NaNoWriMo Day Five
So here we are at the start of Day Five of the month long novel writing project. This is the first of my promised updates on how things are going. I dived headlong into NaNoWriMo at midnight on November 1st. I wrote a quick burst of 750 words and then went to bed. Why did I do this? Because the promo email from the good folks at NaNoWriMo suggested I do so. Apparently I am a sucker for not-so-subliminal suggestions. God alone knows how long it’s been since I tried writing fiction in the wee small hours. Must have been Read more…
NaNoWriMo, Baby!
We interupt our regularly scheduled lack of programming on this blog to let you know that it’s almost time for National Novel Writing Month. This year I’ve decided to give it a go. I’ll try and give regular updates on my progress. I know what you’re thinking. This should be a walk in the park for you, Bill. You’re a professional novelist with all the time in the world on your hands. If you can’t do a 50000 word rough draft in a month you should be ashamed of yourself. Normally I would kinda sorta agree with you. Fortunately for Read more…
Writing A Novel With Ulysses III
Ulysses III looks so simple but it’s enormously powerful. The program’s documentation does it no favours. It does not explain half what the this radical and innovative piece of software is capable of. It leaves you to flounder with its most powerful features. Fortunately David Hewson has come along to give us a helping hand. Writing A Novel With Ulysses III is a short ebook about writing long works of fiction using the program. It is clear, clever and concise. It doesn’t claim to be a comprehensive guide to Ulysses III. It still taught me a few things that I Read more…
Taking Notes with Pen and Screen
A couple of months back I read this article by David Hewson about using an Asus Vivotab Note 8 to replace paper printouts while editing. I liked the idea of being able to carry a whole stack of manuscript pages in my pocket and work on them whenever the notion took me and I am a sucker for a new gadget so I bought one myself. The Note is small and light tablet with a decent 8 inch screen and a Wacom digitiser pen. It uses the latest generation Atom processors and it gets about 8–9 hours of battery life. Read more…
Best Books For Writers 2013
Just to be clear this is not my list of the best books for writers released in 2013. This is my list of the best books I read this year. Looking at the list I realise that I prefer technical books about methods and process, nuts and bolts, rather than motivational books and those that talk in terms of art. Please keep that in mind as you go through my choices. Sitting down to write this made me think about the way publishing has changed in the past few years. Even in the first decade of the 21st Century, a Read more…
The Pomodoro Technique
Over the years I’ve tried many different productivity systems—I am a sucker for them just as I’m a sucker for any piece of software that promises to increase the number of words I get done daily. Recently I have been experimenting with the Pomodoro Technique. This was originally developed by Francisco Cirillo back in the 1980’s and is essentially very simple. The basic idea behind the method is that you productivity increases if you include small breaks between your work sessions. These should be interspersed with longer breaks whenever you have done a certain number of sessions. The basic unit Read more…
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