Posted on

2012 Wrap-up: Nifty Finds and Favorite Things

OK, so we’re a few days into 2013, but I still want to share some of the nifty things I found over the course of 2012 in the hopes that someone else may find them useful.

So here it is; my list of nifty finds and favorite things.

Writing Books & Tools:

  • Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success – This book by K.M Weiland has become somewhat of my pre-writing Bible. I fell so much in love with it and talked about it so much, my sister ended up buying a copy. Don’t let the “Outlining” part of the title fool you; this book has so much more. It covers brainstorming your ideas, developing your characters, setting, conflict and story premise and how to turn all of that work into one big story map. And yeah, it covers outlining too.
  • Evernote – This free and nifty tool was my introduction to Cloud Storage. I have it on my computer, my tablet and my phone and use it on all three. It allows you to store photos, scanned images, PDFs, collaborate with others through “shared” notebooks, and store your favorite websites with the click of a button or swipe of a finger. My sister and I are currently using it to collaborate on a project. One note about the shared folders: you can share a folder and allow a person (or persons) to view the notes within, but if you want him or her to modify those notes, that requires the “Sharer” to have the premium version of Evernote.
  • yWriter – Another free tool that became an obsession this year is Spacejock’s “yWriter.” It’s a word-processing program designed specifically for fiction writers by novelist and computer programmer, Simon Haynes. It acts as a digital story bible that keeps track of all the pertinent details of your Character Sketches, Setting Sketches, Plot Sketches, Summaries and, of course, your story itself. If you’re interested in taking a peek at it, you can find it here: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

Favorite Writing Blogs:

  • Terribleminds – Chuck Wendig –  Ok, this one needs a slight disclaimer. It contains some foul language. If you find the “f-bomb” offensive, you may want to pass over this one. But don’t let it scare you if you can stomach a little “colorful metaphor” mixed in with top-notch writing advice. According to his bio, Chuck Wendig has done a little bit of everything: Screenwriting, fiction, game design, zombie hunting… Ok, I added the Zombie hunting myself. But I can totally see him doing it. Catch the action at: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/
  • Make a Living Writing – Carol Tice – Carol Tice is a successful freelance writer and she started “Make a Living Writing” as a way to pay it forward. Her site and blog are full of years worth of experience in how to make it was a freelance writer. She’s not shy about sharing the secrets of her success with other aspiring and professional freelance writers. I stumbled on her blog (from another blog) over Christmas 2011 and have been a faithful reader since. Read all of the great advice at: http://www.makealivingwriting.com/ 
  • Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors – K.M. Weiland –  Wordplay is author K.M. Weiland’s blog. The same, in my opinion, genius, that brought us the “Outlining Your Novel” book mentioned above. ‘Nuff said! You can find her blog at: http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

Gluten-Free Goodness:

  • This first favorite is a combo Gluten-Free blog and Cookbook find. Gluten-Free on a Shoestring is the brain child of ex-attorney and mom of a Celiac child, Nicole Hunn. She has this crazy notion that gluten free food should be a) affordable and b) not taste like flip-flops with a coating of beach sand. After sampling some of the recipes on her blog, and loving them, I found both of her cookbooks under the Anniversary Tree (thank you, Husband!)

That’s it for now; some of the things I’ve stumbled on over the year. Thank you for reading and feel free to all “Sound of Music” on me in the comments below and share a few of your favorite things!

Disclaimer: I’m nearly positive that none of the people I mention above know that I exist. These reviews were not solicited by any of them. I share these things because I either found them incredibly cool or incredibly useful. Though, if any of the above mentioned folks do know that I exist, that would border on nearly cosmically cool. Also, those boxes are Amazon affiliate links. If you happen to click and buy, it will NOT raise the price of the product for you.

Posted on

4 Reasons Why I Love yWriter

yWriter
yWriter – my new favorite novel-writing tool.

“Hi. My name is Karen and I’m a recovering Word addict. It’s been six months and ten days since I last worked on my novel-in-progress using Word. I’ve replaced my Word addiction with a yWriter obsession!”

To say I’m obsessed with yWriter is probably an understatement. I think my husband is on the verge of telling me that I spend more time with it than I do with him. So what is this thing that has my husband believing he’s a “Writing Widower?”

It’s a word-processing program designed and developed by novelist and computer programmer, Simon Haynes. While writing his first novel, he found himself struggling with large files of story data, and keeping track of chapters and scenes was beyond cumbersome.

Drawing on his programming background, where projects are broken into smaller “modules,” he developed a stand-alone word processing system that takes writing projects and breaks them down into the literary equivalent of a module; the “scene.”

I found this program years ago, but never used it. After reading “Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success,” by K.M. Weiland, I downloaded the current version and dug in. There was a slight bit of “What’s THIS tab do?” in the beginning, but it’s not a hard program to get the hang of. Now I love it! Below are four of the reasons why I now hug my monitor at the end of a daily writing session!

1. It’s a digital “Story Bible”

I’ll admit it; the concept of a story bible is new to me. Before now, I wrote short stories. A document or two to keep the highlights handy was all I needed. But now I’m tackling my first novel and I’ve found that I need to keep a lot more information at my stubby fingertips.

I started off with numerous folders and Word documents: Character Sketches, Setting Sketches, Plot Sketches, Summaries and a Synopsis. They were filed all nice and neatly. But when I needed to find out say, what color scales a particular dragon has, I had to hunt it down. My bad for making them three different colors in three different documents.

With yWriter, it’s all in one place. Does Hyram have black, red or gold scales? Instead of opening up half a dozen documents, I can find out with one click on the “Characters” tab.

There are also tabs for you to fill in information on Locations (Settings, in my mind), Items, Project Notes and Scenes.

Keep your characters and settings straight.
Keep your characters and settings straight.
An At-A-Glance view of your scene's goals, conflict and outcome.
An At-A-Glance view of your scene’s goals, conflict and outcome.

2. Break your big project down into smaller chunks

Any writing project can be daunting, whether it’s a 150 word essay to a 150,000 word super novel. As with any task, breaking it down into smaller chunks helps you focus, feel accomplished and not have a full-blown panic attack.

In yWriter, each book is a “Project”. You can then break that down into Chapters and further into scenes. Your “Scene Screen” has a Word-like word processing section for your actual typing. Above, though, are another selection of tabs, to help you keep your scene straight. Details, Characters, Locations, Items, Notes, Pictures, and Scene Goals are a click away.

So when you’re typing away and you suddenly find yourself asking “Wait, is it the Priest or the Scholar that shows Hyram the secret map?” click on the characters tab and see which characters you’ve indicated are in this scene. If that doesn’t help, check your details or notes tab.

Need to re-arrange your scenes? Just drag and drop them in the order you want! When you’re ready, you can export your chapters and scenes out into a manuscript (which I haven’t done yet because, honestly, I’m still wrangling Chapter 1 into shape).

No need to search for files in the middle of a writing session. The information is all a tab away.
No need to search for files in the middle of a writing session. The information is all a tab-click away.

3. Make and keep a writing goal

I found this to be a nifty tool. Under “Tools” is something called a “Daily Word Count Target”. When you open it up you can enter in a Start and End Date as well as a target word count. Then it calculates how many words per day you have to write to meet that end date. It also keeps track of how many words you’ve written and how far you have to go. For those of us who like visual indicators, there’s even a progress bar.

Create and keep track of your writing goals and daily word count.
Create and keep track of your writing goals and daily word count.

4. It’s Free

What can I say? Even with a day job, I still pretty much fit into that “Starving Artist” category. You can “register” your copy, but it’s not required at all. The disclaimer on Spacejock.com says:

“You won’t pay anything to download yWriter, and the software contains no adverts, unwanted web toolbars, desktop search programs or other cruft.”

I certainly haven’t seen anything to indicate otherwise. No computer wonkiness, no pop-ups, no ads. Just a nifty tool that has helped me reign in an out of control story.

I know there are other programs out there to help novelists and writers of all types. Do you use any and if so, what do you like or not like about them? And if you try yWriter, please come back and let me know what you thought of it! You can find it at: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

Now, off to hug my husband instead of my monitor…

Author’s Note: Simon Haynes and Spacejock have no idea who I am or that I even exist. He (they) did not ask me for a review of this product. I did it because I love it and want to share it with others who may find it awesome or at least useful. I’m not being compensated in any way for my opinion.

Photo Credits: The images in this post are screen shots of my computer/work. I own the copyright to the images and the written content in them. I ask that they not be reproduced in any way, shape or form. Thanks!

Posted on

Evernote – My New Favorite Writing Tool

Screenshot of this post in Evernote

Evernote kind of kicks rocks*; meaning it’s pretty dang cool.

Some of you may know this fact already, but I only discovered this powerful little tool back in November.

I have it on my phone, the tablet my husband bought me, and my laptop, and I use it all the time for my writing.

For instance, a lot of ideas hit me as I’m driving to work in the pre-dawn hours. I can either voice-record my idea du jour into the Evernote app on my phone or type it in on my trek through the parking lot once I get to work. (This is usually my preferred method since I keep my cellphone zipped up in my purse when I drive.)

Once I’m done typing a few lines about my idea, I save it to my “Blog Ideas” notebook and it syncs up to the “cloud” where it taps its fingers impatiently until I can sit down and work on it.

Then at lunch I fire up my tablet, open up that fledgling idea and type away, fleshing it out and turning it into the blog-post goodness you kindly read each week (all while trying not to drip salad dressing or sandwich crumbs onto the keyboard). Once the idea has been typed into full-blown blog post, I move it to my “Blog Post” notebook and hit done. Off it goes again to the cloud.

When I finally crawl to my computer at the end of the day, there’s that draft, waiting for me to spruce up and add HTML tags. After it’s copied and posted here, I tag my Evernote entry as “Posted” and I’m done!

It’s a nifty tool and it fit my “starving artist, parent of teenagers who eat and grow a lot” budget. Translation: It didn’t cost a red cent.

And it can do so much more. I’ve only discovered the basics of this tool. I’m still exploring all of the features, but it looks like you can store photos, scanned images, collaborate with others through “Shared” notebooks, and store your favorite websites with a click of a button or swipe of a finger.

I save interesting-looking freelance opportunities I find on the web this way so I can pull the link up later on my computer and send a proper inquiry.

I can’t wait to see what else I can do with this thing. When I have some free time. Whatever that is.

Have you used Evernote? If so, how? Or do you have another tool you love so much you talk about it to anyone who’ll listen?

Note: Evernote doesn’t know I exist and they didn’t ask me to write this glowing review. I wrote it because I like it and thought I’d share in case it can help other writers, artists, harried parents or people in general, out. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find it here: http://www.evernote.com. As always, thank you for reading!

*For the origin of the term “Kicks Rocks” check out the belly-laugh creative genius that is http://www.neverendingnights.com.