Last week I mentioned TaskPaper and said that this week I would say more about how I use it as an outliner. (It’s Mac only, so if that doesn’t interest you, you can skip this post now.)


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I’m writing this novel draft out of order. It’s a weird weird feeling for a reformed pantser who used to start at the beginning and see what happened along the way. It happened by accident-my outline had holes in it when I started writing, and I got stuck on certain scenes, so I started skipping around.

Which, some months later, led me to wonder ( Read more... )

Looking back at 2012 and ahead at 2013…

Here’s how I did on my 2012 goals:
* Finish one novel revision - done
* Outline and draft another book - nearly done with the draft
* Write 4+ short stories - wrote 5
* Maybe do another novel for nanowrimo - nope

So, pretty good. The pause to rework the book I’m writing will make it a much stronger first ( Read more... )

Happy last Wednesday of the month!

Here are my posts from the All Rights Reserved blog for the past few weeks:

• The Two-Year Novel Course: How I learned how to plan - Signups are open for this free class that walks you through planning, writing, and revising a novel
• Evernote and DEVONThink - thoughts on organizing electronic files
• Toastmasters works - ( Read more... )

Back in June, I referred to Rachel Aaron’s 2k to 10k blog post, and commented that I have trouble tracking my word count at different times and locations because I don’t go straight from blank page to written scene. But that hasn’t stopped me from trying, and using the result to make some plans…

A couple weeks ago I read Aaron’s 2k to 10k ebook ( Read more... )

Last night I wrote a grumpy blog post, but then I deleted it. (Short version: writing is frustrating.)

I’ve been struggling to revise a story. After I wrote that post, I adjusted my attitude towards the story. Even if it’s unfixable, I can still learn from it. I will try to figure out the problem I have with it, and then see if it’ll help me with ( Read more... )

It’s the last Wednesday of the month! Here are my posts from the All Rights Reserved blog for the past few weeks:

• Current project meme - I answer a few questions about…my current project
• World Fantasy - Very brief comments on my trip to World Fantasy

As always, go read the posts of my partners in crime. They are far more interesting than I am.

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I write every day. Not because I think there’s some magical writing power that’s delivered by writing every day (some people who give this advice seem to believe this) but because I only have so much time each day to write, so missing one messes up my plans quite a bit.

Usually if I end up not writing, I feel guilty, and I keep telling myself to ( Read more... )

I belong to two local critique groups and sometimes do other critiques for friends or writers I know online. Most of these are done on the computer rather than on a printout. Since standing at my computer is not particularly pleasant for reading long things, I prefer to crit on my iPad.

However, the word processors on iOS mostly don’t have track ( Read more... )

My plan to finish a novel and then start the next one on Nov. 1 was unsuccessful. With work being busy and me being gone for a week, there just wasn’t time. The novel is still going well, though.

What does that mean for my NaNoWriMo plans? It means I’m cheating. I’ll still aim for a lot of words, but many/most of them will be for the book I was ( Read more... )