Free books for the Kindle

I’m officially a traitor (to my beloved books). I got a Kindle for Christmas.

I wanted to be able to read the free ebooks offered by new authors. (and maybe Sherlock Holmes in a less back breaking format.)

Now I have to fill it up. (Just what I needed, more books to add to my growing to-read list.) I was surprised at how many sites there are out there listing the daily free books.

My favorite site so far is http://digitalbooktoday.com/free-kindle-books/

http://www.pixelofink.com/ is one of the top sites and features daily kindle deals for popular books too. (Maze Runner today for $2)

http://ereadernewstoday.com/ is another top site. I don’t like the layout as much as the others, but it has a mailing list where you can pick which genres you’re interested in.

http://www.mobileread.com/forums/ is a forum site to discuss kindle books.

http://bargainebookhunter.com/category/free/ Another good listing. It as cover art and descriptions on the site, unlike digitalbooktoday.

I’m still new to all this ebook stuff. Anyone know of any good sites that I missed?

For those of you looking to promote your free book http://onlineinternetmarketinghelp.com/23-free-sites-to-promote-your-free-kindle-books-on-amazon/ lists all the sites and links to the submission forms.

Coming next week, what makes me download a book and what makes me turn away.

Novel Editing - What to cut

As a child whenever I finished a rough draft I felt like, "Okay, it's done. Why would I need to edit it? It's perfect." If only it were that easy.

I'm still working on editing my novel. I'm struggling with my word count, so I'm cutting away. Here are some tips that I've found helpful.

* The hardest part for me is cutting something out that I think is good. If it isn't relevant to the plot or character development it has to go, no matter how beautiful the scene or how funny the dialogue.

* Don't repeat telling the same tale more than once. I always want to hear how a character retells the story when relating it to another character, but this redundancy isn't necessary.

* I cut out the backstory, working it into the story itself and dramatically reducing the word count.

* Removing words, such as just, actually, like. If I can still understand the sentence without the word, it doesn't need to be there. This includes removing adjectives when there is more than one in a sentence or overusing the -ly ending words.

* Make things less wordy. Rewrite sentences keeping the important parts, but using fewer words. Easier said than done, but most of my cuts seem to be of this nature.

*If my mind wanders during a section or a sentence, it doesn't seem fluid or is confusing I know it has to be rewritten or cut entirely.

* Excess descriptions. I still want to tell what the characters and places look like, but I've found the key is that the more important the scene or character the more descripton they need. If it is a passing village not important to the plot I don't have to spend all that much time describing it.

* What NOT to do: Don't write a summary instead of dialogue, especially if it is important to the plot. I don't mean leaving in every small talk conversation during dinner, but I like to feel like I am actually there when the character's talk or do something as opposed to reading about it after the fact.

Agree? Disagree? Know of anything I missed? Please let me know, I appreciate your feedback.

Vacation

My romantic notions of writing on the beach were quashed by reality. My notebook got wet and sandy, so I chucked it in my beach bag and played in the surf.

I actually did accomplish quite a bit of editing. The first 24 thousand words are finally done, which were my hardest to write and to edit. It is now speeding along and I'm almost a third done.

Editing

I have been Googling how to edit a novel. Most of the editing articles I've read have been useless. Some of them I questioned how good the writer could be if their articles were so dull. I did read a good one though that explained some common writing mistakes. It's coming in quite handy. 

http://litreactor.com/columns/8-words-to-seek-and-destroy-in-your-writing

I don't recommend eliminating all of a word, just the ones that are unnecessary. Sometimes the sentence makes perfect sense without the word in question or even sounds better without it.

I particularly liked how the author explained suddenly. If you tell your readers that something suddenly happens you are warning them and then it comes off as less sudden. It took me quite a while to fix this one issue. Editing is proving far more difficult than I anticipated. 

Another good site recommended to me by my sister is 

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

She explains the dangling particle quite well which is what the 8 words author was getting at in his IS portion.

Writing Pace

I was looking back to see how quickly I wrote my novel. All but the first 24 thousand words were written in the last 17 days. I think this shows that starting to write is the most difficult part. It proves that you should keep at it. It will get easier once you get going and get used to writing.

I’d also like to note that my ideas were coming out so quickly at that stage that I probably have a lot of editing to do. Certainly proofreading those beginning 24 thousand words has proved difficult. 

I am mostly changing the way my character told the story because she has changed along the way, the sort of character she is, not developing her character. I have also found more than a few good ideas I had that I didn’t follow through with. I created a separate file for continuity, writing these ideas down along with my continuity errors, so I can try to work them into the later parts of my story.

Wordle

Wordle of my entire story.

I did a wordle when I was part way through and realized I had a giant JUST in the middle. I took out 100 just and paid attention to it from then on. Now I’m thinking LIKE is far too large, going to have to fix that next.