I am. It’s day 27 and I do have a first draft and am working on that good first-round edit. Then that will be what we called by definition our book. So I completed the book in 28 days or less, without stressing myself to death, at least for the most part.

How YOU Can Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death

Anyway, I will check back in with you tomorrow. If you are interested in writing a book in 28 days or less, I would encourage you to click here and get a copy of my book. It speaks of all that I have done on this particular 28-day challenge AND it gives even more techniques and tips than what I’ve talked about as we’ve gone through this challenge..

This 28-day method speaks of three ways of writing a book in 28 days or less. I actually used a combination of all three of those techniques in this process.

Well, I hope that you have a good day. Where I am it is sleeting and it’s getting ready to snow. I’m sure that some of the activities that I have planned for tomorrow will be called off. I hope the weather’s wonderful where you are. If you desire to write a book, I just pray that you will take the plunge. My encouragement is, as always, remember YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

February 23, 2022

28-Day Writing Challenge – Day 26: Ranking Paragraphs

Welcome, everyone! We are on day 26 of the 28-day writing challenge. Yesterday, I started talking about doing a paper edit as opposed to a digital edit. Today, I’ll explain more about that.

Day 26 vlog

Today I numbered all the paragraphs in my book. I came up with more than 700 paragraphs, which is what I expected because there are 208 pages.

Review

To review what I said yesterday, start off at the very last paragraph in your book. That last paragraph is numbered one, the next to the last is number two, and so on. Work your way all the way to the very first paragraph of your book. You’ll end up with a very large number. In my case, it was over 700.

The reason why you start at the back instead of at the front is that you are trying to evaluate each paragraph on its own instead of in the continuation of the story or flow of the book.

How To

So you start with paragraph number one, and you rate each paragraph in your opinion, between one and 10. Ten is just wonderful, great. People would set off fireworks as a result of it. Number one is you need to dig a grave for it. It is just the worst paragraph ever. Then all the ranges in between.

You need to be sort of careful as you’re doing this. You can be overly critical of every paragraph or you can be overly enamored with all of your writing. So you should remember that five is about an average type of paragraph.

So you will go through and review all of your paragraphs. Now, if you’re hiring a professional editor to help you you may skip this part, although I even recommend it for that because your book will be in much better shape before you give it to them. Then the editor can spend their time on more in-depth and even better editing.

Yes, this is time-consuming, slow, and tedious.

Average Rating

But go back through rank all of your paragraphs from one to 10. After you’ve got all the way through, one thing that is recommended is to add up all those numbers and then divide it by the number of paragraphs and you will end up with an average rating.

If your average rating is seven or greater then you’re in really good shape. It should be somewhere between four and eight or nine. s

When you do that, you’ll get an average rating for your paragraphs. That may help you to see if you are being too hard on yourself and maybe you should consider them to be a point or two higher. That’s fine as this is for your benefit and is your opinion.

Are any of your paragraphs a perfect 10?

Weeding Out the Below Average Paragraphs

Now the next step at this point is any paragraph that’s rated seven or higher, just leave it alone. If it is rated three or less, get rid of it.

What???

Well, yes, just eliminate it. That means that you might have to make a transition point from the paragraph before to the next one. In some cases you can just eliminate it and it just flows from one to the next and doesn’t make any difference.

But go through and eliminate all of those that are threes, twos, and ones.

Polishing the Four, Five and Six Rated Paragraphs

That leaves the ones that are rated at four, five, and six. These are paragraphs that are okay paragraphs but could be better. What you ought to do with each one of those is to do whatever is necessary to bring it up to at least a seven.

I’ll talk a little bit more tomorrow about how you can do that with some of those paragraphs.

That’s where I am now. I’ve gone through the entire book, numbered all the paragraphs, and then come back and rated all the paragraphs.

Now I have to confess to you I don’t have all of mine rated yet.

My Progress

The digital editing that I did before this big grand paper editing that I’m talking about, will be finished tomorrow. Then I’ll work on these paragraphs for the paper editing.

Actually, this could be like the next step, but I think I’ll have that done by day 28. Then I will have a good rough draft and a good first round of editing and then this even more in-depth editing.

That might actually be what you consider going on into the next step.

I’m confident to say that I have written a book in 28 days or less and done it without stressing myself to death, which is the goal of the last book I wrote.

Again, if you’re interested in that, click here and download a digital copy or buy a paper copy. It has all of the techniques that I’ve talked about and many more things that I’ve talked about during these 28 days.

So the next step after getting the book written, which will be written by day 28, is to start on the promotion of the book; getting it ready to be published and to be sold.

Unless something unforeseen happens, the book will be available on Amazon before the end of next month (March 2022). It will probably be somewhere around the third week or so but don’t hold me to that. I’ve got the whole month to work on doing that.

How About You?

Well, I am glad you have joined me on day 26 of the 28-day writing challenge. Did you attempt to write a book yourself? If you have I hope it’s gone well.

If you haven’t and have just watched what I was doing and saw my ups and downs, my joys, and my sorrows, I hope that’s been encouraging to you.

Until next time, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

February 22, 2022February 22, 2022

28-Day Writing Challenge – Day 25: Paper Edit

Hello, everyone. Here we are on day 25 of the 28-day writing challenge.

Day 25 vlog.

I have printed out a paper copy version of the book manuscript in eight and a half by 11. Today I’m going to talk about setting up for a paper edit. This is a method that a couple of people have proposed to evaluate your book.

Digital and Paper Editing

I’ve been doing a lot of editing on the digital version, but some things tend to be missed when it’s not on paper. That’s why it’s a good idea to print it out.

A paper edit can offer a new perspective. — A paper edit can offer a new perspective

When I printed mine, it came out to 208 pages in an eight and a half by 11 format. But it was just expanded to fit that for the printing. The actual book is going to be six by nine format.

If you watch the video, you’ll also see that some are farther to the left. That’s because of the way the gutter would be set up for having two pages on one piece of paper.

How to Edit on Paper

The way you do the paper edit is to start at the very last paragraph of the book. Label that as number one and the next to last one is number two, and second to the last one’s number three, and you just keep going from the back all the way to the front. You’ll end up with a very large number. I know mine is going to be more than 200 because there are over 200 pages in the book. Y

Then you go through and evaluate every paragraph. Force yourself to quickly evaluate on a scale of one to 10. A score of seven to 10 would be a good paragraph. Four to six is an OK or average paragraph, but it could be improved. A score of then one, two, or three would be way below average.

So I’m going to go through and evaluate each of these paragraphs. This is an optional thing, especially if you are going to hire out the editing. However, if you have confidence in editing yourself, then this is a recommended way of doing it.

Results Tomorrow

Maybe tomorrow I’ll tell you how it works for me. So stay tuned. Also tomorrow I’ll show you how to use this evaluation.

I’m also still doing the chart where I’m doing the digital edits on each section of the book. If you recall, those are 33-page sections that I work on for three days, and most of those are done already.

In fact, if I go ahead and do that tonight, which I think I will, there will only be one section, that would be 167 to the end, to go over digitally tomorrow.

Getting Close to the End

Then I will just have two more days left, and I will have written a book in 28 business days, not consecutive days. Remember, when I say “book, ” it’s defined as a rough draft and a good first-round edit.

After that, whatever you do is just polishing. You have your book, and it can be put out there just as it is. Of course, you can polish more if you desire to..

After this 28-day challenge, I will go into the process of getting this published and the process of launching the book.

Next Steps

I will talk more about establishing a launch team soon. I will say, unless something goes drastically wrong, this book will be available on Amazon before the end of next month (March 2022).

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I will touch base with you for the next three days. Then I will talk about the end product on day 28.

How are you doing? Have any of you joined me in this writing project where you have worked on it yourself? I hope you’ve learned some things along the way and have been challenged and encouraged that you can write a book.

I just wanted to prove that you can write a book in 28 days. It’s certainly not required to write a book in 28 days. You might want to divide it up a little more and maybe do it in two or three months. Three months is very doable. That’s a good book. I mean, I’ve got a pretty good book here so far where it’s at, and I’m still going to do some more on it.

I am glad you have joined. I hope that things are going well for you. Until Next time, remember YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

February 18, 2022February 18, 2022

28-Day Writing Challenge – Day 24: We Have a Cover!

Welcome everyone to day 24 of the 28-day writing challenge. I am happy to report that we have a book cover.

Day 24 vlog

You may have noticed that I missed a day. Day 23 was fairly uneventful. I just continued following my editing chart. Day 24 has been very exciting, however.

In the video above, I show what we had to choose from and the one that we decided on.

Making the Choice

I had my cover designer team come over. The team consists of myself. my wife, our oldest daughter, our second oldest daughter, and two of our granddaughters. So we looked at the choices for the covers, and we were pretty well in agreement as to what we chose. (View the video to see our process)

Teams are helpful when making a decision — A team is helpful when making a decision

Title Considerations

I thought I might come up with a title other than “Valuing Your Spouse,” but actually the feedback that I got from my team was that they all liked the title. Remember, this is the third book in a series of six books about “The Loving Way to A Successful Marriage.” “Loving” is an acrostic The “L” stands for leaving, the “O” stands for overcoming, and the “V” is for valuing. That’s what this book is about: valuing your spouse. So I might just leave the working title as the regular title. I may get some feedback on that when I do the survey.

So that’s where we ar1e today. I’m continuing to do rounds of editing on the chapters of the book.

Have you written your book? Would you like to know more about how to write a book in 28 days or less? Go to Amazon and get my book “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.” and you’ll get the three methods used to be able to write a book in 28 days.

As I said, the rough draft is basically done. I’m continuing to do the first round edit and then I will go into launching the book. That will take two or three weeks after I have the book written. So the book will soon be available!

Maybe you would like to serve on my launch team? I will talk to you more about that next week.

I’m also considering running a sale on some of my books next week. too. Stay tuned for that.

The Designer

Anyway, I’m happy to report that we have a cover. I appreciate the designer, Katrina Richmond presenting all seven of these ideas to us. They were all good. We chose the next to the last one. We really liked that one. I’m going to contact her and I may ask her to tweak some of the things on it just a little bit.

A graphic designer can help with the cover. — A graphic designer can help with the cover

If any of you are interested, Katrina is willing to hire out her work. If you would like to inquire about it, you could do that. You could email her here, or you can contact me and I’ll put you in touch.

Anyway, I hope you have a great day. Remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!