Having had the idea for my first Self Published book, having written it in Scrivener, having set up a WordPress website, having got a Domain Name, and having set up my Email List with Mailchimp, pretty much everything a self pushing newbie needs was in place.

Of those first few steps, setting up the website and organising Mailchimp were the two that took the most time to get right and looking the way I wanted them to. So the next thing to do was the editing of what I’d written…

The Fan Film Book was written in Scrivener, which has plenty of options for formatting and re-formatting what you’ve written. And then, just when you thought you were finished, there was some new development in the world of Who that you wanted to include a reference to in order to keep the book as up to date as possible. All of which meant that it ended up coming out almost a year later than I originally planned, but the finished text was all the better for it.

Not that I was that bothered by the long timescale of this first book project. When you’ve never done something before and are doing it for the first time, it’s going to take you longer to do than it ever will again, because you’ve never done it before.

Hint: When you do something for the first time, that’s the hardest it will ever be to do.

As far as editing the written text goes, Scrivener will only flag up words it doesn’t recognise or words that don’t conform to US English spellings. Like recognise, which it thinks should be recognize. So, great though it in many other respects, Scriv isn’t much use when it come to checking your grammar. And it pays to check your grammar!

STEP 5: EDITING YOUR WRITING..

Grammarly is the over-advertised-on-YouTube option that I wanted to steer well clear of. Mostly due to being sick of seeing their advert on every other YouTube video I watched. Shaxpir is an option, but you only get the grammar checker with the paid version. So I went with the free version of Pro Writing Aid, though you do get more functionality with the paid version.

For all I needed it for, the free version had functionality enough, which essentially came down to a reduced word count on how much text you could check at any one time. Which is 500 words. With the paid version, you can check as much text as you like, but checking it in chunks was no great hardship. As well as being cheaper!

This does, of course, take time. But it’s worth taking the time over editing your book like this if, like me, you don’t have the money to pay an editor to do it for you and you have to self-edit.

NEXT TIME: Publishing Options.