I am finally tying up Angel of Fire. I’ve had one of those rewrites where changing one thing led to changing another which led to changing another and on and on. I’ve simply not had time to keep up to date with the blog over the past couple of weeks. In a pitiful attempt to actually post something this week, here are a few things I can recommend.
First up is Rachel Aaron’s guide to writing 10,000 words a day. Yes, you read that right, that’s how to write 10K a day, not a week, which is what I aim for. I’ve looked at this and I have to say that it all seems sound and sensible. I have written 10K a day in my time before old age and RSI took their toll and I recognise the good sense in what Rachel is saying. I don’t see myself writing 10K a day again any time soon but the basic techniques she writes about will certainly increase my productivity. Yours too if you read them!
Second up, for those of you who want a Windows version of the very wonderful TextExpander, which I have used for many years on the Mac, I can recommend Phrase Express. This does pretty much what TextExpander does and it is free for non-professional use. Now all you have to do is type in abbreviations such ty for Tyrion and it will be expanded into the complete word or phrase wherever you go on your PC. This saves a surprising amount of time with words and phrases that get repeated often.
I would also like to mention the people at Literature and Latte who are responsible for my favourite piece of writing software Scrivener. I had a small problem with installing Scrivener for Windows on my second PC. I wrote to them after midnight last night. I had a response and a solution when I woke up this morning. You can’t beat that for customer service.
Lastly, I finally got around to installing Lion on my MacBook Pro. My basic response is that I like it. I’ll probably inflict more of my thoughts on you real soon now.
10k a day? That’s utterly terrifying. I’ve maybe once or twice in my life got to that, but in my experience when you write that quickly, it takes a lot longer to edit it into something readable than it does when you’re just writing 2k a day. On the other hand, if I could get up to 3k a day, I’d be a happy bunny.
OTOH, I recognise some of the techniques she uses. I also try to map out a scene – or a component of a scene – before I start writing it, rather than purely trying to make it up as I go along. It does help a great deal. And that’s not to mention the extremely detailed outlines I make for each book before I even start to write it, in the hopes of nailing down as many loose ends or possible trouble spots before they come up and slap me in the face (which I just wrote about, on my own blog).
I agree about the techniques, Gary. I recognise them myself and I know they work.