2020

Without a doubt, 2020 has been a curious and sobering year with the broad strokes of the pandemic brushing across the earth. Observing local, national, and international governments respond to the challenge of the dreadful virus has caused many people to reevaluate their own priorities. It seems newsworthy [not really] that celebrities are turning to new endeavors of cooking, gardening, fine art, and writing the next Great American Novel. On the newsfeeds that I monitor most of the publishing news has centered on a few political tell-all works that came out this year.

I asked myself who would buy those books? Who would think that one Washington person would be any more accurate or truthful than the person they are spilling the beans on? In general, those books vilify the subject and propose sainthood for the writer. I am particularly appalled that anyone with moral fiber would write or publish a book claiming to be a former friend. News flash to their current friends: You’re next!

RISE UP. We always told our children that the goal was to be better than us, to move the family up: to be kinder, more compassionate, to give more effort, to do more, to be smarter. RISE UP. That is what comes to my mind when I hear people complain about their lot in life. RISE UP. Life isn’t without difficult challenges. RISE UP. Meet them head-on. RISE UP. Do it. Pass it on.

Getting Started

If you are thinking of writing your first book or your fifth book, take a minute to jot down those ideas. But before starting typing the next Great American novel, make sure your computer skills are more than the bare minimum.

In general, most manuscript submissions, Cactus Rain Publishing included, are expected to be submitted in Microsoft Word. If you use another operating system than Microsoft Windows, find a Word comparable software program. When in Rome…

All of us who took typing in high school have to adapt to ‘typing’ a document, and particularly a manuscript, on a computer.

•  Rather than use five spaces to indent a paragraph, use the TAB key.
• Don’t set the program to automatically indent or to add a space between paragraphs.
• For centering a chapter title, use the CENTER key, do not TAB or space over and eyeball the center.
• At the end of a chapter insert a page break. Hitting enter to move down to the start of the next page doesn’t work in the long term.
• One of the hardest habits to change is to only put one space between sentences rather than two spaces.

The importance of doing these things this way is that all of these old ways of typing have to be fixed by someone. When it isn't done right from the beginning, it wastes someone’s time to fix the manuscript.

Now, you can type your manuscript and get that creative high that comes from writing.

If you have questions, email Nadine@CactusRainPublishing.com.