What Tips Will Help Me Before I Begin?

-- by Loretta --

Creating Life Histories is much more fun than it looks!

Set a target date to complete the history and set a reward for yourself that you can look forward to. Even if you have to move your target date, it will help you finish the project in a timely manner.

Get the written text as perfect as possible before adding pictures. Adding more text to the document after you’ve begun adding pictures complicates the project a bit. Adding more text after pictures have been inserted can make your pictures out of synch with the surrounding text.

Include a chapter of memories from people who have known them. It can become the best part of the book

Make a Table of Contents if the story is over 100 pages.

Add a blank page after the title page and after the Table of Contents. This prevents the printer from printing on the back of your title page, etc.

Start the page numbering on the first page of actual text. This should be one of the last things you do before you have it printed.

Print a page after you begin to insert pictures to see if your pictures are large enough. They look larger on your screen than they do on the paper.

Set your computer to do timed back-ups every 40-60 minutes. In Word Perfect, you can set your timed backup by clicking on the tools drop down menu at the top of the page, then click on settings, then click on the files icon and then the document tab. There you can fill out your automatic backup options. This does NOT replace making a backup as described in the Make a Backup Often section below.