Software that can check your spelling and grammar

With advancements in technology, there is now a range of different software readily available to those looking to put their book through the initial editing process. I have always been a big fan of Grammarly, the online editor. You copy and paste your documents into it and then it spells checks them for you. It has a range of different features including a plagiarism checker for those who are doing essays and may have used outside sources in their work. It is also very good at spotting commonly confused words, it will usually highlight them for you to double check you have used the right spelling. Grammarly also identifies when a comma is needed. If I need to get anything edited professionally I will always put it through Grammarly first. There is no point in sending an editor a half-finished book, the closer it is to finished, the more likely it is that the professional editor will be the one to finish the job. 

Style Writer 4: This is the second piece of writing editing software that I recommend. It can be tailored towards your writing style. The aim of this software is essentially to remove redundant text. Performing the role of a professional editor without the cost. I don't honestly believe there is a piece of software on the market that is perfect, but this software will check through your work for you, and turns your work from what it is, into what editors want to see. It will also remove words that are overused in the English language and suggest more appropriate words. This will help your writing appear fresh. It does not like Microsoft Word 2010 very much though, it works better with Word 2007.  The website is here: http://www.editorsoftware.com/

The Mice and the Cream

The Two Mice and the Cream

I loved my primary school, what I remember most out of everything we did was the assemblies. Sure we had some good lessons, but the assemblies were different. There was one story in one assembly which I came to embody as my own life. The story of the two mice, I will retell it for your benefit. There are two mice that fell into a bucket of cream. They fought and fought to escape, running as fast as they could to get out. Eventually the first mouse gives up and drowns. The second mouse keeps running till it churns that cream into butter. And that appears to be my life, granted the butter is not particularly thick at the moment, but I expect it shall thicken with time. Ultimately the question is and always will be how much do you want it? I was speaking to a girl at one of my many jobs, she was an English student. I told her the journey I had been on, the six years churning away at that cream.

She responded, “That seems like hard work.”

So I will ask you again, how much do you want it? I gave up watching television, I gave up computer games because I wanted this more than I wanted them. You may think I am being extreme here, I know that, I don’t care I will not go to my grave wondering if I could have given just that little bit more. Before I was born I won my first race; the race for life. The promises about my life are slowly being fulfilled. Since March this year I have earned more from writing than I have from my other job, somewhere between selling books and advertising products I am actually making a decent income. I won't pretend like there aren't bad months, cause there are, but there are also very good months. This month has been a very good month. Whilst I await the return of my beloved laptop I thought it would be a good time to start a new project, it will be a collection of short stories with a Yorkshire theme. 

The New Season

       What an amazing time to be alive, I am officially making money from writing. Six years ago I set out with a dream to complete my first novel. Six years (and three part-finished novels later) that dream is still be fulfilled. I am closer than ever though and now have the summer to put the finishing touches on Unspent Convictions. In the last six years I have moved from obscurity to running my own magazine. Twelve thousand people a year visit Dark Places Magazine at present. Issues are selling and I am very happy with the general direction that my life is moving in. About six hundred people a month read stuff I have written. It would seem that the dark period of the early twenties that many men experience is coming to an end. Your twenties represent an era of unknowns, "what am I going to do with my life?" is one of those burning questions. Fortunately the tide began turning for me on the eve of my twenty fourth birthday.

It all begins with a choice and a risk. When I did a short stint at a recruitment consultancy at the age of twenty three, I realised then I was a bit different. When asked what they wanted to do with their lives, most people responded to that "to work in  recruitment, to raise money and to have a family."

I responded "I want to be a writer." I left on the Friday after making a call to a gentlemen with regards to a job I was pitching. The woman asked how I knew the person I was contacting, the truth is I didn't, so I panicked and hung up. If I am honest  I was too honest for recruitment anyway.

My mother hounded me for months after, she was worried about me- about my future more specifically. I now work in a school, which is probably the best place for me. The kids I work with are a delight, if not a little bit cheeky, but so what? It keeps the job interesting and keeps me on my toes. Dark Places Magazine was the master stroke. It came as an idea to me whilst perusing Hubpages one evening. I have always loved writing, but knew how difficult the industry is at the moment for new writers to enter. I wanted to create a platform to get writer's voices heard. I am delighted to say that a year on, not only is the project still running, but the product is being delivered simultaneously in multiple formats in PDF and on Kindle. We have sold more issues of Dark Places in the Month of July 2013 than in any other time since I started the project in October last year with Brandon Vaughan at my side. It has been sad to see Brandon say goodbye, and I really do owe him a lot, without a second person I don't think I would have had the guts to get this project up and running. So thank you Brandon! 

The summer holidays begin tomorrow. I have big plans for this summer, I will be going to a Christian youth conference with some of my young people. I also have a stack of books to read and old friends to catch up with, and my first full length novel Unspent Convictions needs finishing. This summer is gonna fly I can sense it.        

The things that are important...

It has been an amazing weekend, I spent most of Saturday night half awake on a slowly deflating airbed at E:merge in the centre of Bradford. I got less than an hours sleep, but there was a reason for this. The reason was that we were enabling ninety six young people from Leeds and Bradford to bless a deprived community not ten minutes from where our church meets in Shipley, West Yorkshire. The overnight stay was to look after them whilst they cemented relationships with each other. Then the next morning we went in, cleared gardens and ran a family fun day. One woman seeing all this was almost reduced to tears. What an amazing feeling it is to see how the lost respond to being loved.
     Whilst we cleared the garden it rained intermittently, I think the only thing that kept me going at times was the thought of a time of worship to come and a warm meal in my belly when we got back that evening. It was an amazing weekend, but God wasn't finished yet. I arrived the next morning to run Latitude, the youth I help run for my church in Shipley. One of the young people was complaining about severe back pain and was having trouble standing for long periods. He spent most of our game time sat in a chair. So I thought you know what this time we will pray for his back and God will answer. So I gathered the youth round and the other youth worker and we prayed and God answered. As he stood up out of the chair the smile that stretched across his face was huge. "That is so much better." Rest assured God is on the move at City Valley church. I went out to lunch with some friends, came home after, thoroughly knackered out due to lack of sleep. God was not finished for the day yet, I received a text later that evening from a mum whose son I know, he needs a role model desperately. I already have his name on a prayer list on my wall. In truth I don't have the time, but to be a father to the fatherless I will make the time. We were talking with the youth this morning about time, money and gifts and actually what the other youth worker said spoke volumes, you can't take your riches to Heaven, you can't take your Lamborghini but you can take people, and I for one intend to take as many people with me as possible.

Keep plugging away! (Can't someone edit this book for me?)

       I am presently working about thirty hours a week for a school in Bradford and have just started another job as well. In between this I am running my own magazine, editing my book and completing my Level 3 Teaching Assistant course. As well as doing youth work each week. Now it is really important when you are going through something this intense that you take regular breaks. This is because you don't want to burn out. It is so easily done in this life. Also and I am talking to myself here as much as I am to anyone else. Life is busy, so so busy, but please respect that there are times when your body will not feel like completing mammoth tasks like editing your book, respect that. You have one life, it is better that you enjoy it than ruining it by overworking. I assure you few end their lives wishing they had spent more hours at work. As long as there is no deadline, don't worry too much. Obviously again there is a balance here, so if you feel you may go the other way then set yourself a weekly editing target. For me I am now over 75% of the way through my writing project and the book is really taking form. My suggestion is to read it out loud slowly. You will be amazed how many mistakes you pick up on as you do it. Above all else don't give up, many of life's failures were people who did not know how close they were to success when they quit-Thomas A. Edison US inventor. Then again how do we rate success? One thousand people have now read my article on the Mechanics of Short Story writing on Hubpages, is that success?     

Reviews of various moth killling products

We have been at war with the dreaded moths in our flat for a number of months now, there have been casualties on both sides, I have killed close to one hundred moths and they ate two of my beloved sweaters. I don't believe you can fully eradicate them either not without pest control. However that being said there are a number of products I have been using over the past few months, with varying degrees of effectiveness. We we start with the best product I have used to kill close to seventy of the cloth munching little monsters.

The Flea and Fly Bomb (can it kill moths?)

This is by the far the most lethal product in any moth killers arsenal, I have actually managed to clear my room of moths using this product. There is no other product I can say that for. At first I was skeptical, but it says on the canister that it decimates flying creatures, I think that is a fair representation. We only brought three cans, I reckon had we have brought six we would not have any moths left at all now. They were fleeing from the rooms where we set the canisters off. I personally toppled my bed (I knew that under the bed was their favourite breeding spot). I have had a few rogue moths sneak back under the door into my room I killed them promptly so despite the rest of the house still having moths in, my room presently has none! You have to use more than one canister for bigger rooms though (we didn't otherwise there would be no moths left at all now). The biggest thing is the eggs if you get the eggs then you stop them breeding. I actually hoovered my entire room thoroughly before using this product, targeting places where I suspected they were breeding. They like warm spots, next to radiators and dark spots- under the bed so make sure you hoover there. You will need some cheap face masks as well, because this product is hazardous to humans. Put the canister in the centre of the room, close all windows, twist it, till it starts spraying, then get the heck out of there shutting the door behind you. You have to stay out of the room for about four hours (upon returning follow the instructions on the bottle). My room was moth free for two days, I found one baby at that point which I promptly killed, since then there have been no moths breeding in my room at all. This product works! 4.4/5

The Zeroin Demi-Diamond clothes moth killer

It is the safest, easiest to use and in my opinion most effective moth killer on the market (unless you want to pay rent-o-kill hundreds of pounds to super heat your home to high temperatures to destroy the little blighters and their eggs). Essentially it is a prism shaped object. Inside is a sticky piece of card sprayed in a sexy lady moth pheromones. The male moths fly onto it attracted by the pheromones and then get stuck to it, if you are wondering whether they can escape, I caught the edge of my foot on it and ended up with the pad stuck to my sock, I had to use physical force to get it off. With no men left the women cannot breed, so you end up with severely reduced numbers of moths. However there are a lot of cheap knock offs and you struggle to buy a good batch in large quantities. 3.7/5

Zeroin clothes moth Killer Spray

So this Zeroin clothes moth killer is another from the Zeroin range. It is not nearly as effective as the Demi-diamond clothes moth killer. I have sprayed a number of surfaces with it and found that it makes very little difference, in comparison to the aforementioned product. It did make me cough though, a lot actually, so make sure if you buy it, keep your windows open and don't breathe it in. I used so much of it my room became hazardous to my health, I am not sure how the moths survived. I was having coughing fits in the night as a result of using this product. It is not recommended as a spray you can put in the air as it is bad for us and not just the moths. It is for spraying on various surfaces. So it is best not to chase moths around the room with it. However it is only marginally effective. 2.9/5

Zensect Moth Proofer

When I first brought this product I was impressed by the number of moth balls you actually get. There are twenty in a pack. They smell of lavender which is never a bad thing, but I am not particularly confident in this product I have to say. I have put the twenty balls around my bedroom near clothes, under the bed, the moths seem to like it under there and in the cupboards, however I moved a moth to within close proximity to the product hoping it would drop over dead and instead it chose to fly off. It deters the moths but is it a moth killer? Definitely not. 2.1/5

Don't judge your journey by its beginning

Life does change at quite a pace. I left my second job a little over three weeks ago, God told me it was time. It seems at that point the magazine started taking off. Traffic has jumped up to almost seven hundred and fifty visits a month. Finishing the books is still on the priority list, the second book is closer to finished than the first. I now have the equipment and the time to be able to get them both finished. I remember when I started Nowhere To Be Found roughly three years ago now. I had no idea how long this project would take or that it would spawn a sequel. Now looking back I can see a journey, where I have come from being a child writer to a prolific editor, a new writer to a more season one. I look at my writing and see an heir of maturity. I respect the journey I have been on. Others now turn to me for advice and input. There is no quick fix for this journey, no magic course, it could never happen any other way. I think the mantra of the day is definitely Mark Twain "it's not the dog in the fight, it's the fight in the dog." With every fight we gain experience, with every wound we are left licking we grow stronger and ultimately we get better at spotting the errors in our own writing. I remember handing over a shocking manuscript to a friend Charlie Southwell, I asked him a few weeks ago what happened to that manuscript, he said he got three chapters in and his red pen ran out. It is fortunate we don't judge all journeys by their beginning. The second novel was better, and by the third I was happy I had developed a craft that could potentially give me a second income in the long term. Unspent Convictions and Nowhere to be Found have both been read by three people each. Reviews so far have been promising. Whilst neither book is finished I feel I can now finish them quickly and with a much higher level of efficiency and accuracy than I had previously. Largely because of a new piece of software I started using. In the mean time I spend my spare hours reviewing and picking stories for the next issue of Dark Places magazine. Then in my day job battle to get children to read and write simple sentences and walk in single file up corridors. This is a strange life... but not a bad one.