Re-Blog: Here’s a Handy Trick If You Use Word by Leah Braemel

Warning Scrivener Users!

I had a melt-down-worthy moment with Scrivener recently. (I'm on a PC, by the way.) I just finished composing my entire 106k manuscript for my next novel and Scrivener did some updates to their software. When I opened my manuscript in the updated version, it told me I had to convert the old file format in order to be used in the updated software. Where there were once seventeen chapters and an epilogue, I was down to the first three chapters of my book! Fifteen chapters...GONE!

Thank the GODS I still had my old computer with the older version of the software and was able to open the back-up and export the whole thing into MS Word. Crisis averted and I didn't end up sitting in the corner, sucking my thumb and rocking back and forth while I lamented over losing my novel. What a nightmare!

One of the main reasons I started using Scrivener was the ease of being able to break my book into scenes and then be able to move those scenes around with ease just by dragging and dropping them wherever I needed. After this little near-miss, I posted my woes in a network group I belong to, asking for recommendations of new software that would do the same thing, and the lovely Leah Braemel shared a blog post she wrote about how you can do the same exact thing in MS Word! I was so excited, I just had to share!

Here's a link to the original post, which shows you exactly how to do this nifty little trick!!

>>Here's a Handy Trick If You Use Word<<

by Leah Braemel

Although I loved the flexibility of moving things around in Scrivener, I did not like quirks of formatting text, how I always had to change my font to something other than Courier New (in spite of instructions I followed to fix the defaults) and then the mess the document was in once I exported it for eBook formatting. Too much junk in the background of the file! But the flexibility of moving scenes around was a big enough win for me to stick with it. I really have enjoyed working with MS Word as the final product. NOW I can!! *Arial does the Snoopy dance*

I hope this helps someone else!!

That's my two pence...

The Best Time to Write and Get Ideas, According to Science

Someone in my RAMN (Romance Authors Marketing Network) group posted this article in our Facebook group and I just HAD to reblog it here! I find myself referring other authors to this article often, so I thought it would be easier to re-post here. Nice reference for me and now available to those in my circle.
Author: Kevan Lee - March 10, 2014

What does your ideal day look like? Would you believe there’s a scientifically correct answer to the question?

Research into the human body—its hormone  allotment, its rhythms, and its tendencies—has found that there are certain times of day when the body is just better at performing certain activities. Eat breakfast no later than 8:00 a.m. Exercise between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. Read Twitter from 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. (your fellow tweeters are more upbeat in the morning).

Turns out our optimal times for performing a large number of tasks are best left up to science. If breakfast can be black-and-white, does that mean writing and creativity can be, too?

Click here to read about the best time to write...