The Writing Machine

TiddlyWikiWrite

2008-08-29T23:12:00.007+10:00

On Writer Unboxed, Lisa Janice Cohen shares her adaptation of TiddlyWiki for writers.

Organize your Novel with a Wiki
Organize your Novel with a Wiki, part 2

How to keep track of Series Novels

2008-08-21T19:52:00.007+10:00

Tracy Grant shares her method, and that of other authors, of keeping track of a series of books and their characters, events, and other pertinent info.

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Floyd Skloot

2008-08-10T01:13:00.005+10:00

The Writing Life - 8/4/2008 - Publishers Weekly

In The Wink of the Zenith (Reviews, June 30), poet and memoirist Skloot—who was brain damaged after a viral attack in 1988—dissects his often bumpy path to becoming a writer.

See also: Nonfiction Reviews (Scroll down to the red star)

Writing a Book in Google Docs

2008-01-25T07:19:00.000+11:00

Philipp Lenssen at Google Blogoscoped shares the process by which he is writing a collaborative book with Google Docs:

Writing a Book in Google Docs

Found via 43 Folders

Tricia Sullivan's "Non-Outlining" Process

2007-12-09T17:29:00.000+11:00

a moment of burnt hat - some non-outlining process thingies

yWriter - Word Processor for Authors

2006-09-04T05:16:00.000+10:00

yWriter, a writing program that I tinkered with alot but never really stuck with, has had a recent update. A lot of people recommend it, and I'd say it's worth taking a look at. It just didn't work for me. It's windows, so I don't think I'll take another look at it, but there it is, fyi.

yWriter - Word Processor for Authors

New Version of Blogger to check out

2006-08-15T16:53:00.000+10:00

Blogger has released a beta version with some interesting, but long overdue, features. Labels (tags), drag and drop editing, the ability to have your blog be private, or viewable to "members". I've already started a more personal blog with a new domain name, but hopefully I'll get notice soon that I can change this blog over. I'm looking forward to that.

http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/08/blogger-in-beta.html

Cool Site: The Stone Pages - Web guide to Megalithic Europe

2006-08-07T11:57:00.000+10:00

Found this great site called The Stone Pages. I love the look of it; a recent update, it would seem, but I really love the panoramic movies of ancient sites that let you see standing stones and tombs as if you're standing there yourself. There's lots of pictures and information as well. Seems like a great resource for researching a story. Makes me want to come up with ideas set in the time period.

(Editing and) "Collaboration Made Simple with Bracket Notation"

2006-07-05T06:37:00.000+10:00

Here's an ingenious method of marking up a digital manuscript when collaborating with others, even though the contributors may be using wildly varying text editors or word processors. From Humanized via 43 Folders Recent Links --> "Collaboration Made Simple with Bracket Notation". This would also work just fine for editing your own work alone.

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I have so much stuff saved in .doc .txt .rtf .sxw .knt and other formats. I tried in the recent past to simplify things by sticking to one filetype where possible (.rtf), but switching to mac complicated things again because .rtf's with pictures are changed to .rtfd's in osx. grrr. So, I'm moving towards just working in .html, motivated by the way ScrapBook in Firefox has become indispensible to me for research and note-taking. Html can be read in a text editor, and I'm getting to a point where it makes more sense than not in that format, but can also be read by Word, Open Office, TextEdit, and any email program. In fact, it'd be hard (for me) to think of a program that works with words that can't work with html.

I think, because the internet is so pervasive, and so much content is prepared for it, html is going to be supported by most writing/word processing/editor programs. And Bracket Notation will work just fine in html. Nice.

ps. I also like the suggestion made by one of the commenters to use <> brackets instead of [ ], though that may cause problems with html. Hmm. Shall investigate.

Tags: software, writing, word processing

Writing with Mori

2006-07-01T22:02:00.000+10:00

Infinite Loop, an Ars Technica Journal, has a "mini-review" of the Mac digital notebook software Mori. It's of interest because the reviewer writes from the perspective of, well, a writer, describing ways the program could be used in writing a novel. Mori's been on my radar screen for a while now, but after trialling an earlier version, I lost track of it while testing out all the other software candy available. I'm going to try it again soon and may post a review of my own.

Tags: software, mac, writing, blogpost, organiser, digital notebook

Crisis vs. Conflict

2006-02-08T05:25:00.000+11:00

Found via Paperback Writer, an article that explains conflict simply and uniquely (as in unlike hundreds of other articles out there on the net).

Posted to: writing, conflict, plotting, article

Scarlet Pimpernel Finds

2006-01-23T02:09:00.000+11:00

Found via The Human Flower Project:

their post on the flower behind the name, including some great pictures;

which led me to Rachel Perkins Art, and her artwork for a Barnes & Noble Classics edition of The Scarlet Pimpernel;

as well as a site which sells CD copies of an old time radio series.

Posted to: books, scarlet pimpernel

"Classic Story Elements"

2006-01-14T04:53:00.000+11:00

From the May 2003 Meeting Notes
of the Scriptwriters Network: "Jeff Kitchen Spotlights Classic Story Elements."

Aristotle's "Poetics"

. . . a good strong dilemma (D), which builds to a crisis (C) and forces decision and action (D & A). This leads to a resolution (R) by the protagonist.

Kitchen defines dilemma as "two equally painful choices".

. . . The way in which the protagonist resolves the dilemma expresses the theme of the plot.

Sequence, Proposition, Plot

A plotting method where you work "backwards from an effect (your ending) to its cause", and then back to the cause of that, and so on until you get to the beginning.

"The trick is to only ask what the cause of an effect is, not what comes before it."

Should be "applied first to the whole script, then to each act, then to each sequence, and then to each scene."

Also mentions William Thompson Price, who might be a subject for later research. And Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations.

Posted to: plotting, polti

"Notebooks" for PC

2006-01-12T07:32:00.000+11:00

Alison Kent had a recent post asking for Windows programs that are like Circus Ponies Notebook, which is an Apple program. I made the following comment, posted here because it's relevant to the focus of my blog. Alison writes romance novels and often posts on craft and process. Her blog is one of my regular reads.
_____________________________

Hi Alison!

Check out these programs:

OneNote
http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/prodinfo/default.mspx

The 60-day trial can be downloaded here: http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/prodinfo/trialoffer.mspx

GoBinder
http://www.gobinder.com/Default.aspx

These are very notebook or binder-like. OneNote is a Microsoft product, and so works really well with Word and Outlook etc. I've tried both of these, albeit a while ago. I liked them a lot. I won't go into why I didn't keep using either of them here, but if you want to know more, just let me know.

Maybe also:

Franklin's Tablet Planner
http://www.franklincovey.com/tabletplanner/

and PlanPlus
http://www.franklincovey.com/planplus/xp/screenshots.html

I haven't tried either of these, and they seem more geared towards being a planner, but include binder like features.

As Flo said above, Lotus Organizer might be a good option. It's currently at version 6.1. Their webpage is useless. If you search for "Lotus Organizer" with Google Images, you'll find pictures, but mostly of the planner section.
I used version 4, along with the rest of the Smart Suite many years ago. WordPro was my main word processor. I can't say why I stopped using them, except that I like trying out new stuff and so just drifted away. In fact, just this week I reinstalled the SmartSuite to try it out again, and am remembering why I liked it so much.

A few notes on Organizer; the notebook pages in v.4 won't take pictures, but support links to files and the internet as well as internal links between notebook pages. You can assign categories to each page, which might let you organise things nicely, and the pages can be sorted by date, title, category, and page number. You can assign pages as being the start of a "chapter", and when sorted by page number, they appear in bold.

This page: (link) has pictures of v.4, including notepad pages.
And I've uploaded an image of the Notepad contents page here.

I'm about to make the switch from a PC to a Mac, and so probably won't be needing SmartSuite anymore. If you wanted to try it out, and couldn't find it anywhere else, I'd be happy to try and get it to you. I'm in Australia, though, and I have no idea what it would cost to ship.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Carissa

Mac software to try

2005-11-26T03:07:00.000+11:00

I hear about Mac software all the time, but can't test it as I'm on Windows. Just keeping track of what's out there, for when/if I ever make the change.

myMind 1.3.2

Creating and organising Documents from within Firefox

2005-11-18T10:16:00.000+11:00

I was inspired to respond by email to an interesting post on Lifehacker called Geek to Live: Turn Firefox into a Web Writer. This is what I wrote:

I've looked into using a combination of the ScrapBook extension, Nandu extension &/or Launchy (to access Nvu or Open Office, if necessary) to create documents from Firefox.

I've got a page captured to ScrapBook called "New Document", which I open in a tab when I want to create a new document (ie blog post draft or similar). I then right click and select "Edit this page" to open it in Nandu. I write my post, save it, then refresh the page in firefox, which shows the changes I've made. I then capture (re-capture?) the changed document to my blog posts folder in ScrapBook.

It's a little involved, and I have to clear old text from "New Document" every time I open it to make a new entry, but I like staying in the browser, and ScrapBook allows me to order things how I like, give keywords/tags to documents, search, and do some annotation within ScrapBook. Also, if I'm referring to a webpage or blog to write a post, I can save a copy of that page to the same ScrapBook folder as my blog post draft to make it easy to reference.

I use Launchy to do more involved editing, when Nandu isn't sufficient. Nvu works best with ScrapBook code (preserving ScrapBook's annotations). Open Office 1.4 screws with the annotations a bit. I haven't tested Open Office 2.0 yet. It may work fine.

The Internet Black Hole

2005-07-01T13:10:00.000+10:00

Paperback Writer (PBW) shares her strategy for controlling her time online, using the humble kitchen timer. Some more tech-y alternatives I've found include "Cool Timer" and "MP3 Pizza Timer" (no url), which are very simple timers that let you choose the sound file for the alarm, pop up when the time's up, and sit in the tray in the meantime. Also TimeLeft, which has more features, including sitting in a little window on top of your other windows, and skins.

In the comments for the same post, Carter says "Nothing controls Internet time like a dial-up connection and a single phone line." I concur. It may be an outside control, but it's a good one.

Blogger vs LiveJournal

2005-06-23T07:54:00.000+10:00

Well, you can't have everything. LiveJournal now has tags! But I still can't see how some people with free accounts manage to get extra links and such in their sidebars. Blogger doesn't have tags, but I can get an approximation and I like that it's fairly customisable.

So, I'm going to stay with Blogger and work a fix where I post to both Blogger and LiveJournal and link to the tagged categories in LiveJournal from Blogger. I think that'll be easier than the del.icio.us categories I've been fiddling with the past couple days. I've downloaded w.bloggar and that will make it easy to post to both. Hopefully, w.bloggar will include the LJ tags functionality in future editions so I can post without having to leave the program.

My Software

2005-06-22T04:50:00.000+10:00

I thought I'd post a listing of my favourite software; the stuff I use every day. I'll probably post more about each individual one, but for now here's what I've got.

KeyNote: A tree and tab based organiser. I use it to organise absolutely everything possible. I have a Novel KeyNote file, a Reference KeyNote file, a Research KeyNote file, and many more. Think of it like a binder, with tabbed dividers; only better.

Rainlendar: a calendar program which sits on your desktop. It shows a calendar, a to-do list, and an appointment list.

Firefox: wonderful browser with many 'extensions' that make it even better. I love it . . . particularly because of . . .

ScrapBook: a Firefox extension that lets you save webpages and organise them any way you want. It uses a tree (like you see in Windows Explorer) with folders into which you can file pages. It lets you annotate right on the page, save comments and even separate notes. I save my online research and daily blog reads with ScrapBook. It's indispensible. And it's constantly being updated, making it even better.

Open Office: the free Office suite. I like it even better than Microsoft Office.

ShirisuPad: a notepad that sits in your tray and pops up with a click. It uses tabs to allow multiple notes and looks great.

And note: all of these programs are free!!!

Filed under: Software, ScrapBook, Firefox, KeyNote, Word Processing, Other Software.

Testing Categories with del.icio.us

2005-06-19T10:08:00.000+10:00

I made my own menu with PowerPro which inserts the code linking to my delicious tags.

filed under: My Blog

Testing

2005-06-19T06:21:00.000+10:00

Testing