Category: Writing

Hello, everyone. This is day 22 of the 28-day writing challenge.

There’s nothing really new for me to share with you today. I just did some more editing based on that editing chart where I’m trying to spend three days on each of six sections of the book.

So, today I did section 1, pages 1 to 33, and then I did my second day of pages 67 through 99, and I have day two on pages 33 through 66 up there too. However, I think I’ve made a mistake because it shouldn’t be three to one, but it’s three to two. But I’ll leave it the way it is because I’m still on track.

New Tools

While it’s not directly related to writing, I want to tell you about a couple of new tools I’m using to make my Facebook videos.

I made the video above using Iriun Camera, using my phone as a webcam. I have also downloaded a new software called OBS Studio. So I’m recording this in OBS Studio instead of going directly to Facebook Live. There is a way to stream from OBS Studio to Facebook Live. I’m supposed to get a “stream” key, but when I went to Facebook to get the key the page was grayed out. I’m sure I’ll get that all worked out.

Maybe knowing that small struggle I’m having will give you some comfort when you have your ups and downs with the things that you’re trying to do

That’s all for today. I hope it’s a great one and remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

Hello, everyone. This is day 21 of the 28-day writing challenge.

Editing

Today I did some more editing. I went over two sections. Each of those sections has 33 pages within the sections. Later this evening, I will work on pages 67 through 99.

Cover Suggestions

So you remember yesterday I showed you (in the video) some samples that I sent off to my cover designer who’s also my assistant. She got back very quickly today. I had given her a really rough sketch of something for some ideas along with those samples of other books.

I’m happy to report that she’s already given me a bunch of ideas here. Now she says I can mix and match and she’s open to all kinds of suggestions. I haven’t talked to her yet about what she would charge to do this for someone else, but if you’re interested, you can get a hold of me and let me know. If you watch the video above, I show the samples that she’s sent.

So that’s what’s going on. That’s where we are now: day 21 of the 28-day writing challenge.

Time Frame Information

By the way, this work on the cover and the more extensive editing would be outside of the scope of what I talked about, in the book, “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death.” So we’re going a little bit beyond what that definition of the book was, which is a rough draft and a good first-round edit. After that, you would just continue to improve however much you wanted to.

So we’ve talked about 28 days to write your book, maybe another 28 days to get your book published. In fact, I was thinking about writing another book along that line. Maybe I’ll do that.

It CAN Be Done!

With this exercise, I’m just doing this to prove again that you can write a book in 28 days or less. So I have the rough draft, but I don’t have that first-round edit done. So I’m doing some of that now.

Well, have you started writing your book yet? Maybe you’ve kept up with me as we’ve gone along and we’ve done this together. If you are interested in writing a book in 28 days or less, you can click here and order yourself a copy. I still have it on there at half price (as of 2/15/2022) but it’s going back up soon. So if you’d like to get one hurry up and get it.

I hope you have a great day. I’ll talk to you tomorrow and until next time remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

Hello, everyone. This is day 20 of the 28-day writing challenge. I am happy to report what I’ve been doing.

On the editing chart, I did the first round on pages 34 through 66 and the second round of editing on pages one to 33

The Process of Choosing a Cover

I also worked on the cover some more. I did some research on some of the bestsellers in the Amazon current bestsellers and used keywords that are similar to what my book has.

What I have done is take the pictures from some of the book covers, made comments on them, and sent them to my assistant, who is also my cover designer from time to time. She did a really good job last time so I’m going to give her another opportunity to present an idea.

In the video above, I show a mock-up of an idea and pictures of several of the book covers that have elements that I like.

This is sort of the work that I’m doing so far.

It’s getting exciting. We’re already at day 20 of the 28-day writing challenge. Just eight more days to go and I’ll have the rough draft written. I’m working on what some writing coaches call their “vomit draft.” Some of it’s a little bit like that, but it’s not really that bad. I’ve gone through and done revisions of that.

Facebook Group

I’d like to know how you’re doing with your book. You could leave some comments about your book here if you wish. I also want to encourage you to go to the CCS Book Encouragers group on Facebook. Just sign up for that. It will ask you a couple of questions in order for you to be able to join. I would be glad to have you in the group there. You have access to all the previous videos that I’ve done.

You’re watching the progress the ups and downs, frustrations, whatever. I’m not too frustrated right now, I feel pretty good.

I hope you have a good day. Until next time, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

Hello everyone. Welcome to the report for day 19 of the 28-day writing challenge. Today, I worked on the cover, adding humor, and headings.

A Brief Recap

As you recall, yesterday, I set up an editing chart. The plan is to spend a day s on each of those sections. So I started on the first section, pages one through 33.

Headings

While editing, I found that in chapter one, I did not have any headings in that original document. So I went through and I found places that would be good to break up the writing a little bit with headings.

Cover Feedback

I got feedback from some of my family on the cover research I had done. They looked at a page full of the covers of books that are similar to the books that I’m writing. They were all books about marriage. So I got their feedback for that. So that was the cover.

Humor

Then the humor. I just looked up some jokes and humor about marriage. I wanted to see if any of those would relate to any of these chapters that I’m working on.

So that’s my report for day 19 of the 28-day writing challenge. We’re winding down, we just have nine days left. Isn’t that amazing?

So you’re aware, I still have the book and the ebook for “How to Write a Book in 28 Days or Less Without Stressing Yourself to Death” at half-price (as of 2/12/2022) but I am going to raise it back up to the regular price soon. So if you’re interested in getting that a half-price, please hurry and order it at the link above. I will talk to you again on Monday. I hope you have a wonderful day. Remember, YOU CAN WRITE BOOK.

Hello everyone. This is day 18 of the 28-day writing challenge.

Editing Chart

Today I set up an editing chart. It basically contains four columns. In the first column are numbers one through 33, then 34 through 66, and so forth in groups of 33 pages. (See video for visual) So, day one day two, and day three.

For each of those days, it’s more than one chapter so. It’s actually the book divided into six sections. So, I spend three days editing each one of the sections.

Adding Humor

Part of what I did today was look up some jokes and humor about marriage that I might want to insert in the book. Part of the reason that I do the jokes and humor is, when I do speaking engagements, I throw in jokes and humor about every five minutes or so, mainly to keep the men interested in what I’m talking about.

So today I set up the chart and I have edited day one of pages one through 33. Then tomorrow, I will edit day one of pages 34 through 66, but I’ll also do day two of pages one through 33.

That’s how the editing chart is set up. I hope you’re doing well with your book. Until next time, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

Hello everyone! This is day 17 of the 28-day writing challenge. I just wanted to give you a report of what I got done today.

Shish Kabob

I want to talk about the shish kebab. Typically, it’s a skewer with alternating pieces of meat and vegetables or fruit on it and you roast it. When it comes to writing, the things that you have done up to this point, getting the main facts of your book down, serve as the meat. Then the alternating vegetables or fruit come in to spice things up.

So how does that apply to your revisions of your original draft? Well, the vegetables or fruit would be something like interest factors that you would put in. You might want to put in some humorous items or include stories that may not have already come to mind. So I’m beginning to work on that.

Section by Section

I worked on the first 30 pages of the book. The idea is to spend three days on each section of the book, refining it over and over as you go.

When you do that, you will be doing the first section the first day, the second day you will be doing the first section, and the next section, and so forth and it will compound as you go along.

So the next day you will be working on the first section and the second section and the third section. On the fourth day the first section will drop off and you will keep adding a section a day as you’re working at it.

I’m planning on doing 30 pages a day so that means that within six days I will have gone over and edited those parts of the book.

Cover Design

The other thing I did today was research ideas for book covers. One of the things that have been suggested by many writing coaches is to go to Amazon and look at some of the best-selling books in your category. So I went to the best-sellers list in some of my categories using some keywords and tried to come up with two or three ideas. I’m going to give those to my graphic designer who also happens to be my assistant. She did a good job on the last book so I’m going to let her give us some suggestions as to ideas for this book cover.

Reworking the Title

I also need to come up with a catchier title. “Valuing Your Spouse” is indeed what the book is about. But I need to come up with something that grabs attention better than that. The subtitle will still be comprehensive is about

So that’s what’s going on. This is day 17. If you’re working on your book, I hope it’s coming along well for you. If you would like to make some comments here or in the different places where the videos or blogs are posted, it would be very helpful.

The best place is if you go to CCS Book Encouragers and put all your comments in there. I’ve been trying to get all these videos compiled there and I think I have been successful with that up to this point.

You also can go to Rumble and subscribe to my channel. There you’ll be able to see all the videos. With the exception of weekend sermons put in between the daily videos, the 28-Day Writing Challenge videos are in order fairly well.

I also have a channel on YouTube that some of you may be subscribed to. The videos are all there, as well.

Well, I hope you have a good day and I will see you again tomorrow. Remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

Hello, everyone, this is day 16 of the 28-day writing challenge. I’m excited about today because I put down the last of the blog post that I was going to use as a foundation for this book.

Chapters

There were actually six different blog posts that I combined to make three chapters. So I had the four chapters from my original book, three chapters that are composed of blog posts, and eight new chapters that I’ve written during this process. So I’ve come up with 16 chapters.

Page Count

My original goal was to get at least 125 pages. Looking at the document, I see that I have 217 pages at the moment. Now that may sound bad, but it isn’t. A 200-page document is really good; that’s an average size book.

What’s really good about this number of pages is I’m going back through it and I will be able to cut out a lot of things and not worry about the length. I’ll be able to tighten the wording and make it flow better. So that’s exciting.

Next Steps

Here I am on day 16. Can you write a book in 28 days or less? Well, I wrote one in 16 days. Although technically I’m not quite there because my definition of writing a book is to do the rough draft and a first-round edit on it. So I will go ahead and do the first round edit, but I have almost two extra weeks to do some extra editing and polishing.

I’m going to have to come up with a book cover as well, which I’m going to start working on tomorrow. Today I had to go to work to make up for a day I missed last week, but I’m glad to report that I’ve done I have a rough draft of the book. So that’s pretty exciting.

It can be done. Remember: YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!

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!

Welcome, everyone to day 14 of the 28-day writing challenge. I want to tell you about a new combination technique that I actually started using today, and I like it very much.

You know we have been talking about doing things in five-minute writing segments. Well, I have discovered that with the dictation many times you can get as many words in a three-minute dictation segment as you can in a five-minute typing segment.

Typing vs Talking

When you are typing, there is a different process that goes on. Sometimes when you’re typing, you feel like you do better. Your brain sorts through words and by the time you get to typing a word, you come up with something a little bit more refined than you do by just speaking off the top of your head.

I sometimes feel like typing works better for me in a five-minute writing segment than to be speaking in a three-minute writing segment.

However, today I experimented with something that I like even better. So how it works is I have a question, you know, from the blueprint. I have the three trigger words that can trigger the answer to those questions. That’s not the new part of the techniques that I use.

How I Did It

To implement the new technique, I did something that is a combination of both. Basically, I set the timer for one minute and I type for that one minute. Then when the timer goes off, I set it for three minutes. Then I hit CTRL+D on my computer and that activates the dictation program, and then I begin to dictate. I have found that works very well for me.

Starting off typing kicks a different way of doing things and it sorts through and does a little bit of that self-editing before I start, then I’m on a roll. I’ve found that when I then do the three minutes of dictation, it seems to flow better. It seems to be a little easier getting started on each of the writing segments.

So doing it this way, these are four-minute writing segments and I have enjoyed it very much.

Not Quite Caught Up Yet

I mentioned yesterday that I might be able to get through chapter 16 done today. Well unless I do some more before midnight, I’m not going to finish that. But I did do chapter 14 and I got about two-thirds of the way through chapter 15 as of the video. I may finish chapter 15 before the night is over with, I don’t know.

This weekend is the opportunity for catching up. I’m going to put forth a real concerted effort to have chapter 16 completed by tomorrow at the very latest. I also want to be able to paste in those earlier seven chapters that already have the content for. I’m very confident that I will have the entire rough draft of the book tomorrow.

So that will be catch-up day after day 14 of the 28-day writing challenge. I like that because it’s going to allow me to spend about 10 days doing what I would normally do after having the rough draft done as far as doing editing.

So after next week, I’ll give you the opportunity to be a part of my launch team. We’ll talk more about that when it comes up.

But anyway, there is the new technique: you set the timer for one minute and type, and then set the timer for three minutes and do the dictation.. I found that that works very well and I like it very much for being able to get a rough draft done.

I hope you have a good day and until next time, remember, YOU CAN WRITE A BOOK!