I am so behind

I’ve written 2,065 words this month. Let me just say that’s not where I imagined I’d be at this point in the month.

Since I have a book to finish, I’m going to have to try to write today and keep writing until I’ve written a damn lot of words. :o

To do that, I’m going to have to kick this damn perfectionism I’ve got going on to the curb. I keep letting people in my head, but they’re not even the main problem. I’m the problem. I’m the critic from hell. When I’m in one of my moods, nothing is ever good enough. I can’t write fast because I can’t stop criticizing what I’ve written as I write. I also over write. Seriously. I spend way too much time trying to draw a picture of the images in my head with words, and I’m starting to realize just how dumb that is. It’s limiting. I need to lean a little heavier on the reader’s imagination.

Or something like that.

Anyway, I’m about to have a late breakfast. It’s 11:07 am, but I stayed up until 2 in the morning so I’m not that surprised. What sucks is that I’ve actually been awake since 7 and I’m already tired.

But a writing day it is today.

Also, I’ve decided that today is the first day of me writing every day. I’m going to do it. I’m afraid to commit, but I’m kind of in a contrary mood today and by damn I’m going to start writing every day if I have to glue my fingers to a pen to make it happen.

I have to start writing more and that’s just all there is to it. I can’t be happy as a writer if I don’t, because writing stokes the desire to write more, and not writing just makes me apathetic and write even less over time. I can’t afford that unless I want to find another career.

And I don’t. I like this one just fine.

CreateSpace cover template generator at Bookow

I meant to publish this a few days ago when I was in the midst of working on my paperbacks. I tested the Bookow CreateSpace cover template generator and I really like it.

The templates are similar to the CreateSpace templates, but they’re an exact fit for CreateSpace book covers. CreateSpace itself doesn’t generate templates that are an exact fit, so I have a spreadsheet that does it for me. CreateSpace’s own templates are done in batches of 10 pages, so they’re close, but not exact.

My spreadsheet came up with 3268.5 x 2475 as the dimensions I need for my cover. Rounded, that’s 3269 x 2475 at 300 ppi.

Bookow generated a template sized 3269 x 2475 for my book.

Spot on. :D

That was for the PNG file. The PDF file when opened in GIMP came up short after setting it to 300 ppi. However, that might be a quirk I just don’t know how to deal with, and I never use the PDF anyway, only the PNG, even from the CreateSpace generated templates. So there you go.

The Bookow page also has a few other resources on that page that are useful, including the ISBN-13 hyphenator, which I had fun with.