The Editing Process - Track Changes

I know, I know, I should have loaded this earlier, but it’s still the 28^th right? I was having a hard time on how to conclude this…

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Okay so you’ve just got your book back from the editor. Your heart beats hard in your chest as you download it into your computer and hope they like it. You open it up and start to look through it.

I have a couple of tips to make your life easier as you work your way through the edits.

Do you have the same program as your publisher? Can you see the track changes? Can you see the comments the editor made? Questions they might have asked? I bring this up because most publishers use MS Word and if you don’t have that program you might not be able to see the comments they could make.

Do you know how to use track changes? In MS Word if you look up at the top of the screen you’ll see a line of words – file, home, insert, page layout, reference, mailings, review, and view.  If you click on the word review you’ll see the bar below it change. About half way across in that lower bar is track changes. If it is on the background it sits on turns yellow. When it’s off it is white. I found out when I get my ms’s back from my editor and I turn it off I can still accept and reject their changes. The great thing is that if I find something I need to fix that the editor didn’t mark I can make my changes without having to approve everything I alter.

 I also like the using the accept and reject section in the toolbar when I have a few of those pesky track changes I can’t seem to find. That shows it to me every time. Normally, I just right click on the underlined section and a box will appear that allows me to do the same thing the tool bar does.

Really early versions of Word put the comments in the body of the documents but as they kept upgrading the program it moved to the side of the document – the one nice thing is they are easy to delete when you have completed the comment or to add to it if you need to. Just right click to delete if you don’t want to use the tool bar up top.

I still haven’t figured out how to end this particular blog. I hope this info helps you and I’ll be continuing with the editing process next month.

Barb:)

Bio:
Barbara Donlon Bradley wears many hats. She’s a mother, wife, care-giver, author, and editor. She’s a senior editor for Melange Books, and writes for Phaze and Melange books/Satin Romances with over twenty titles under her belt.

Author Sites:

Website: http://www.barbaradonlonbradley.com/

Publisher: http://www.phaze.com/author.php?author=21

Blog: http://barbaradonlonbradley.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Barbara-Donlon-Bradley/118673448173249

Twitter: https://twitter.com/barbbradley

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/barbaradbradley/

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7773192-barbara-bradley

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0072OTZJE

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Barbara-donlon-bradley

ARe:http://www.allromanceebooks.com/storeSearch.html?searchBy=author&qString=Barbara+Donlon+Bradley

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/Search?Query=Barbara%20Donlon%20Bradley

Shelfari: http://www.shelfari.com/search/books?Keywords=barbara%20donlon%20bradley

the image I used came from my pinterest account - and from writer-write-creative-blog.posthaven.com

Sign OFF for Simple Painless Promo #MFRWOrg

How often have you checked out a post from someone and thought "Interesting, I'd like to know more about this person" or you've seen an invitation, on a discussion group, to share blogs, but no e-mail or blog address. Sure you can reply publicly...which in some groups is not encouraged. Or you can hope the individual e-mail will show up when you click on reply.

That's a lot of work, even when one of our goals as writers is to be available to those who want to communicate. How can we easily provide our contact information without a constant shout out, or without typing it in every time we post.

Simple. Just sign off with everything you want people to know.

When we are in author mode, we need to be thinking about ways to let people get in touch with us. That's as opposed to writer mode, where we just want people to leave us alone so we can write. Even then, if we stick our head up out of our story to check our e-mail (yeah, shame on us but it happens!) we want to get the best return on our posts.

So, we want to let people know WHO we are, WHERE to find us, and HOW to get in touch. In my case, it would be  [Monica Stoner w/a Mona Karel http://mona-karel.com/ tsent@ix.netcom.com Discover the Enchantment in Romance https://twitter.com/MonaKarel] which also includes my tagline. When we use one e-mail for more than one purpose (for me, I'm Mona the Writer, Monica the AKC Delegate, and also the day to day Monica) we can develop a unique sign off for each identity.

How do I handle this? My e-mail server allows multiple signatures. For each one, I set up a signature line. Monica Henderson Stoner is Delegate to the Saluki Club of America; Mona's signature line is above. Monica has a cute snippet: We only have a little spark of madness, we must preserve it. ALL of these signatures have at least an e-mail if not also a website contact. The only thing I have to remember to do is change the "from" bar when I start a message.

Almost painless, yes? Guaranteed to make it easier for people to stay in touch, which is a very good thing.

You can go further, of course. You can list every book you've ever written, add their covers, include glowing reviews. You can make your signature line bigger than your message.  And some people will happily read that information, at least the first time. If you're participating in an online discussion and no one is trimming their message, that display of information will be seen over and over and...which is one of the reasons you want to be trimming your messages!

Make it easy on readers and on yourself to stay in touch. Have a bright day!

Monica Stoner w/a Mona Karel http://mona-karel.com/ tsent@ix.netcom.com Discover the Enchantment in Romance https://twitter.com/MonaKarel
MFRW Staff, Blog Hop Coordinator

BIO
I think my first story written was in sixth grade, something to show my penmanship for the county fair. Penmanship, me. Right. I wrote Beatles fan fiction, and horrible Gothic romances, then set aside writing for my other obsession, horses. I worked in horses and dogs (and restaurants) until my mid thirties when I discovered real jobs in materials management, and married Tom.

We were married for 25 years, most of them spent in Los Angeles county. It had to be true love for me to live there that long. New Mexico was our ultimate goal and we had five wonderful years on the high plains. For all that time, I wrote. Writing helped me deal with living around too many people, and then helped me express the joy of the high plains, and deal with the shock of losing my best friend. I write to share my dreams...and the beautiful New Mexico skies.

Retweet Day on July 8 - Share #MFRWAuthors Tweets

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Once the tweet has been posted. Click on the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to (copy link to tweet). Copy this link and put it in the comment section of this post.

On Sept 9, click on each link and share everyone's post on twitter. Also, make sure to have #MFRWauthor in the tweet.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Tina Gayle writes stories with strong women fiction elements. Visit her website and read the 1st chapter of any of her books. www.tinagayle.net

What's Your Critique Group Experience? @kayelleallen #MFRWauthor #amwriting

Tarthian Empire Companion 

I live in a small town in Georgia, and honestly thought I'd never find a writer's group where I would fit. I write non-fiction, contemporary romance, scifi, scifi romance, gay romance, and I'm moving into mainstream with all my books simply to broaden my reader base. So instead of erotic content, I'm writing with a focus on character relationships and other story aspects.

When I found a group on MeetUp that brought together local writers, I intended to stay "in the closet" as far as my erotic writing went. I was focusing on other aspects anyway. They'd never see my spicy scenes. Members knew going in that I wrote gay romance, and that was never an issue with anyone. Considering it is such a small town, I was a little surprised when no one even blinked when I said what I write. About three months later, we got a new member from California who was writing a lesbian romance series. It's literary fiction with characters who happen to be lesbians. She's an incredible writer -- one of the most gifted I've ever read. She's become my friend.

When she asked if the group could meet an additional day of the week just for critiques, we took a vote. Everyone who was interested began meeting on the new day as well. Later, we gained another writer who writes romance, but who has a serious love for gay romance. I'm still amazed at how diverse this group is for such a tiny town. I never expected to find this. We have one writer in her 70s who's probably the most open-minded person I've ever met. She just isn't shocked at anything, unless it's us saying something nice about her work. We have a 20-something guy who's a new writer honing his love of pony fanfic. And we have a serious literary writer who uses multimillion dollar words and you would think is pretentious until you realize he's being himself. He speaks the way he writes. If I made these characters up for a book people would think I had an outrageous imagination. But they are real, and I get to hang out with them every week.

My point is that no matter where you live, there is probably someone like you, looking for a writer friend. Ask at the library if you can put out flyers to start a writers' group. Take out an ad in the local paper. Reach out on social media. Try MeetUp like I did, and see what happens. But get out there and meet writers. The fun and camaraderie of working together is too good to miss.

What is your experience? Have you belonged to a critique group in the past? Are you in one now? Please share in the comments.

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Kayelle Allen, author of the Tarthian Empire Companion
A World-Building Bible and Guide to Writing a Science Fiction Series
Amazon http://bit.ly/companion-az Smashwords http://bit.ly/companion-smw
Website http://kayelleallen.mobi Blog http://kayelleallen.com/blog
Twitter http://twitter.com/kayelleallen Facebook http://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Google+ https://plus.google.com/+KayelleAllen/