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.