Free The Busy Writer's Book of Checklists by Marg McAlister

Introduction
    The idea for a writer’s Book of Checklists
popped into my head when I fine-tuning the list of titles in my Busy Writer
series. Actually, it more than ‘popped into’ my head – it was more like a
blinding flash!
    You see, while I was planning the series, I
was actually checking items off a list sitting at my right elbow. The checklist
was related to my business: I wanted to link my new e-books with my long-established
Writing4Success website and Tipsheet, my writers’ e-courses and my assessment
service.
    Checklists ,
I thought. Of course!
    A checklist is one of the most effective
tools any writer can use. In the past, I have used checklists for characters, plotting,
dialogue, and a whole bunch of other aspects of technique. I have used them for
step-by-step processes, such as uploading pages and products to a website, creating
sales pages and linking them to PayPal, and editing graphics and photos.
    I’ve also used them for time management,
career planning, networking and dozens of other things. I have, in short, found
them to be an indispensable tool.
    It's likely that you already use a
checklist in its most basic form - the good old 'to-do' list. How often do you
make a shopping list? A list of household chores? A list of debts to tackle?
    When you make a list, you are acknowledging
that anything on it has to be dealt with in some way. Calling it a 'checklist'
simply infers that you need to tick off the items on it as the desired action
is completed.
    Checklists ensure that: 
    # you don't forget anything important
    # you know (a) what you've done and (b)
what you need to do
    # you build your skills in an organized
way
    This book contains 23 different checklists
that you can use for your writing and your business, and I can tell you that
they are good checklists. (I know that after getting feedback from them
over the years. People who have made use of my checklists in the past have
asked me for another copy if they lose them, or whether I have a checklist on a
different aspect of writing. One author who bought the Busy Writer’s One-Hour
Character suggested that I add a characters’ checklist to the book – which I
will do.)
    These checklists have been created to help
you check everything from your basic ideas (are they worth developing into a
plot?) to your marketing plan for your published book (how can you make sure
people see your book? How can you encourage them to buy?) You’ll find
checklists for plot, characters, scenes, dialogue, viewpoint, and a whole lot
more (just take a look at the table of contents!)
    However, as I refined my use of checklists,
I realized that the best checklists (that is, the most useful) were the
ones I created myself, and in the very first chapter I talk about how you can
make a highly effective personalized checklist from any one of the
checklists in this book.
    Let’s look at that in a little more detail:
I’ll delve deeper into how you can create your own checklists, and give you a
recent example.

Section 1: How to Increase Your
Efficiency by Creating Your Own Checklists
    With at checklist at your elbow, you can
make sure that you don’t forget something essential when you write or edit your
book (or when you’re promoting your published book).
    What kinds of checklists do writers need?
Here are some possible topics:
a. Writing Technique and Plotting.
    This is the most obvious type of checklist
for a writer, and you'll get off to a great start by using the 6 Foundation
Checklists in this book:
    (1) Getting Ideas
    (2) Plot
    (3) Characters
    (4) Viewpoint
    (5) Dialogue
    (6) Scenes
b. Grammar and Language.
    What causes problems when you're writing?
If there are some aspects of grammar, punctuation and/or sentence structure
that continually trip you up, add them to your personal checklist. Some
suggestions:
    (1) Punctuation - commas, colons, semi-colons, quotation marks, exclamation marks,
question marks.
    (2) Grammar - past tense, present tense, past perfect