Tag: 28-day writing challenge

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

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!

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

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!

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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!

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

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)

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.

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!

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!