My client excitedly told me, “I’ve just found the coolest thing in Word: the navigation pane. It has made my life so much easier—you gotta tell everyone about this!” Okay, I got my marching orders! Tip time. Microsoft Word’s navigation pane has been around for a decade, but I’ve only been using it in the […]
The Prick of New Growth: On Writing and Chickens
My chickens are molting. In the fall, they lose old tattered feathers so new ones can come in. (Hang in there—this will come around to book writing eventually.) Molting is not a fun process for the chickens. “Pin feathers” poke through their skin. Being a live pin cushion is clearly uncomfortable for them—they don’t want […]
How to Begin Writing a Nonfiction Book
On a recent call with my mastermind group, we were talking about the value of writing a book to support your business, and one member said, “Writing a book seems like a good idea, but I have absolutely no idea where to start!” I hear this a lot. How to begin writing a nonfiction book? […]
Word Tip: Creating En and Em Dashes
In Word you can automatically generate en and em dashes by using the hyphen key and AutoCorrect. (Read more about en and em dashes in this article about common proofreading oversights.) To make an en dash: Type a word (or number/letter character), space, hyphen, space, word (or number/letter). Example: 1990 – 1995 As you move […]
Proofreading Oversights You Don’t Realize Are Giving You Away as Self-Published
You know you want to self-publish—for control, for speed to market—but you don’t want your book to look self-published. You want it to be indistinguishable from books published by the “Big Five.” But even if you have high quality content and avoid common formatting mistakes, your book may still contain proofreading oversights that give it […]