So last night I was working on the Fantasy Firearms script which I had saved as a Google Document by chapters.  Well, Google was having some issues and would not save anything, so I copy/pasted the changes into Word and decided to take a break and do something else.  I went over to Lynda.com and wanted to bone up on some InDesign skills; especially regarding formatting text. (I’m a subscriber to their service.)

In no time I discovered a few simple things that made me realize I have pretty much been doing it wrong the whole time!  A few key-strokes and I fixed most of the formatting errors in the SCARE Vol. 3 layout.  If you will remember, the layout issues were one of the problems with SCARE Vol. 2 that cost me a star (along with some spelling to be fair) so I wanted to make an improvement.  Especially with some much larger page count projects coming up.

After that I was on to styles, which is a whole other topic.  While I didn’t get as much editing done last night as I wanted to, I have to say that I learned some important new things about the products I am using that will result in a better end product for my customers.  Sometimes training and learning isn’t as sexy or fun as doing a cool cover or coming up with a great concept, but in the end it will pay off with better production values and a more professional product.

If your using Adobe products, or a host of others that they cover, then do your self a favor and check out lynda.com; way cheaper than taking a college course.