General – Page 127

No, it’s not a title, it’s a fact. I’m 60 today and though I don’t feel old, I do feel kind of strange …. What’s the loose connection between me and Edinburgh Castle? Well, we’re both Scottish and we’ve both been around a while.

Edinburgh Castle - 3 — Edinburgh Castle – it’s been around a while

Apart from that I’ve just come back from a visit to Edinburgh with my wife. We had two pleasant days up there and most of the second day was spent at the castle. We both felt like a short break and enjoyed two days of good weather too – as seen by the photograph.

I’m back now and working hard on my novel once again. Outside agencies have dealt with the cover design and the critique and editing of the first five chapters – and I have just about completed what will be the fourth draft. Only days away from publication now and it’s all getting very exciting.

I’ve prepared a marketing strategy, which includes the sending out of my recently designed business card and I’m now going to concentrate my efforts on getting my hard work out there and read by as many people as possible. A lot of folk are of the opinion that getting as far as the e-publishing is easy and that the hardest part is getting it noticed, so I’ll shortly be able to test that theory.

For now, I think it’s time I left this birthday memo and got on with my job – of finishing off my final edit.

Ten Days - wordle example - Chapter 3 - for blog — Proportion of word usage in ‘Ten Days’ – Chapter 3

Welcome to the world of Wordle. Until today I had never visited the site although I had a knowledge of ‘word clouds’. I must say a big thank you here to my online friend and fellow blogger Chloe for pointing me in the direction of this incredible tool.

My romantic novel ‘Ten Days’ is now at a point where a lot depends on; feedback from my five sample readers, the response from my proof-reader and the results of the person tackling the design for the front cover. Personally I’m in the process of reading a hard copy of the manuscript, word by word and line by line.

I was aware of the overuse of some words but not others. It’s a romantic novel featuring two main characters; Pete and Gloria, so you might well expect them to appear a lot. In my Wordle experiment, I found that to be the case so I was pleased. After subjecting the entire novel to the filter effect of the Wordle system it seems that I rather like the word ‘looked’.

No, that’s not quite correct. I’m lazy where the word ‘looked’ is concerned, so I should now be seeking to alter it on many occasions to a word of similar meaning … and I’ve ‘looked’ and there are several out there. I would recommend Wordle to all writers.

Progress on the novel? Yes, I think I can say with confidence that I’ve made some. I’ve got the main task done, which is reaching the end of the third draft. My read-through will be a tidy-up and then my proof-reader will highlight issues for me. I have the opinions of one of my sample readers already and I’m confident in my cover designer’s ability.

I’ve decided to take the self-publishing route through Smashwords to produce an e-book. I’ve read all three books produced by the man behind Smashwords – Mr. Mark Coker. Once I’ve managed to work my way through that system I’ll tackle the Amazon Kindle method. One step at a time eh!

My aim is now to get the book out there for early-mid November. I have plenty of work to do yet and I still have to depend to a great extent on other people. One last thing to do is a bit of self-marketing. My website is now up and running, ‘Tom Benson – Creative Writer and Artist’. If you’ve checked in here, please feel free to check in there too, browse and leave a comment in the Guestbook. I’m constantly adding to my art portfolio on the site so it’s not just writing in there.