Post by flatiron on Mar 5, 2011 15:16:56 GMT -5
Hey everybody,
I'm wondering what tools, both hardware and software, that you are using to lay track down on the way to noveling fame and fortune, or at least as subversive wrimo novelistas, so to speak, on your way to meeting that goal you've set for yourself.
For my part, I've got two tools that I am using now that I really find useful.
One is a software tool that I read about on another wrimo board somewhere, and that is yWriter, a free piece of novel creation and composition software written by someone apparently as a tool to use during NaNoWriMo. I've used two pieces of software that I actual purchased that were not as good as this one. It includes the ability to map out your monthly goal, show your daily progress, and shuffle scenes around in different chapters. There are also lots of nooks and crannies for character sketches, random ideas, and such that that I haven't really used yet. Mainly, just having an interface that tells me how many words I've added "today" is really nice. This might be something you have all run across already, but if you haven't and you're curious, you can check it out here: www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
And yet, I am definitely NOT using this tool for composition. Why? Well, because I am very distractable, and with the a Pandora's box of possible distractions, like writing this entry, available online, along with pandora.com, and thirty blogs and RSS feeds on things that I'm interested in, available at the mere touch of my ADD fingers, who has time to write? yWriter runs on my computer, which unless I take it out into the wilderness where there is no Wifi, and no cell signal, preferably back in time or on another planet, is going to be connected to the internet.
So, I have reverted to a retro technology, and that is using an Alphasmart Dana to do my writing. A pleasantly retro Palm based device, with a ten line LCD screen that lets me see about a paragraph at a time, it has a nicer keyboard than the brand new Lenovo laptop that I'm writing this on, very basic spell checking, and after syncing with my computer allows me to take the resulting files into yWriter for editing, spell checking, and mucking about. But the most important "feature" is that it is not connected to the internet. No IM, no Facebook, no Pandora's box of distractions that my ADD heart would love to go mess with. No, when I pull out the Dana it's just like me using an old Underwood, without the cigarettes and Fedora's and inky ribbons and challenging erasures of that era. And lo and behold, when I sit down with that device, not my nice new laptop... I write. And write, and write. And at every juncture where I'd otherwise zip off to google to look up that detail I just have to know, and then get lost in ten other things that would leave me angry at myself for not getting the WC in for the day... I write a note in brackets [ look this up!] and then I continue writing, my characters breathing a sigh of relief that I haven't abandoned them by getting sucked into the thousand distractions and million worthwhile things out there that are about consuming other's creative output, rather than plugging into my own.
And is this some very expensive venture, some treat that only the well to do writer can afford? Well, it used to be, perhaps, when they were new and it was several hundred dollars US for the version with the larger screen, but not so any longer. They don't even make them anymore, and I've seen them online in several locations, used (returning from schools that have moved on to the next technology, it appears) for about ten dollars US. In fact, yesterday I just purchased a second one, to have in hand lest they become unavailable, for US$9.99 on ebay.
Of course, another alternative is always the even more retro pen and paper, or quill and papyrus, if you're really retro, but I am not blessed with a good relationship with the handwritten word, having struggled since my very early childhood with writing by hand, so for me, the Dana is a real gift, because of what it does, and mainly because of what it doesn't do.
So, these two things, and a liberal dosing with caffeine that I'd given up until about a week ago, are the tools that are helping me to get from point A to point B on a given day.
What are you using?
Cheers,
Flatiron
I'm wondering what tools, both hardware and software, that you are using to lay track down on the way to noveling fame and fortune, or at least as subversive wrimo novelistas, so to speak, on your way to meeting that goal you've set for yourself.
For my part, I've got two tools that I am using now that I really find useful.
One is a software tool that I read about on another wrimo board somewhere, and that is yWriter, a free piece of novel creation and composition software written by someone apparently as a tool to use during NaNoWriMo. I've used two pieces of software that I actual purchased that were not as good as this one. It includes the ability to map out your monthly goal, show your daily progress, and shuffle scenes around in different chapters. There are also lots of nooks and crannies for character sketches, random ideas, and such that that I haven't really used yet. Mainly, just having an interface that tells me how many words I've added "today" is really nice. This might be something you have all run across already, but if you haven't and you're curious, you can check it out here: www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
And yet, I am definitely NOT using this tool for composition. Why? Well, because I am very distractable, and with the a Pandora's box of possible distractions, like writing this entry, available online, along with pandora.com, and thirty blogs and RSS feeds on things that I'm interested in, available at the mere touch of my ADD fingers, who has time to write? yWriter runs on my computer, which unless I take it out into the wilderness where there is no Wifi, and no cell signal, preferably back in time or on another planet, is going to be connected to the internet.
So, I have reverted to a retro technology, and that is using an Alphasmart Dana to do my writing. A pleasantly retro Palm based device, with a ten line LCD screen that lets me see about a paragraph at a time, it has a nicer keyboard than the brand new Lenovo laptop that I'm writing this on, very basic spell checking, and after syncing with my computer allows me to take the resulting files into yWriter for editing, spell checking, and mucking about. But the most important "feature" is that it is not connected to the internet. No IM, no Facebook, no Pandora's box of distractions that my ADD heart would love to go mess with. No, when I pull out the Dana it's just like me using an old Underwood, without the cigarettes and Fedora's and inky ribbons and challenging erasures of that era. And lo and behold, when I sit down with that device, not my nice new laptop... I write. And write, and write. And at every juncture where I'd otherwise zip off to google to look up that detail I just have to know, and then get lost in ten other things that would leave me angry at myself for not getting the WC in for the day... I write a note in brackets [ look this up!] and then I continue writing, my characters breathing a sigh of relief that I haven't abandoned them by getting sucked into the thousand distractions and million worthwhile things out there that are about consuming other's creative output, rather than plugging into my own.
And is this some very expensive venture, some treat that only the well to do writer can afford? Well, it used to be, perhaps, when they were new and it was several hundred dollars US for the version with the larger screen, but not so any longer. They don't even make them anymore, and I've seen them online in several locations, used (returning from schools that have moved on to the next technology, it appears) for about ten dollars US. In fact, yesterday I just purchased a second one, to have in hand lest they become unavailable, for US$9.99 on ebay.
Of course, another alternative is always the even more retro pen and paper, or quill and papyrus, if you're really retro, but I am not blessed with a good relationship with the handwritten word, having struggled since my very early childhood with writing by hand, so for me, the Dana is a real gift, because of what it does, and mainly because of what it doesn't do.
So, these two things, and a liberal dosing with caffeine that I'd given up until about a week ago, are the tools that are helping me to get from point A to point B on a given day.
What are you using?
Cheers,
Flatiron