So I’m assuming that you want to learn how to draw dragons because you opened this post xD

Some disclaimers, I have never taught anyone professionally, so please bear with me. Also these are how to draw the dragons in my universe. It’s not a must to have dragons looking like mine.

I’m open to DMs if you actually did try your hand at this and want some advice.

Right.

Let’s begin.

The Head

I mean, debatably you don’t need to know how to draw a dragon head in order to draw a believable dragon silhouette. But I don’t know where else to start lolol, so here we are.

For references, I use a blend of lion, wolf, and T-rex skulls. I just plopped some of them here.

Maybe I’m old school, but it’s good to know some anatomy, so that you know where the notches and shadows are, where to set the eyes, the teeth, the nose etc etc. It makes your art more believable.

For beginners

Don’t panic just yet. Today we are going to start with something simple: the shapes that make up the dragon’s head. Next session I will do the body.

Your homework this round is to start by looking up some pictures of animals you believe your dragon looks similar to, and vandalise them >:D

Like so:

Do all sorts of angles. Try to find the midline of the face, and the eye level. Draw the jawline too, if you want.

Use horses, deer, bats, dogs, crocodiles, cats. Anything that calls to you.

Then just be aware of how it translates over to a dragon’s head. This is important because it forms the base of your sketch.

Something more advanced

For more experienced artists (or beginners who want a challenge), go build your dragon from scratch and mess about with the bones.

This is mine, if you need reference.

You can see the bits of lion and t-rex in there.

DO NOT forget to draw a bigger brain-box because dragons do have bigger brains than the average creature.

And here are the usual areas where dragons grow their horns and spikes.

Horned animals like goats and moose etc etc make for good references.

Looking forward to see what you guys draw for me xD

Click here if you need some one to one guidance.

Depending on how free I am, next tutorial might be next Saturday, if not the week after. Have fun :D

📚 Following along with the series? Find every lesson, past and upcoming, in our Self-Publishing 101 table of contents.

A finished manuscript still is not a book interior.

That sounds obvious, but it becomes real fast the moment you sit down to build actual pages.

Once I chose KDP and committed to doing both ebook and paperback for The Day I Didn’t Die, the next step was no longer theoretical. I had to start turning a finished manuscript into something that could actually function as a book.

Not just text in a document.
Not just a file on my computer.
A real interior.

For me, that step came down to four things.

What I actually had to figure out

Before I could meaningfully format anything, I had to decide:

• what version of the manuscript I was building from

• what trim size I was designing for, meaning the final physical size of the paperback

• what tool I was actually going to use

• what kind of interior I wanted this book to have

That was the real start of formatting.

Because formatting is not just making pages look nice. It is taking a manuscript and giving it structure. It is deciding how the book will read, how it will flow, and how it will behave once it stops being private text and starts becoming a product.

Why formatting is not just “copy and paste”

I think a lot of writers imagine formatting as the easy part.

The writing is hard. The revision is hard. Choosing the publishing path takes thought. Then, somewhere in the imagination, formatting becomes this simple little afterthought. Paste the text in. Pick a font. Export a file. Done.

It does not really work like that.

Once you start formatting, all the little invisible decisions come crawling out of the walls. Margins. Chapter openings. Scene breaks. Front matter, meaning the pages before the story begins, like the title page and copyright page. Back matter, meaning the pages after the story, like the author bio or links to more work. Page flow. Consistency. Font choice. Readability. Where things sit on the page and how much room they need to breathe.

A manuscript can be finished and still be nowhere near ready to function as an interior.

That was the part I wanted to understand before I got too deep into building.

Why I chose Canva

For this stage, I decided to use Canva.

Not because it is the only way to do it. Not because it is the perfect solution for every writer or every book. But because it is the tool I already know well enough to actually use.

That matters.

At this stage, I am less interested in chasing the theoretically best tool and more interested in choosing a workable one I can move through without spending a week learning an entirely new system before I even start building the book.

That is one of the things I think writers need to hear more often.

Sometimes the best tool is not the fanciest one. It is the one you understand well enough to finish the job with.

For me, Canva made sense because it gives me control over layout, lets me build visually, and fits the way my brain works. I can make decisions quickly, test pages, and start seeing the book take shape instead of staring at a different learning curve before I have even laid out a chapter.

That does not mean Canva makes the decisions for me.

It just means it is the workspace I chose to make those decisions in.

What I had to decide before building pages

Before I could really start formatting The Day I Didn’t Die, I had to stop thinking in vague terms and get specific.

That meant choosing the actual foundation of the print interior:

• the trim size

• the page setup

• the general style of the book

• what front matter and back matter were staying

• how restrained or stylized I wanted the design to be

This is where formatting starts becoming real.

Because once those choices are made, the book stops being an abstract future object and starts becoming something physical in your head. You are no longer asking, “How do I publish this someday?” You are asking, “What do I want the title page to look like? How should chapters open? What kind of spacing gives the text room without making it look sloppy? What belongs in the back matter and what is just clutter?”

Those are bookmaking questions.

And they matter.

What mattered more than making it look fancy

This was probably the biggest reminder for me in this step.

A good interior is not the one that shows off the most. It is the one that supports the reading experience without getting in the way of it.

That means readable beats decorative.

Every time.

The temptation when you start laying out pages is to make it look like a design project. To add extra style, extra visual touches, extra little flourishes because the tool lets you. But a book interior is not supposed to perform tricks. It is supposed to hold the story cleanly and let the reading experience do its work.

So for me, the goal here was not to make The Day I Didn’t Die look fancy.

It was to make it feel intentional.

That is a different standard.

Intentional means the font feels right for the tone of the book. The chapter openings feel clean. The spacing feels readable. The front matter belongs there. The back matter serves a purpose. The pages look like they know what kind of book they are in.

That is enough.

More than enough, actually.

What I built first

I did not try to format the entire book in one pass right away.

That would have been a good way to create a hundred pages of preventable mistakes.

Instead, I focused on starting the structure.

That meant building the bones first:

• the core document setup

• the opening pages

• the beginning of the interior style

• sample pages that let me see how the book would actually look and feel once it stopped being a manuscript and started becoming a printed object

That is the stage I am in now.

Not finished interior.
Not upload-ready files.
The build stage.

And honestly, that feels like the right way to approach it.

Because this step is less about speed than clarity.

If the bones are wrong, the rest of the body is going to have problems.

What writers should know before they start formatting

If you are approaching this stage with your own book, here is what I think matters most:

• start from a truly locked manuscript

• choose your publishing path before you build files

• decide your trim size before laying out pages

• choose a tool you can actually finish the job with

• remember that readable matters more than decorative

• build a few sample pages before formatting the whole book

• treat paperback and ebook as related, but not identical, jobs

That last one matters a lot.

Just because the text is the same does not mean the formatting process is the same. Print asks different things of a book than digital does. If you try to make one format behave exactly like the other, you can end up creating extra problems for yourself.

What this step actually changed

This week did not give me a finished interior.

It gave me something more useful than that.

It gave me a starting structure.

That may not sound dramatic, but it matters. Once the manuscript starts turning into actual pages, the project changes again. It stops being only about the story and starts becoming about presentation, readability, and physical form. That is when the book begins to feel real in a new way.

Not because it is finished.

Because it has started taking shape.

And that shape matters.

Starting the interior for The Day I Didn’t Die reminded me that formatting is not a side chore. It is part of how the book enters the world. It is the difference between having written something and having built something readers can actually hold, move through, and trust.

That is the shift this week.

The manuscript is no longer just sitting there finished. It is starting to become a book.

If you are at this stage with a book of your own, do not let formatting turn into a decorative detour. Start with structure. Choose your tool. Choose your trim size. Build sample pages first. Let the book tell you what kind of interior it needs.

Next time, I’ll be moving further into the process of building The Day I Didn’t Die for KDP and figuring out what this book needs from the inside out.

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📚 Following along with the series? Find every lesson, past and upcoming, in our Self-Publishing 101 table of contents.

At a certain point, a finished manuscript stops being just a piece of writing and starts becoming a product.

That shift sounds obvious, but it changes the questions you have to ask.

Once I locked the manuscript for The Day I Didn’t Die, the next step was not formatting. It was not cover design. It was not uploading files or writing a description. Before any of that, I had to decide something simpler and more foundational: where was I publishing this book, and in what forms?

For me, that decision came down to three things:

• what platform I was using first?

• what formats did I want to offer?

• how much complexity was I willing to take on for a first off-platform release?

That was the real threshold.

A lot of writers treat publishing like one giant blurry category. But the moment you start turning a manuscript into a real book, the choices stop being abstract. They affect everything that comes after them. Interior formatting. Cover specs. File preparation. Pricing. Upload process. Even how you think about launch.

So before I built anything, I needed a publishing path.

Why this comes before formatting

I think a lot of writers assume the next step after finishing a manuscript is formatting the book.

But usually the next step is deciding what kind of product you are making and where that product is going. Formatting makes a lot more sense once you know the destination. Ebook and paperback files are not built the same way. Different platforms have different requirements. The files you need depend on the publishing path you choose.

That is why I wanted to make this decision early instead of stumbling into it halfway through.

A lot of headaches can be avoided by choosing the road before you start packing for the trip.

Why I chose KDP first

For The Day I Didn’t Die, I decided to start with KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing).

Not because it is the only valid publishing option. Not because it has to be the forever home for every book I ever release. But because for a first off-platform release, I wanted one system I could learn cleanly without dividing my attention across five dashboards and a pile of competing requirements.

That was important to me.

KDP gave me one place to start, one system to learn, and one process to move through from manuscript to live book. For a first release, that kind of clarity has value. It reduces friction. It makes the goal of publishing feel more achievable. And that matters more than theoretical perfection when you are doing something for the first time.

There are a lot of debates writers can disappear into at this stage. KDP versus wide. Amazon versus everyone else. Exclusivity, visibility, strategy, long-term reach. Some of those are real questions. But I think a lot of newer writers get lost trying to solve their entire publishing future before they’ve even released one book.

I didn’t want to fall into that trap. I wanted a clear first path.

Why I’m doing both ebook and paperback

I also decided that I didn’t want The Day I Didn’t Die to exist in only one format.

So I’m doing both ebook and paperback.

Part of that is practical. Some readers prefer digital. Some want something they can physically hold. Some read almost everything on a device. Some are still much more likely to buy a paperback than an ebook. Offering both gives the book more ways to meet people where they are.

Part of it is also psychological, if I’m being honest.

A paperback makes the project feel more real to me.

There is a difference between finishing a manuscript and holding a book that came from it. Even if the text is the same, the form changes the feeling for me. Since this is my first real off-platform release for this project, I want to give it both forms from the start.

That does create more work. Paperback introduces more decisions, more formatting needs, and more cover requirements. But in this case, the added work feels worth it because it gives the release a fuller shape.

Why I’m not going wide yet

That said, I am not trying to do everything at once.

I may expand to other platforms later. That is still on the table. But I’m not doing that as my first step.

Not because going wide is a bad idea. Not because other platforms do not matter. Just because for this release, I didn’t want my learning curve split into pieces before I’d even finished the first launch.

That is the core of this decision for me. You may choose to make a different one.

I don’t need the perfect “forever” publishing strategy right now. I need a clear enough strategy to release this book well, learn the process, and build from something real instead of something hypothetical.

There is a big difference between saying “I might go wider later” and saying “I need to manage every possible platform on day one.” One of those is strategic patience. The other is a good way to drown in setup.

For me, KDP first makes sense because it lets me finish the first release, understand the workflow, and expand later from a stronger foundation if I choose to.

What actually matters when choosing your path

If you’re at this stage with a book of your own, I think these are the questions worth asking:

• Am I releasing ebook, paperback, or both?

• Do I want one manageable system first, or do I really have the bandwidth for multiple platforms right now?

• Is my goal maximum reach immediately, or a clean first release I can actually achieve in a timely fashion?

• How much technical friction can I realistically handle at this stage?

• Am I making this decision from clarity or from fear of choosing wrong?

That last question matters more than people think.

A lot of writers get stuck here because they are afraid of making an imperfect decision. But not all publishing decisions have to be permanent to be useful. Sometimes the best choice is not the theoretically ideal one. Sometimes it is the one that gets the book into the world without wrecking your momentum.

For me, that meant choosing a simple, workable first path and committing to it.

KDP first. Ebook and paperback. Other platforms later if they make sense.

That decision may not be right for every writer or every project. But it is the right one for this book, at this stage, for me.

And that’s enough.

Once I made that decision, the next steps became much clearer.

Now I know my short-term goals. I know what files I need. I know what formats I’m preparing. I know what kind of cover requirements and interior formatting questions are coming next. The path is not fully walked yet, but it is chosen, and that changes everything.

Sometimes progress is not doing more things. Sometimes it is narrowing the road so the next steps stop fighting each other for attention.

That’s what this week was for me.

If you’re at the point where your manuscript is finished but the publishing side still feels vague, start here. Decide where the book is going and what forms it will take before you start building everything else around it.

Next time, I’ll be moving into the next practical step of getting The Day I Didn’t Die ready for KDP in both ebook and paperback formats.

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📚 Following along with the series? Find every lesson, past and upcoming, in our Self-Publishing 101 table of contents.

At some point, every writer has to decide whether they are still improving the book or just delaying the moment it has to leave their hands.

That was the first real threshold for me with The Day I Didn’t Die.

Before formatting. Before cover design. Before metadata, uploads, and launch plans. Before any of the visible publishing work could begin, I had to answer a simpler question: was I still making the book better, or was I just keeping it in motion because releasing it felt harder than revising it?

For me, locking the manuscript came down to five things.

How I actually decided it was ready

I knew it was time to lock the manuscript when:

• the major structural issues had been worked through

• the emotional core was landing the way I wanted it to

• outside feedback was no longer pointing to foundational problems

• reader response showed the story was connecting

• the remaining changes were sharpening the book, not changing its identit

That was the shift.

The moment I knew I was close was when I realized the edits left to make were no longer transforming the manuscript. They were polishing it. Cleaning it. Tightening a line here, clarifying a sentence there, smoothing a rough edge without changing the shape of the thing. That is a very different stage from real revision, and it matters to know when you have crossed into it.

Because if you do not, “still working on it” can quietly become a hiding place.

It didn’t start out this way

I rewrote The Day I Didn’t Die two or three times. Not in the sense of tweaking a few pages and calling it revision. I mean real rewriting. The kind where the book becomes more fully itself through each pass. The kind where you stop writing toward an idea of the story and start seeing what the story actually is.

Each rewrite helped sharpen something important. Structure. Emotional clarity. Tone. Momentum. What the book was really trying to say.

That matters because I think a lot of writers quietly assume they are failing if a manuscript does not arrive clean and finished in one strong burst. Most books do not work that way. They become themselves through revision. That was true here.

But revision only stays useful as long as it is still solving real problems.

You can’t see your own blind spots

One of the things that helped me know this manuscript was genuinely close was sending it to a retired editor who is also a subscriber.

That gave me something I could not create on my own, which was experienced distance.

When you live inside a manuscript too long, your judgment gets strange. You can become protective of weak sections because you know what you meant. You can also start distrusting strong sections because you have read them so many times they no longer feel alive to you. Good outside feedback helps cut through both problems.

Not because every note has to be accepted. It doesn’t.

But because outside feedback helps answer a more important question: are there still major issues here that I am too close to see?

In my case, that feedback helped confirm what was working, identify what still needed work, and show me when the manuscript had moved past foundational problems and into final refinement. That distinction mattered.

“I think it’s close” and “it has been read closely by someone with experience and it’s close” are not the same thing.

What reader response taught me

There was another layer too.

Because The Day I Didn’t Die was published chapter by chapter, I got a kind of live reader response along the way. That is not exactly the same thing as a formal beta-reading round, but it did give me valuable signals. I could see what connected, what resonated, and whether the story was doing what I hoped it would do on the reader side, not just in my own head.

That kind of response matters because writers are often poor judges of their own work in isolation. We know too much. We fill in gaps without realizing it. We remember what we intended and sometimes mistake that for what is actually on the page. Reader response helps expose that gap.

So if you are not publishing in installments, I would strongly recommend finding a few beta readers before publishing. And not just random people. Find a few readers who actually read your genre.

That part matters.

Someone who reads the kind of work you are writing is much more likely to tell you whether the pacing works, whether the tone lands, whether the emotional turns connect, and whether the book is delivering on the promise it makes. “I liked it” is nice. It is not enough.

You do not have to fix every note

This is another thing writers need to hear at this stage.

Getting feedback does not mean obeying every comment like it arrived on a stone tablet.

Some notes reveal real weaknesses. Some are taste. Some point to execution problems. Some come from readers who are simply not the audience for the book. Part of revision is learning to tell the difference.

The goal is not to make every reader happy. The goal is to notice patterns and understand what those patterns mean.

If one reader dislikes a choice, that may be taste. If several thoughtful readers stumble in the same place, that is probably worth looking at. That is the level where feedback becomes truly useful.

What I didn’t wait for

I did not wait for perfection.

I did not wait for the feeling that there was absolutely nothing left I could improve.

I did not wait for doubt to disappear.

If I had, this manuscript might still be sitting in revision.

A book does not get locked because the writer runs out of things to change. It gets locked when the important changes have already been made.

That is the real lesson here.

Perfection is not the standard. Readiness is.

And readiness, at least for me, meant that the structure was working, the emotional core was intact, the outside feedback was no longer flagging major problems, the story had real signs of connection with readers, and the remaining edits were no longer changing the book in a meaningful way.

Once I could see that clearly, the next move was obvious.

Stop revising. Lock the manuscript. Move forward.

What actually matters at this point

If you are at this stage with a manuscript of your own, here is what I think matters most:

• do not confuse “could still be improved” with “not ready”

• use actual criteria, not just feelings

• get outside eyes on the work before publishing

• choose beta readers who understand your genre

• do not treat every note as an order

• save a true locked version once you decide

• know what your next publishing step is before you stop revising

That last one matters more than it seems.

A lot of books stall out right here. The manuscript gets “finished,” but there is no immediate handoff into the publishing phase, so the energy leaks out. Locking the manuscript works best when it leads directly into the next practical move.

Locking The Day I Didn’t Die did not mean declaring it flawless. It meant something more useful than that.

It meant I had taken the writing as far as it needed to go before the work changed.

That is the real shift. Once a manuscript is locked, the question is no longer “how do I keep rewriting this?” It becomes “how do I turn this into a real book without losing what made it worth writing in the first place?”

That is where this series goes next.

If you’re somewhere between draft and publication, I hope this makes the first threshold a little clearer. And if you’re not publishing in installments, get a few good readers on your side before you move forward, especially ones who actually read your genre. A manuscript usually doesn’t need perfection. It needs clarity, outside eyes, and a point where revision stops being progress and starts being delay.

Next time, I’ll be moving into the next practical step of taking The Day I Didn’t Die from a finished manuscript into the publishing process itself.

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Over the next several weeks, I’m documenting the real step-by-step process of self-publishing The Day I Didn’t Die from finished manuscript to published book.

Not in hindsight.
Not after everything is polished and done.
While it’s actually happening.

Each week, I’ll be sharing one part of the process through Indie Ink Fund: what step I’m working on, what I actually completed, what I learned, what was harder than expected, and what comes next.

I wanted to do this for two reasons.

First, accountability. Publishing a book can turn into one of those projects that lives in your head forever if you let it. By documenting the process in public, I’m giving myself a reason to keep moving and a structure to follow all the way through.

Second, usefulness. A lot of writers hear “self-publishing” as one giant phrase, but the actual process is made up of smaller decisions and steps: finalizing the manuscript, formatting, cover design, metadata, pricing, uploads, proofing, launch prep, and everything in between. Most people only see the beginning, when someone says they finished a draft, or the end, when the book goes live. They do not always get to see the middle.

That middle is what this series is for.

I’m not coming at this as someone pretending to know everything. I’m coming at it as a writer who wants to take the process seriously, learn it clearly, and leave a trail behind that might help someone else do the same.

That is part of why this feels right for Indie Ink Fund.

IIF is not only about celebrating finished work. It is also about supporting the process that gets creative work into the world. The uncertain part matters. The practical part matters. The messy middle matters. If this series helps even one newer writer understand publishing a little better, it’s worth doing.

And The Day I Didn’t Die feels like the right book to do it with.

It’s a story that matters to me. It’s strange, personal, psychological, and surreal. Because of that, I do not want to rush the publishing side of it or stumble through it blindly. I want to understand each step as I go and make deliberate decisions instead of frantic ones.

So this is the beginning.

This first post is the line in the sand.

The project is real.
The series is real.
The book is getting published.

Later this week, the actual process begins. Next week, I’ll share the first real publishing step.

If you’re a writer trying to make sense of the space between “I wrote it” and “it’s published,” you’re welcome here. Follow along as I document the real process of self-publishing a book, one step at a time.

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