Monday, April 22, 2013

Editing has begun!

Today I spent the first actual money on getting my novel finished. I went to my local printing shop and had my manuscript printed and bound so I could carry it everywhere with me and edit as much as possible. The printing and the binding cost me about $30, but it's well worth it to save my own limited ink and paper, plus having it bound for easy transport and reading.

What I should have bought while I was there was a red pen, though! We have none in the house and for now I'm going to use a red marker until I can get my hands on an actual pen for making notes.

I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've written a novel at no cost until this point. I see other blogs that talk about all this cash they've spent getting their novel off the ground and I was a little worried, having limited funds myself. For anyone who is about to sit down and write something for the first time my first advice is spend no money. Zero. Unless you don't have access to a computer, then buy that.

Most computers should come with at least Word in some form. You don't need to spend $50 on a fancy writing program, a fancy keyboard, or any of the bells and whistles you might see some famous author talking about. Word, or even notepad, will work just fine.

Two things that you'll obviously need to drop money on are editing and a cover, but really that should be it. Watch the price on the cover and editing though. This day in age almost everyone probably knows one graphic designer and someone with an English degree that's gathering dust. Speak to them before giving money out to strangers online, at least for some background information.


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