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I'm going to start a book

sfbloodbrother

Extreme Android User
Jul 30, 2012
6,109
733
Chicago IL
Writing a book is something I always wanted to do. This book I'm writing now is something that I know is not going to be an easy task by any means. I'm not saying that it is going to be any good or anything like that, but a book is a book. A bunch of words isn't it? Who knows, maybe someday after editing it, it will actually get published. I have started this book already and my progress is below. It would be nice to stay in communication with you phandroids on this thread to keep me motivated in finishing this novel.

Constraints:
Book Start Date: December 15; Book End Date: January 15. (31 Days)
50,000 words or 1,613 words a day.
Edit this post at the end of every day to share how far I've come.
Record a video of less than 60 seconds and edit that into the final video which will be posted on my YouTube homepage.
Reply to this thread with a picture of how far I have come in the novel showing page numbers, words, characters.

This shows how many words I have towards my 50,000 goal. Daily goal is 1,613 WPD
Day 01: 1,829
Day 02: 3,410
Day 03: 4,734
Day 04: 5,708
Day 05: 6,100 Or something like that.
Day 06: 7,801
Day 07: 8,584
Day 08: 10,522
Day 09: 12,000 Or something like that.
Day 10: 13,143
Day 11: I decided to change my goal. Instead of 30 days, I made it 90 days to write a 50,000 word book.
Day 12: Haven't written anything today.
 

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Thanks, do you think I should post it somewhere online? Is there a website for that?

I believe I answered that in a different thread.

There are various forums which cater to young and budding writers, if that is what you are looking for.

It is always good to have someone to read your stuff as a sanity-check (if not spell/grammar-check).
 
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I believe I answered that in a different thread.

There are various forums which cater to young and budding writers, if that is what you are looking for.

It is always good to have someone to read your stuff as a sanity-check (if not spell/grammar-check).

Yes, thank you. I will look more into those sites later. Right now, I just want to brainstorm ideas to write down. I can't believe I took this challenge on, 50,000 words in 31 days?? It's possible but I don't think I ever took on something as writing challenging as that.
 
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When I was going to the community college, one of my professors (Philosophy), had wrote one book and was working on a second one. I used to hang out with his younger brother years before, so I ended up typing a rough draft of the new book, I only had parts of it that he had finish writing. But he died before we was able to finished it.

During the time I was typing it, I was saving it on floppy disks, which was still the go to media at the time. Later on, I wanted to see if I could finish the book for him but I didn't know where he lived to talk to his wife about getting the rest of what he had wrote. I never did find the part I had saved on disk, because I had moved a few times and probably threw it away without knowing it.

I wished I could have finished it for him. The book was about an old black baseball player from our area who played in the Negro Baseball League during the 1940s & 1950s.
 
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When I was going to the community college, one of my professors (Philosophy), had wrote one book and was working on a second one. I used to hang out with his younger brother years before, so I ended up typing a rough draft of the new book, I only had parts of it that he had finish writing. But he died before we was able to finished it.

During the time I was typing it, I was saving it on floppy disks, which was still the go to media at the time. Later on, I wanted to see if I could finish the book for him but I didn't know where he lived to talk to his wife about getting the rest of what he had wrote. I never did find the part I had saved on disk, because I had moved a few times and probably threw it away without knowing it.

I wished I could have finished it for him. The book was about an old black baseball player from our area who played in the Negro Baseball League during the 1940s & 1950s.

Wow, interesting. I'm wrining my book on Google Drive. I love Google Drive. I intend to finish this book with the wrining, maybe I will edit the book later, I just want to write something to say that I wrote something like this. Chromebook is going to die, typing as fastn as I can type to geth this done before the book dies. Lol, I did good for the first day I think so in my opinino.

EDIT
I won't bother to reply to the same thread if nobody has repled to this one. Don't want to spam my own thread. Here's the picture today.
 

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Just a suggestion:

I notice that you are writing it in one document. It might be wise to write each chapter in a new word document, so that if something happens to the file you are working on, it is only the latest chapter, and not the whole novel.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to organize and keep a track of your accumulative word count, but it seems safer. Huge word files can become unwieldy, and you are more likely to accidentally lose everything.

BTW, good luck! :)
 
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One can generate a master document which links to each of the chapters. Opening up the Master should allow him to do a total word-count.

It's been ten years and several versions of Word since I last did so, therefor YMMV.

My own work is getting on the large side and I should be doing the same thing, actually...
 
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One can generate a master document which links to each of the chapters. Opening up the Master should allow him to do a total word-count.

It's been ten years and several versions of Word since I last did so, therefor YMMV.

My own work is getting on the large side and I should be doing the same thing, actually...

After you posted this I looked up how to create master documents and discovered that they are very prone to corrupting your documents! :eek:

There has been a lot written about this and there is also a list of rules to best avoid corruption.

Here is an explanation of why they corrupt documents:

Why Master Documents corrupt

And here is the guide to best practice in avoiding corruption:

MS Word Master Documents | TechWhirl


After reading those, I think we might be better off just typing into one big document, if it is likely to be less than 500 pages long.

So although I think it could be a good idea to write chapters in separate documents, I would NOT recommend creating a master document!
 
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Hm.

I found this program: Plume Creator

It looks like it is designed specifically for writing books.

It's maybe a little late for my ongoing project, but I may try it out on a new one.

Frankly, I miss the simple logic of Word Perfect... it was purely text-oriented (until they decided to make it a MS Word competitor), and you could easily view the metadata settings if you wanted to.

It was like having a simple text editor that could also format your document like a modern word processor.
 
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You can publish for free via Kindle, and it has good royalty rates.
Yes, I looked that up earlier.
After you posted this I looked up how to create master documents and discovered that they are very prone to corrupting your documents! :eek:

There has been a lot written about this and there is also a list of rules to best avoid corruption.

Here is an explanation of why they corrupt documents:

Why Master Documents corrupt

And here is the guide to best practice in avoiding corruption:

MS Word Master Documents | TechWhirl


After reading those, I think we might be better off just typing into one big document, if it is likely to be less than 500 pages long.

So although I think it could be a good idea to write chapters in separate documents, I would NOT recommend creating a master document!
Thank's. But I'm not using Microsoft Word. I haven't used that in 6 years. I'm writing this in Google Drive.
Just a suggestion:

I notice that you are writing it in one document. It might be wise to write each chapter in a new word document, so that if something happens to the file you are working on, it is only the latest chapter, and not the whole novel.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to organize and keep a track of your accumulative word count, but it seems safer. Huge word files can become unwieldy, and you are more likely to accidentally lose everything.

BTW, good luck! :)
What do you think about Google Drive? I haven't used Word in years.
Let us know how it works out.
Thanks, I will.
 
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I've tried writing some books over the past few years but have never got very far so I'm finding this thread quite interesting.

It sounds like you've already got alot more wrote than I have so good luck with finishing it.

I find my main problem is that l lack the focus to put time aside to spend enough time writing,
Also I tend to read through what I've wrote so far every time and end up spending more time editing that than writing new content.

The idea of writing a chapter per file sounds interesting though never thought of doing that before. Might help me stop re-reading what I've already done.

Although think I'm stuck using Word as most of the time I spend will be on a surface RT which I cant see letting me install the app mentioned earlier or Google drive.
 
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I find my main problem is that l lack the focus to put time aside to spend enough time writing,
Also I tend to read through what I've wrote so far every time and end up spending more time editing that than writing new content.

The idea of writing a chapter per file sounds interesting though never thought of doing that before. Might help me stop re-reading what I've already done.

Although think I'm stuck using Word as most of the time I spend will be on a surface RT which I cant see letting me install the app mentioned earlier or Google drive.

Does RT have Wordpad or something similar?

Rather than loading up a full word processor every time, you could use a small text editor such as Wordpad or Notebook to write your rough-draft chapters. Each chapter as its own file.

Then, at the end of the month, or what-have-you, you can merge the accumulated chapters into a larger file in the word processor, do your spell-check and re-read, editing and such.

Giving yourself a little time between the initial draft and the first real edit gives you a chance to 'clear your eyes' a bit and you will catch more problems.

Also, it will take you a few chapters to really understand who and what your characters are, and you will invariably have to rewrite the first few chapters to accommodate their development.
 
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Does RT have Wordpad or something similar?

Rather than loading up a full word processor every time, you could use a small text editor such as Wordpad or Notebook to write your rough-draft chapters. Each chapter as its own file.

Then, at the end of the month, or what-have-you, you can merge the accumulated chapters into a larger file in the word processor, do your spell-check and re-read, editing and such.

Giving yourself a little time between the initial draft and the first real edit gives you a chance to 'clear your eyes' a bit and you will catch more problems.

Also, it will take you a few chapters to really understand who and what your characters are, and you will invariably have to rewrite the first few chapters to accommodate their development.

Yeah I think it does have word pad,

Thanks very much for that I think that will help alot with been able to make some forward progress.
 
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FYI
I'm a very good (read, 'cruel task master' :) ) at proofreading a document, if you'd like another set of eyes on it just let me know.
Thanks for the help. I want to go over it at least once myself then I will let someone else check my work. I want to see how well I can do myself.
I've tried writing some books over the past few years but have never got very far so I'm finding this thread quite interesting.

It sounds like you've already got alot more wrote than I have so good luck with finishing it.

I find my main problem is that l lack the focus to put time aside to spend enough time writing,
Also I tend to read through what I've wrote so far every time and end up spending more time editing that than writing new content.

The idea of writing a chapter per file sounds interesting though never thought of doing that before. Might help me stop re-reading what I've already done.

Although think I'm stuck using Word as most of the time I spend will be on a surface RT which I cant see letting me install the app mentioned earlier or Google drive.
I sometimes just read the last paragraph I wrote just to see what the next one should be about. Don't think about it too much while writing.
And, yeah, the Surface RT does not have an app for that, Drive. But that does, or SHOULD come with a full office suite. The RT should be a good tablet to write a book on.
Does RT have Wordpad or something similar?

Rather than loading up a full word processor every time, you could use a small text editor such as Wordpad or Notebook to write your rough-draft chapters. Each chapter as its own file.

Then, at the end of the month, or what-have-you, you can merge the accumulated chapters into a larger file in the word processor, do your spell-check and re-read, editing and such.

Giving yourself a little time between the initial draft and the first real edit gives you a chance to 'clear your eyes' a bit and you will catch more problems.

Also, it will take you a few chapters to really understand who and what your characters are, and you will invariably have to rewrite the first few chapters to accommodate their development.

I am breaking down the file into chapters while also having one master file with everything. Google Drive can support any document, no matter how many pages, or font size as long as the character count is below 1,044,000 characters. I asked a Google Drive specialist about this after you guys let me know about it.
 
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