Processfest: Days 9 & 10
processfest Day 9: Tools
What are your tools? What software, hardware, fancy equipment or handmade work-around do you use to create? Don't assume everyone does what you do and would be bored by your answer. It's YOUR answer. Share it with us, and we can pick up tips and suggestions from each other, or connect over the fact that we do indeed use exactly the same tools.
I use Word, which I have, sometime in the last seven years, mostly gotten over being grumpy about as a new-fangled concession to what everyone else uses (up until 2006 or so I was the last stubborn holdout still using WordPerfect, which I bonded with implacably in the late 90s). It's possible that in another seven years I'll give up and try out that Scrivener thing everyone is always talking about, but at the moment I don't feel the need--for long stories I keep a story file and then another word file with an outline, notes, and any bits I cut out as I go along, and that's generally sufficient to keep me organized. For Jigsaw, in which I was tracking characters in at least six alternate realities, I had a spreadsheet, but most things don't require that much complicated management. I'm fairly good at holding a story in my head, which only infrequently fails me in some disastrous way.
I do also use some tools to manage, not specific stories, but my writing as a whole. I have a spreadsheet that tracks every story I've posted (to the AO3 & my website, not counting story-like-things only posted on LJ/DW, which are tracked under the "orphan" tag instead) which totals up word counts and allows me to calculate stuff only I care about, like my average word count per story in various fandoms. I have another spreadsheet that tracks my daily writing word count, per story and total, and keeps running totals for the month and year.
I also use 750words.com to help motivate me to write (and as something to write into if I'm away from my own computer and can't put words directly into the appropriate file). 750 gives you little animal badges for keeping a streak alive by writing every day and does entertaining linguistic analysis on your mood and topic of concern--I get Upset/Death a lot, but Affectionate/Money reliably crops up when I'm working on hookerfic, which I find hilarious.
Lately I've also getting two helpful boosts for writing (not counting the deadline-panic of exchange season, which is its own kind of help): one is word wars over in the #yuletide channel, where you settle on a time and race to see who can write more words in 15 or 20 minutes. The other is the power of timers and phone alarms--I've been doing a sort of half-assed mashup of Unfuck Your Habitat's 20/10s and the Pomodoro Method to choose tasks and make myself start and finish them. It's very helpful for actually getting me to close tumblr and write words even on nights when I am sort of inclined by mood to just fall into the more pleasantly mindless depths of the internet.
Day 10: Favorites
What is your favorite part of what you create and how you create it? Talk about what you love!
I love fandom so much, you guys. I've said repeatedly that I need other people with me on a story idea to write, and in fandom a lot of people are already like 75% of the way with me when I say "So Derek and Stiles--" or "So Nate and Brad--" or "So Aral and Cordelia--" I love being able to write in response to other stories I'm reading, and being able to write specifically to please one person I want to make happy. I love writing something I think no one else will like and then finding out who else really wanted to read Dean Winchester getting a Bible lesson or Aral Vorkosigan having a hot young boyfriend or Brad Colbert dressed up like Santa.
I love being here with all of you. That's the best part of writing for me. ♥
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