writing | Writin' Fish

In order to write you need something to write with, write? Er–right? You don’t have to use anything new or fancy; there’s nothing wrong with pen-and-paper, a typewriter, or Notepad. Still, if you have access to the latest technological accessories, you may as well take advantage of them! Here are some of the handy utilities that I use:

Elephantastic?

Evernote is a great online note-taking service (especially now that they have their cross-platform line-break formatting fixed!). The basic service is free, providing you with a rich-text editor to create notes and organize them by tags or ‘notebook’ folders. You can use it straight from a web browser, or (better yet) download the dedicated application for your computer, phone, and/or tablet, and have access to your updated notes wherever you can get to the internet (and still be able to view what’s on the device where you can’t). When an idea pops into my head while I’m away from the computer, I’ll take a note on my iPhod/iPad, then pull it up later on the PC when writing. Simple and convenient. It also has a variety of plugins to other services, if you’re feeling adventurous.

It’s like a box that you drop things in. Except completely different.

There are a lot of “cloud-storage” solutions out there these days, but I find Dropbox to be the most streamlined. It’s more of a synchronizing service than an online storage receptacle, which is what makes it so great. You install it on your computer, and it creates a ‘Dropbox’ folder in your user profile (or you can put it anywhere else you want). Then, you just put your writing folder inside that, and use it like normal. Install it on any other computers you normally use, and it will mirror that folder among them – make a change to your draft on one, and it will be made on the rest. Download the phone/tablet application to view your files on-the-go, or access your files from the Dropbox website on computers you don’t typically use. You can even view older versions of the files there that you’ve overwritten. It’s portability, backup, and version-tracking all in one! Like Evernote, the basic service is free, starting you off with 2GB of wiggle-room – more than enough for bookwork. Great stuff. (Psst – though if you sign up with that link you’ll score us both an extra 1/2 GB of space!)

Words are neat

Pretty self-explanatory. A dictionary is always good to have on hand, to check nuance or find a synonym. Dictionary.com has some nice phone/tablet applications as well, which are as free as the website.

It’s not a real office

As far as the actual writing goes, I use Microsoft Office (i.e., Word 2010). It’s sort of not free. It is, however, the de facto standard, and most people seem to have access to it for one reason or another. If you don’t, Open Office is a pretty popular and plenty functional no-cost alternative, Pages (for you Mac users) is only $20, or if you want to keep things simple, you could always consolidate and just use Evernote for everything! Anyway, say what you will about Microsoft on the whole, but I find Office to be a pretty dang competent product. Like many people, I’ve used it for decades in both a personal and professional capacity, and there’s something to be said about its ubiquity and ease-of-use coupled with the granular control it gives you over your documents.

So, that’s the general software that gets me through the day! Maybe you’ve found some other helpful programs?

Next time, we’ll take a look at the day-to-day writing process. Until then, bene scribete.

Since much of this ‘blog will be concerning my attempt at producing a book, I should probably introduce it in some fashion.

What a book might look like if you were a cartoon. A boring cartoon.

A book, in case the modern audience has forgotten what…whatever this is is.

If you were a cartoon, it might look like that (a lazy cartoon. Tsh).

Why write a novel? I guess storytelling has always been something really important to me. I’ve wanted (and still want) to be a lot of things in my life, but a writer has for as long as I can remember been first among them. And, if you want to do something, sometimes you just have to…well, do it! Technically, I suppose this is the third book I’ve tried to write. I started one when I was ten, and another at fifteen, but both fizzled out when I got bogged down with the difficulty of figuring out how to get from one point in the story to the next. Luckily, I’ve gotten a lot better at plotting in the interim and naturally have much more writing experience this time around, so this one’s getting finished, dangit!

So, what’s this thing about? Well, that’s a good question, comma, myself. One of the most important questions there is when considering a narrative. One which I should…really have a better answer to by now. Let’s try this – the first of a four or five part series, it’s a medieval fantasy (young adult-ish?), following an adolescent dragon as she investigates a strange disturbance to the land originating from the nearby human settlements. Neh? As the author of a work, when you have all the low-level details ever present in your mind, it can sometimes be a little tough to weed out the high-level premise and distill it into a good succinct pitch line, so it’s an issue I’ll likely keep returning to. I’m still trying to find a balance between being too generic and giving too much away. Maybe I can cheat a bit and ask those of you who have read the beginning how you’d describe it in a sentence if someone asked you what it was about?

O.K., so, what’s it called? Uhhhh, hmm. Don’t have that yet, either. There’s a title for the second book; does that count? No? No.

When will it be done? … All right, maybe I should stop asking myself questions that make me look bad.

I’ve been working on it for a little over a year, now. I have a couple hundred pages at various draft stages, and at least as much to go. Progress has been slow but fairly steady. I’m terribly meticulous when writing, hence the sluggishness – I’ve still yet to effectively shake the bad-bad-bad writer habit of mentally editing every sentence several times before I put it down (I’m even doing it now, gah!). Well, at least I have the major elements outlined, and things seem to be getting smoother as they go, if only slightly.

Anyway, my hope with this thing is to give a window into what all goes into writing that first book as it happens, at least from one quirky space fish’s perspective. Maybe if you’re looking to write (or currently writing!) one yourself, it’ll help to see someone else going through the trials along with you. Perhaps you’ll pick up some ideas on what (not) to try, or maybe if you’re having an easier time than I am, you can just follow my struggles as a way to feel better about yourself. (>^-‘)>

Otherwise, well – writing can be kind of lonely! You spend a lot of time in your own head. I need to talk about this stuff, to share the enthusiasm, but I’m not sure there’s anyone I can do that with in person. So, Internet, you will be my sounding board, willing and responsive or not! Come and join me as I take time away from writing to write about writing like a super responsible person.

A super responsible person.

The pictures help, right?

Bene scribete, all.

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