Every story (or book) begins with one sentence on one page. You
don't have to decide to "write a book." Decide to write one page,
telling about one event. After that, write about another event. After a
while, the pages add up and as you keep working on the project, it will begin to
develop.
When you do begin, do not overly concern yourself with
sentence structure, spelling, or exact details. Your first goal is to simply get
a memory down on paper. Just write it the way it comes, even if it is
disjointed. Say what you want to say. Now walk away for a day or two. Then go
back and read the story. Now you will see things you want to add. This process
is more easily done on a computer, which allows you to add, delete, or move sentences. It
will be helpful to you later if you add a date to the top of the page–the year
the event happened. As your material grows, you will be able to organize the
various stories in chronological order. Read
short
excerpts of what others have written.
Continue this process and you will see a more complete story
develop. When you have what you think is a finished story, put it away for a few
days. Then take the material to a different room in your house, sit down, and
read it with pencil in hand. You will notice that sitting and reading in a
different "climate" will cause you to see things you haven't seen
before, to think of ideas or memories you want to add.
After you complete this process and make changes or
additions, ask another person to read it. They will likely ask questions about the story and you will realize what needs to be added to clarify
the event.
If you have in mind a printed and bound book one day, it is
helpful to write this story in a computer program like Word or WordPerfect. This
gives you later options that will be important. Or you can write on a tablet and
later have it typed into a computer. See
Easy
Book.
Pull out your old photos–for two reasons. First, they will
prompt your memory. Second, if you later decide to print copies, you
will already have the photos that go with the story. See
About
Photos.
You may wish to see the way others have written their
stories. On the
Featured
Books page, you can click on a particular book and see their
stories. See
color
photos of covers and
Hard
& Soft Covers for details to begin the process
of creating a vision for your book.
If you decide to write many stories, first
look over the information in
Computer
& Your Pages.
Then take a quick look at
Formatting
Your Pages &
Designing
Your Pages to gain an overview of helpful tips you
can use now.
We do offer other services such as editing, design etc, if you need them.
More
Services
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free to send us your
questions on our
Question
Form and we'll answer in two business days.
Know there
is never ever any obligation or pressure. Our working environment with authors
is warm, friendly, helpful, and informative.
