The All-Purpose Writing Thread!

Thank you, Baker and Quackers*! I've sent each of you copies of the story. It will be nice to get some different eyeballs on this thing.


* two great names that go great together

Congratulations, CN!

Unfortunately I don't have the time to edit, but I'd still be interested in reading about The Cobalt (I don't know much about superheroes, but hopefully I could give you some general feedback). Also very happy to pool advice on publishing, etc.

I don't know much about superheroes, either, but didn't let that stop me!

Now I'd like to talk about writing tools again because I'm at a point where my opportunities for writing have expanded and I'm mulling different writing configurations.

I'm covered at home where I use a PC running Windows 8. I do all my writing in a live tile on the Start screen.

Okay, I actually use two programs. For short stories I'm still using Word 2007 as I've got it configured to stay out of the way, it works and I'm familiar with it. I don't have the urge or need to change.

For novels I've embraced Scrivener. While I had it in time for NaNoWriMo 2011 I didn't fully use it until my 2012 effort and it was then that I learned to love the way it lets you organize everything. I continue to tweak it to my own particular needs.

In my current job I have a one hour lunch break and really only need 15 minutes to actually eat (I bring my own lunch). That leaves me with 45 minutes I'd like to devote to writing. This means I can be productive even if I come home and have to fight off Sasquatches or something and end up being unable to write in the evening.

Right now I have an iPad with a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover, which works very well as a case but is merely adequate as a keyboard as the keys are a bit small, even for my girly* hands. I could get a larger Bluetooth keyboard to overcome this and the iPad display, while not large, is very sharp, easy on the eyes and has great viewing angles.

Software-wise my choices on the iPad are to use the integrated word processor found in Google Drive or a separate app like Apple's Pages or iA Writer. I picked up iA Writer (hey, 99 cents) but it's far too simple for my purposes, to the point where I find its limitations annoying. There is currently no Scrivener app for novel-writing though one is allegedly in the works. Because of these issues I am mulling over whether to reserve the iPad for other tasks and invest in a proper laptop.

But another option has been previously offered up by several people in this thread, namely the Neo dedicated word processor. While Jason Pace and Baker sing its no-frill praises (no distractions, incredible battery life, cheap, light, etc.) I can't get past how little you get to see on screen. I think it would make me crazy. I may have to find someone with one to get some hands-on experience before seriously considering it.

If I opt for a laptop I'd probably go with an ultrabook because being lightweight is a major consideration for me. There's the Macbook Air which is considered by many to be the current standard bearer. The main disadvantage here is I can't use my existing software unless I boot over into Windows, which is a level of hassle I'm looking to avoid. But it remains a valid option.

On the Windows side the list of options is so vast as to be overwhelming. Most of the multitude of ultrabooks have similar specs so it's a bit like drawing a name out of a hat at this point, save for whether or not to get one with touchscreen (which adds to the weight). Software-wise I'd simply continue to use my existing tools, which makes this the 'easy' choice.

Or I could go back to writing longhand, which would be good for smudging everything as I'm a leftie but would make me Harlan Ellison's BFF.

What does everyone else currently use and what do you like most/least about your own software and hardware choices for writing?

* no offense to girlies intended

If you are the sort of person who likes to continuously re-read what you are writing as you write, then the Neo is not for you. And there are times I don't like it either. But for unfettered streams of typing where I'm just getting it down and I'll transfer it to the PC for reading/editing later, it's awesome. If you are a touch typist, you can even sit there in the dark while watching TV or a movie and be tapping prose out on the keyboard without seeing the screen at all.

My writing workflow for short stories and essays (I've not attempted a novel) is to use IA Writer on my mac for fullscreen no-nonsense writing. That lets me focus on the first draft with no distractions, once that's done I copy paste into Word or whatever and go from there.

Today I banged out about ten pages for my short story in about an hour. It's all very rough, but I've got almost the entire basics there; probably it'll clock in at 12-14 and I'll edit it down to 7-10.

Jason, my touch-typing skills can be described as non-existent. And that's being charitable. The Neo is still a neat device.

My main complaint about IA Writer is similar to the Neo -- I just can't see enough on the screen. I feel claustrophobic when using it. Maybe it works better on a Mac than the iPad. Or maybe I should use it when I'm writing a story about being trapped in an elevator.

I now have my second short story ready for eyeballs. It's the next in the three-pack (thus far) chronicling the adventures of The Chicago 8 supergroup. This one is titled "The Chicago 8 vs. Armageddon" (in this case Armageddon is the nickname of an Earth-pulverizing asteroid). If anyone would like to peruse it with an editor's eye or offer any kind of feedback, let me know.

I'll read it Ned. Be warned: I'm usually quite extensive with the feedback!

Also: part of the point of writer is to kind of keep you focused on the sentence you're writing right now. That's why you don't get much on the screen.

I know and I appreciate the sentiment behind 'no distractions' but I figure if I get to the point where I need software to deliberate limit what I can see I'm probably not going to get much writing done to start with. I can also write with music blaring into my ears so maybe I'm suffering from some kind of reverse-distraction. Too little and I lose focus!

I'll send you the story. Extensive feedback is not a problem!

Yay I finished my short story. I ended up having to trim about five pages from it; the assignment was for a 5-7 page short story and my initial draft clocked in at 13 pages!

If anyone would like to read it toss me a PM. If I had to offer a blurb it'd be something like this: a junior compliance officer at a world-class financial firm has to confront the firm's top trader. All is not as it seems.

Congrats on finishing! And I volunteer to read your tale of finance finagling.

Is it better for being half as long? ...how? ...what did you cut? ...is it a different story?

Probably it's better, the stuff I cut was fun background for the setting, but extraneous to the actual story.

So I completed my first draft and my own revisions. The only step left is editing.

Now the question is, how much does something like that cost (around 215k words) and where does one find (cheaper) editors? An additional problem is that I wrote the book in English while not being a native speaker so I suppose I should go with a native speaker editor as well?

Here's a story what I wrote.

A foolish consistency

My goblin left me on the corner of Wilson and Broad Street while I was waiting for the lights to change. I only noticed he was gone five minutes later, when I scratched at an itch on my shoulder and felt the welts where his claws had been.

I stopped dead in the middle of the footpath. A girl bumped into me with a muttered exclamation and I apologised. She smiled and waved her hand like it didn’t matter. But I met her eyes and there was a hint of sympathy before she flicked them aside, kept walking. A few metres down the road I saw her pat her own goblin a couple times. It was a beautiful bright green colour. Mine had been blue.

At work my desk was full again. I did a quick inventory - five Cabinet papers, a couple of assessments to sign off on, three messages from overnight. One of the messages was from Colin the group manager. I powered on the computer so it could rub the figurative sleep out of its eyes while I trotted down the corridor to see him.

“Colin,” I said. “You wanted to talk strategic plan?”

Colin is a burly man, I’d heard he’d played rugby at a high level until his ankle popped. His goblin was slumped on his desk, snoring.

“Yeah, mate, just give us a--” He looked up. Frowned. “Where’s your, uh, what did you…”

I inclined my head. “Hopped off. It just… Not sure.” I shrugged, not sure what sort of expression was appropriate, settled on a brave smile.

Colin nodded. “Is this a good time? Because we could do it this arvo if you want, or…”

“Let’s talk now,” I said. “I’ll, it’ll be alright.”

Two hours later I was staring out the window. The pile of papers was higher; Ellen had dropped off something on sewage consents in the Mangatukituki Basin. She’d been a bit cheerier than usual but hadn’t stayed to chat. I guessed I was trending upwards in the secretarial gossip charts. Didn’t really care.

In fact right now I didn’t care about much. I’d spent the last twenty minutes massaging my shoulder with my right hand, unkinking its knotted muscles. My scars were starting to itch a little, but not in an unpleasant way. I plucked the sewage paper off the top, leafed through it. Closed it, put it back on the pile. It was a beautiful day outside, sun sparkling on the harbour.

“Fuck it,” I said out loud. “Early lunch.”

My office is close to the water, and I only had to cross two roads to get there. I was already starting to find the stares and whispers commonplace. Pleasant, even. I polished the apple I’d stolen from the snack bar on my shirt, took a bite. There are bright yellow bollards dotted along the boulevard that runs alongside the harbour. I perched on one, munched. The sun was warm on my skin.

When I finished the apple I tossed the core into the water. From behind my sunglasses I watched the people go by, carrying their passengers. Pictured my goblin, his smooth dome of a head, little black eyes. It was a little harder than it should have been, as though he’d had taken my memories of him when he left. I contemplated going to the pub. Eh, why not. My jacket was over my chair, though. Back at the office. I stood up, enjoying the lightness. God, why do people even… I smiled at a pretty Chinese girl with a jet black goblin. It inclined its head to me, regally.

As I rounded the corner to my building I saw a lump of what looked like blue cloth, like a discarded pair of painters overalls by the entrance. Two steps later I recognised him. My goblin looked up, opened his slitlike mouth, closed it. A forked tongue came out, flicked back.

I felt a tightness in my chest. There were people walking past me, the automatic door opening and closing to let them into the building. I stood there. My goblin held up one hand to me, two, claws opening and shutting. I stood there. I tried to remember what happened to people who lost their goblins and never found them again. It must have happened. Maybe it was too terrible. Or too good. I took a breath, pictured myself turning around, walking away. My eyes were dry, and I blinked.

Then before I could stop myself I’d dropped to my knees, reached out, gathered my goblin up, cradled him. His skin was dry and papery, his skinny arms tight around my neck. We held each other as the stream of people flowed on around us. Then I stood up, positioned him on my shoulders. He clung there, trembling. I patted him, got into the lift. The doors closed and the lift hummed as it took me back to work.

dawwwwwwwwwww

If you go over to the Absolute Write forums, you'll find this exact question answered in some depth there. The summary version is:

1) In editing, you generally get what you pay for. A good editor is not cheap; it's highly skilled labor that takes a lot of time.

2) Do you know if you want an editor, a copy editor, or a proofreader? Because a lot of people who say "editor" mean "proofreader", and these are three separate jobs, though there can be overlap. If you want someone to do all three, it is going to cost more.

For the last question, I would say yes, you want a native speaker as your editor. I would, in fact, be very dubious of anyone offering editorial services--especially in the line edit level of work--who was not a native speaker of the language they claimed to edit.

I don't know if you folks would be interested in reading a sci-fi RPG module. It includes fiction, and setting info (Factions, places, characters). It's also rather... voluminous, which is why I ask.

I love stuff like that, Tankero. I can't promise I'd read it all, but I'd at least give a good skim.

I've written all sorts of short stories and several novels. I'm working on a short story called "The Fold" right now. Would anyone mind if I posted it when it's done? I don't expect it to be terribly long.

The premise, to gauge your interest:

Finally responding to this...

There are many great reasons to get a Neo (dirt cheap, portable, durable, incredible battery life, instant-on/off. instantly saves everything you type, distraction-free, usable in bright sunlight, just ugly enough to attract no attention), but the main one is that you have a pretty damned good no-compromises full-sized keyboard. If you can get past the screen size (and you can, trust me, because you soon shed yourself of the need to constantly go back and tweak things, and you can use the search feature to reference something you've forgotten) I can't recommend this thing enough. The only way they could improve it would be to have it integrate seamlessly with Google Docs.

And speaking of Google Docs, that's what I'm turning to most often for writing all kinds of things. Cross-platform available-anywhere trumps pretty much everything else. When I need to put the finishing touches on something I cut-and-paste into InDesign or Word and do the dirty work.

And speaking of Word, the 2013 version is by far my favorite ever (the new Excel is similarly great). It has a flat interface that melts into the background, it's easy to configure, and I swear they poured some secret sauce into the cursor code because it glides as you type in some scarcely-perceptible yet wholly-identifiable way that makes you want to keep typing just to keep watching it move. I can't explain it other than to say it's smooth and satisfying and gives you that feeling you get when you slip into the seat of a luxury car and start sensing all the craftsmanship that went into its construction relative to the econobox you drive.

And speaking of that econobox you drive ... oh wait, wrong thread.

Please, do.

Had it been any other question than English I wouldn't even have asked. But you know, English.

I'll check out those forums though. Thanks for that.

Basically, you want an editor who's a native speaker for the dialect of English appropriate to your target demographic, insofar as you have one. So there are a lot of different variants of English, but make sure your editor is native to the version where you expect your readers to come from. Especially if you're looking for an editor who's doing copyedit stuff, that means if you want to be selling your books primarily in the UK, you don't want an American editor, and vice versa. That way you don't end up making dialect level mistakes. Though some of that is also based on where your story is set, and so forth...

I am an unrepentant gadget whore so I'll probably get a Neo at some point.

In the meantime I did get a laptop - a 13.3" Macbook Air. I'm using Word 2011 for Mac (yay employee discount) and Scrivener and saving my work to The Cloud™, either Dropbox or Google Drive. The Air is a much better solution than an iPad/keyboard combo and light enough that it's easy to carry back and forth from work. The past week my lunch time has been pleasantly productive, writing-wise.

I am pretty indifferent to OS X. There's a good chance that when I next look at laptops I'll jump back to Windows.

As mentioned, I've started doing this well. Being able to pick up and start working on a document wherever you happen to be is great. And if I'm in a place that's Internet-free, I can just save my work locally until I get home.

I have the preview version and find the interface of Word 2013 fades into the background a little too much, to where it's harder to scan. The core program has a host of nifty improvements, though, so on balance the good outweighs the bad. I'd settle for them fixing the SHOUTY ribbon titles.

Hi folks, as promised. This link will take you to the whole text of Heraklion, the setting for my small RPG module. I'm writing a campaign to go along with it as well. It has some fiction vignettes woven in there.

A sampler of a bit of the history in it.

Tankero, :(

"Sorry, we are unable to generate a view of the document at this time. Please try again later." using firefox
Opera is not supported either.

I'll convert and repost it.

Alright. This link should do it.

My first thought is that it will be important to differentiate by style the narrative parts from the historical background and technical descriptions. My favorite editing technique is to hack at prose with a rusty blade. Remember the movie, A River Runs Through It? I took old Bessie to your first scene. I realize that is damn presumptuous of me. Forgive me but I love hacking. Fewer words. I think the Remy and Freddie parts need to be terse and action heavy. I think The Dr Len part could be even more ornate and whimsical... to set it apart from the scholarly history. The Dr Len part is good and can be verbosely flowery in keeping with the Len character. But even the historical exposition could use a cruel hacking. Make one sentence out of two or three. Cut down modifiers/descriptives from phrases to words. "Half as long."
I have not yet delved deeply into the mythos you have created.

I never cut deep enough, alas. There's also a subjacent structure (I'm basically rehashing something from universal literature) but that hasn't been fully formed. I'll do that in the campaign. These notes are greatthough; thanks for taking the time!

I have a question about the short story collection I am assembling for self-publication later this year. There will be 30 or so tales, the writing of which covers a span from the late 80s to the present. The stories themselves vary in tone from comedic to Grimdark and cover genres such as horror, science fiction, fantasy and 'other' (literary fiction, I suppose, though I find my writing too meat and potatoes to really suit that designation).

My question is this: What would be the best way to arrange the order of the stories? Group them by genre? Chronologically? Theme/tone? By drawing random numbers from a hat?

It's a lot like making a mix tape. You want to have a sort of emotional arc formed out of the sequence of stories, so that there's interesting change and contrast between them, and it ends on a satisfying note. Which is something you kinda need to do by feel, but I recommend against grouping them strongly by theme, subject, or any other strong similarity. While you don't want people to get mental whiplash when moving from one story to the next, you also don't want to put two similar stories right next to each other, where one or the other might suffer--or distract--from the comparison.

Start with a bang. Crank things up high, then pull back for some breathing space again. Have some ups and downs along the way, while starting to build back up again for going out on a really high note--or a high note, followed by something short and sweet. (Or short and horrific, depending on the emotional arc you want.) Overall, I'd look at what sort of dominant emotional sensation a given story has, for figuring out where it goes; and beyond that, just don't put it directly next to anything too similar. Two fantasy stories in a row: fine. Two tragic fantasy stories with wizards in a row: less fine.

Well, the best beginning is your second-best story, and the best ending is your best story. From there, I'd say it's best to stagger the genres. Place them like hands of four cards with the caveat that sometimes stories bleed into and compliment one another and should be placed for that benefit.

You don't want to read through forty pages of grotesquely dark fantasy that culminates in a young boy, clad in the pelt of an albino wolf, breaking his fingernails trying to dig a hole in the hillside to save himself from winter to the adventures of Hans Draki, Venusian space fighter.

From the Shipping Manifests and Logs of Hans Draki, Venusian Space Freighter*:

* I read it as space "freighter" and went with it.

This is the first draft of a poem that I'm having a difficult time dealing with. It's decasyllabic and has eighteen lines. I'm starving for suggestions on the weirdly anachronistic thing.




Lack



Were that dew were a true panacea
for dander's scent on yours and my pillow,
or less, your nails unstitching bed's satin,
the only facsimile for our flesh
worth its weight, I might tolerate my breath's
drub and dub and dub and drub, the heartbeat of


...

the one you buried, the one who hurried,
the one you harried, the one you stood up.
They fill pages sure as metered rhyme does.
Lack persists in these singular feelings,
the rage of passion, the longing, needing
a face to look toward to spite the morning


...

The truck batters a dirt road, slings mud ropes
onto spruce, skeletal in the sunlight.
We circle the truck's engine, drink enough
to tell stories we don't believe. Herons
soar, shatter the conversation. They breathe
between wails. There is bleak in this absence

A few questions:
What is the form doing for the poem? If this were in a different form, would the meaning or thrust of the poem chance? Why did you choose this form? What specifically about the anachronism is tripping you up?

It's hard to understand what a poet is trying to do, in terms of critique, based on one poem, but hopefully these questions can help point you where you want to go.

I would say that this form adds a degree of cohesion/legitimacy to a poem that starts by sulking through sentimental abstraction. In the interest of full disclosure, the poem is more a glomming together of two exercises and a six line poem (which appears earlier in this thread, apparently) than an engineered poem. Aside from that, the form cozies up to the shape of Berryman's dream songs. In short, I guess I'm trying to apply a literary context to those first stanzas in order to avoid the a-feared sentimentality.

I think that changing the form would make this a much longer poem than it is. Without the similarly sized stanzas and their lack of end punctuation, I'd have to go into the blood and guts of the why of the abstractions.

As for the anachronistic language, "were that dew were a true panacea" puts a giant target on the thing. It's a post-Shakespearean/post-Romantic/post-Modernist world, after all.

An edited-in amendment: I'm shit at love poems (or poems that I self-consciously perceive as love poems).

I didn't mean to wait so long before replying but thanks to both for offering your input.

I've already decided to slim the volume down a bit by turfing some of my earlier stories. They're not bad but why include stuff that's not up to what I consider my usual standard? My main concern is not so much having one genre butting up against another (eg. fantasy followed by horror followed by SF) so much as the tonal shift. Since only a few stories fall into the GrimDark™ category, it should be fairly simple to sprinkle them throughout in a way that feels natural.

I thought I'd post this here, apologies if it's old hack or mildly inappropriate for the thread. The funniest review of a Dan Brown book you are likely to read.

"The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive."

Warning: Contains loads and loads of Bad Writing by renowned critic Michael Deacon.