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Some Beginner Tips for Writing a Book
(writing a book)
Before you begin your book writing adventure, you must research your idea and see if it will fly. Who is going to read it? Who are you trying to appeal to with your words? You must have a general idea of who your intended audience will be. Check out other books. Is there a book already published that resembles your book? What will make your book unique from theirs? If there are similar books already out there, what is going to make your book different and make people want to buy it?
If you are still reading, then it is safe to assume that you have your idea under control and are ready to more on in writing a book. Decide on a schedule that is best for you, one that you will be able to stick to. It will be very frustrating to you if have unrealistic expectations and then are unable to stick to them. Your schedule should begin before your research and carry through to the book being ready for publication.
Make a detailed outline with the main plot, events leading to that plot, and explicit detail about the characters. By having more information about the character you will be able to become them as you are writing. By having background on them, even if it is irrelevant to the story, it may help while choosing their actions, dialogue, and feelings through out the book. An outline is also a good reference point to come back to double check your timelines and details.
You may want to turn of you editing software for your first draft. While writing a book the first draft is when you begin meshing the plot, the characters, and everything together. Grammar, spelling, and punctuation can be fixed later. Remember books do not necessarily have to be written front to back. By writing different chapters or events it may be easier for you to come back and connect them later. Sometimes having the words on the paper and reading will make it easier to fill in the blanks.
You are on a role and rough draft is finished. Now is the time to read it. When writing a book reading the rough draft will allow you to make sure that there are no errors in the timeline, that plots link with the characters, and that it all makes sense and flows together. Once you have accomplished that turn your editing software back on. It is time to fix your grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes.
Now put you book aside. Let it sit for about two weeks or so before you pick it up again. This will give your mind time to be clear and fresh. Now read the book again. Does it still flow and make sense? Do you need to add something or change it? Now is the time.
Choose someone to proofread your book for you. If at all possible you should hire a professional editor to do this. But if you cannot ask a colleague or maybe someone else you know with a writing or English background. While giving professional advice they will also be able to offer you and unbiased opinion. They will be able to see if there is a jump in the timeline you didn’t notice or if you had a character in the beginning and they just disappeared.
The last thing to do while writing a book is creating the final draft. The final draft should be error free. This is your last chance to change anything before it goes to the publisher. Now is when all that time you spent writing a book comes together to make its trip to publication.
Web Hosting - Managing Disk Space Few things are less exciting than managing the disk space that always seems to be in too short a supply. But few things are more important to the health and well being of your site. The most obvious aspect of managing disk space is the need to have enough. If you have only a few dozen web pages, that's not an issue. But as the amount of information (web pages, database content and more) grows, the quantity of free space goes down. That's important for two reasons. All permanent information on a computer is stored on hard drives. Temporary information is often stored in memory only. The two components are completely separate, though they are sometimes confused with one another. As the amount of free space on the hard drive decreases several effects occur. Here's one way to picture them... Imagine you had a table with a certain area and you lay out playing cards on the table. At first, you lay them out in order, the 2 at the side of the 3, then 4, and so on. But then you pick up one or two cards from the middle and discard them. Then you add some more cards. Pretty soon things look pretty random. Now cover the cards with a big opaque sheet of paper. You want the cards to appear in order when displayed to someone. A special robot could be designed to always pick up the cards from underneath the sheet in order. Or, it could slide a hole in the sheet over the cards to display them in the correct order (2, 3, 4, ...), no matter what order they are really in. That's similar to how the operating system always shows you information in a sensible way, even though it's actually stored randomly. Why should you care? Real files are stored in pieces scattered around the drive wherever there is space for them. The more free space there is, the quicker the operating system can find a place to store a new piece. That means, if you delete the junk you no longer need (and free up more space) the system actually runs quicker. It helps create space you might need, and allows the operating system to store files for you faster. But there's a second effect. As you delete old files or change them, the pieces get more and more scattered. It takes the 'robot' longer and longer to fetch or display the 'cards' in order. Existing files are fetched and put together 'on the fly' (say, when you request a graphical page or a list of names). But, it takes longer to put together the web page when there are more scattered pieces. So, the other aspect of managing disk space is to keep the pieces of the files more or less in order. A utility that does that is called a 'de-fragger' or de-fragmentation program. You can request that a system administrator run it, or if you have the authority, you can run it yourself. That keeps the 'cards' in order and allows for quicker access to them. So, managing disk space involves chiefly three things: (1) keeping enough space to store what you need to store, and also (2) keeping enough free space to make new file storage quick and (3) making old file retrieval fast by keeping things orderly. When only a few files are involved the benefit isn't worth the effort. But as the number and size of the files grow, to thousands of files or several gigabytes of data, the effect becomes more noticeable. Keeping things organized then makes a significant difference in performance. Much of this can be automated using utilities. Some will delete files in a certain folder older than a certain date. A de-fragger can be set to run automatically during times of light usage, or quietly in the background at all times. Discuss the options with your system administrator and help him or her do the job better by keeping your house in order. You'll benefit by having a better performing web site. Assistance on Filling Out those Online Forms for the Free Stuff So, you’ve found a great freebie online, or a free trial of some service you have been wondering about, but the form you have to fill out has left you scratching your head. Sometimes the paperwork involved in getting some free stuff can seem a bit like applying for a mortgage or filling out your life insurance policy, and in fact, many people decide the freebie isn’t worth it after all when they’re facing down an intimidating form to fill out. The good news is that you don’t have to miss out on the free stuff just because the form leaves you a little perplexed. This guide will walk you through filling out these online applications, even if this is your first trip around the Internet. Once you get the hang of things, you’ll be filling out these forms in no time at all. First things first: once you have the form open on the screen in front of you, you have to move your mouse so that the cursor sits in the very first empty space on the form, and then click the mouse once. Some forms will automatically place your cursor there when you open them, but if you are not sure, moving the mouse there and clicking won’t hurt anything at all. All you have to do now is start typing, filling in the information they ask for in that field. Filling out the form the entire form is merely a repetition of this process. Of course, you have to be able to move between the fields easily so you can fill in the rest of the form. On some online forms, the cursor will move automatically when you have finished filling in a field, which makes life easy on you, but others do not. To manually move between fields, all you have to do is either hit the “tab” key on your keyboard or use your mouse to move the cursor to the next field, just like you did to start typing in the first field. Hitting “enter” may seem like a natural thing to do, and while it can work on some forms, other forms will submit themselves when you hit enter, meaning you will have submitted a blank form. It is best to stick to “tab” or your mouse to be on the safe side. This technique should allow you to navigate a freebie form fairly easily. There are a few other things you may see on a form that you have to know how to handle. You may be asked to “check” a box or indicate in a little circle (called a radio button) that you accept the company’s privacy policy or some other thing. To do this, all you have to do is move your cursor over the box or circle and click – the check or the dot will then appear. This can also be handy when forms ask for a billing address and a shipping address - if they are the same, you can tick a box stating so and avoid having to type the same thing twice. If a form has several pages, be careful to save your changes for every page as you move along. Usually there will be a button to click at the bottom of the page that allows you to save the work you have done. Especially long forms usually have some kind of side navigation that lets you skip around from section to section instead of moving through the form systematically – this can be helpful if you need to find some info for one section, but want to take care of all of the other work first. Most forms are reasonably user friendly and contain info to walk you through the process. If you get stuck, look for a help icon on the page – this info should clear up any questions you may have. |