Writing Software for Windows: Scrivener Beta

I have tried a couple of writing software packages, and so far haven't really felt at home with any.

Too much time trying to figure them out, rather than getting on with content. But I don't intend that as a criticism, just an aside:

• yWriter5 is freeware from SpaceJock Software
• The Snowflake Method from Randy Ingermanson might interest you - his Snowflake Pro software will cost you $100, though.

So I like the idea that Scrivener (so long only available to Mac users) will soon be released in a version for Windows.
Indeed, if you like early-uptake, and don't mind beta-testing (i.e. finding bugs and not complaining about them to the manufacturer - just reporting them as feedback) then you can already download it and get going. Beta Test Download here

As software goes, it has always seemed really cheap (£30-40) and (even better) if you 'won' on NaNoWriMo this year you get a 50% off coupon, too!

It ain't easy

I did finish the rather bad book for NaNoWriMo, and it would take a lot of work to really shape it up, as this year I struggled. Every year seems different with this challenge (I have done it four times now).

As it happens, serendipity helped motivate me to catch up and cross the line in the last few days, in spite of having a cold and all that. What helped? Going to a gig in London and meeting Robert Rankin (without even knowing it was him, until he was already off at the bar buying another round) and chatting all evening.

While he was gone, my friend Michael and I had let our hair down, so when Robert came back with the drinks, he let his hair down, too, and Per took this picture! Heh heh. Robert and I later left that room where the volunteers were letting their hair down, and found a quieter bar, where we could hang out with Mr Kenny Baker (R2D2 for those who don't know these things).

I have gone off and joined The Order of the Golden Sprout, as I have enjoyed Robert's books in the past, although I am not a completist (yet!)

So although I could despair of my own writing after reading his latest, it remains helpful to remember that these magical things called 'books' are actually written by real people!

It was also a delight to meet his partner Rachel Haward. I hope they got away on their cruise...

I Made It!

I finished "Does Not Compute" !

Everyone wins who crosses the line, so it's not the first person to finish, or the one with the most words...

Congratulations to every one else who shared this journey!

Downhill all the way

And as we come into the final straight - still slightly off the pace, but getting second wind, the writing becomes more reckless as I throw myself towards the line.

Far too late to make it all fit together, ideas tumble out that may have to go get retro-fitted to all that went before.

That edit, that series of edits, happens once I have all the words in the can. The editing suite is a whole other life for a director than the shooting process, of trying to capture stuff on film.

If I had the control-freak approach of having an outline, plot and characters story-boarded, then the edit just tidies up what was visualized initially, and what finally ended up as the raw material.

During the edit we might find we need to re-shoot some stuff, even recall the cast and shoot some newly-scripted bits, but finally we have to compile what we have, and then try it out on someone.

I really don't want this run by a test group in some little suburban cinema in middle America.

I need a crowd who knows its a rough draft, a stab in the dark, just one more attempt to created something which might actually change the way we see things, do things. Over-ambitious, no doubt, and falling far short at this stage, but we can't let that inner critic out just yet (even if we secretly feel that we agree).

The critic, after all, is cruising along in one of the support vehicles, making some sort of documentary about the creative process, while I still slog on - nowhere near as tired as Eddie Izzard on his 40th marathon...

But he remains a role-model of gritted-teeth determination to complete something that he made a commitment to himself to conclude. My ambitions remain far below that kind of target, fairly achievable, after all, but also without a support team. All I have going for me is a swarm of other crazy folk, all over the planet, writing their hearts out to hit that target.

Be lucky, folks, the end is in sight. Why quit now? The time to quit came in the early stages, or maybe halfway, when you could retire having made a serious attempt. Now it would just feel sad to get so close to the line and not make it. Let's just finish this, OK, and I'll see you in the bar in four days, or so (given the time differences around the world).

Go for it! One last push!

I've been writing for 23 days, now...

This year I really thought I might have gotten myself into something I couldn't complete in time.

Stubbornly, in the face of interruptions, this cold that has made me woolly-headed, the usual slump of despair and resistance to the problems such a project entails, and all the usual - that NaNoWriMo contributors know only too well (the inner critic who finds it all boring and tedious and badly-written, the curiosity of people I mention it to - actually using the public declaration as a way to drive myself forward - as to why I should bother, and all that...)

And incomplete sentences, and distractions, and other projects, and the sad eyes of my dog who wonders why I am not walking as much, or why I stare at the screen so often), etc, etc.

I know from previous experience that I learn a lot in this process. Ending up with something that may not entirely make sense (not a lot of time for research, or re-reading) I still find it a very fruitful process, and it feels great to know so many other people enjoy it too.




Each time I face a blank page (if scribbling in a reporter's notebook) or screen, I decide on a different approach or task.

Invent a character, describe something in detail, elaborate on the story so far, spend an evening letting the characters just talk to each other, throwing people together unexpectedly, hinting at secrets that even I don't yet know the answer to, etc. I learn something from each and all of these exercises.

No-one pretends they will end up with a smooth and finished product. Looking back, I feel a bit sheepish that I wanted to follow through to holding a hard copy in my hand, but it led to me learning how to use Lulu, and layout a book, commission a cover, etc.

Learning all the time.

So, I only have a week to go, and have still fallen behind sustaining the right average daily number of words to get through the process smoothly. I have almost clawed my way back to the 'par for the course' word count.

by now I should be at 38k, strictly speaking, and I have only made it to 34k, but I can feel that easing of the tension, too, that can sometimes lead to an increase in pace. The finishing line has become a real possibility, now. I seem to have got through the dreadful 'hitting the wall' phase of such a marathon. I even find time to stop and write a blog post like this.

I have spent some time updating a Wiki we made for one of my favourite books, Illuminatus!

In previous years I made encouraging videos...The creative process has spin-offs like that which make it even more rewarding.

I may even find that the half-understood book from last year, which I never went back to edit, and this year's, may eventually blend, with some savage cutting into something else again.

I quite enjoy not knowing, now, quite what I hope to achieve. Writing forward into the unknown means I sometimes hit passages I actually enjoy writing, transactions that surprise me, and ideas that make me laugh.

All that makes it seem worthwhile, as an adventure, an exercise, a challenge.

One week to go, and more distractions on the horizon, a gig in London, travel (but train journeys do offer an opportunity to write, one good reason for not driving, for instance).

And my worst case scenario? I don't actually complete 50k by next Tuesday. I hope it doesn't happen, but I will still have learned all this...

Wish me luck...just don't pray for me, I don't think it works. On the other hand, why not?

Do as you Will.


[You see? There's 600+ words I'll never see again.
I guess I write half a million words a year, in blogs, emails, FB, etc. So why does fiction seem so hard?]

Something like that...

"Chandler has also influenced my way of telling stories; all my fiction tends to follow the Chandler mythos of the skeptical Knight seeking Truth in a world of false-fronts and manipulated deceptions. (Of course, this is also my biography, or that of any shaman.) "

Robert Anton Wilson from an interview you can find online

Uninhibited

I realise now one of the reasons I have trouble writing this year. When I did Infinite Monkeys I wanted to write something without the gimmicks that often sell books: misery, violence, sex, angst, adrenaline and all that. I deliberately wrote something that pottered and meandered along (although one rude word slipped in, I notice!)

I guess that comes from my previous life as a 'children's entertainer' when I eliminated ambiguity from everything I said and did in public, deciding that (without going Disney) the world was quite full enough of innuendo, prurience and dirty jokes, etc, and I would avoid such stuff.

This year, although it hasn't quite worked as planned, I wanted to write a conspiracy thriller, and this 'tameness' wasn't helping at all. I guess there's the fear of being judged (as ever) but no-one (let's face it) might ever read it. So I decided to let my characters swear, think about (and perhaps even indulge in) sex and violence, etc.

We'll see how it goes, but it gave me a couple of thousand more words, and they all count. What might have to go in the editing remains to be seen.