I’m fairly enthused about this novel. (I’m always enthused about the latest novel, I know.) I’m working with The 90 Day Novel: Unlock the Story Within by Alan Watt (not to be confused with Alan Watts). The ebook is only $9.99 for your Kindle app. And well worth the money. His site is LA Writers Lab.

I’m also using some ebooks I downloaded from Holly Lisle’s site a while back. She’s making her stuff available on ereaders too. Check out their sites and teaching methods. I’m sure you’ll find something on either one to help you unlock the story inside you.

Referenced in this post:

• WriDaNoJu on Facebook.
• WriDaNoJu Free forum.
• The 90 Day Novel: Unlock the Story Within. eBook. Author’s site.
• Holly Lisle’s site. Holly Lisle’s Shop for Writers.
• Scrivener writing software. Not just for Mac’s anymore: Download the Windows Beta! You’ll be glad you did.

(Unless you do what I did: Get thee to the Apple Store and get thyself a MAC!) =)

It’s a good thing the handbook is entitled, No Plot? No Problem! Because I’m 73% on the way to 50,000 words and still have only the vaguest notion where I’m going with all this. I can say that things took a scary turn in this evening’s writing session. Could it be because I’ve been reading Stephen King? This past weekend I read his book on writing, called On Writing, and decided it was high time I read some of his fiction. So I steeled my nerves and headed out to the newest used bookstore in town, and bought an armful of King classics: Misery, The Stand (expanded and uncut version), Carrie, and the like. I’ve seen the movies, now I’m going to read the books. I’m gonna learn myself to write if’n it be the last thang I ever do. And it may be! See you at the next progress report. And I expect to have some progress to report! If I don’t scare the daylights outta myself.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.html
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/forum/516
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/offers

Got back a few days ago from a trip to Hilton Head Island, SC. I took my dog with me. My dad’s dog had to stay with him, much to her dismay. But my doggie has traveled all over the country with me and hasn’t had an accident in a motel room yet. When his dog gets better about that, she can go on trips too. Above is a photo of sunrise at the beach. Note the lab strolling along the shore. Lots of folks had their dogs with them at the motel and at the beach. Dogs everywhere. My kind of travel destination!

• Visit Christian Diversity.
• View our Mission Statement.
• View Author Biographies.
• Read my first post there: The Catholic view on Original Sin.

This is not a review but I can tell you this: I am definitely a new fan of O’Brien’s work. Now I need to collect the rest of the Children of the Last Days series. And, no, it’s not the Catholic version of Left Behind. Far from it. Anyone alarmed at the direction our world is headed in should read O’Brien. Anyone interested in spiritual combat should read it too. I’m going to read it again and take notes this time. Check out the artwork, interviews and articles on O’Brien’s site too.

I downloaded some writing courses a while back from one of my favorite writing teachers, Holly Lisle. (I love her humor and her down-to-earth wisdom. We may have nothing in common as far as religion goes but I’ve learned a lot about writing from her. Mostly she helps me sit myself down in front of the laptop and write, and have fun doing it!) Going through her lists and exercises last night helped me explore my story and I learned more in that one session than I had learned during the whole month of June when I began this madness.

I found some writing software trial versions last week too. Last night I decided which one seemed the most useful for long projects (now and in the months and years to come) and bought it. (To pay for it, I returned some other things I’d bought elsewhere. That’s how much this novel means to me. I’m committed to it!) I chose the Writer’s Cafe. I’d love to use Scrivener but, alas, there is no PC version and I can’t afford a Mac right now. But the Writer’s Cafe is close enough to Scrivener to be very useful and fun and it costs less than a lot of software I’ve tried over the years. It’s $45 as of this writing and well worth it, in my opinion.

Using the Pinboard in Writer’s Cafe (above).

I’m not an artist but I do have a strong visual sense and I really enjoy being able to jot down a quick note and stick it on my desktop. With Writer’s Cafe I can do that and not lose the note somewhere between the actual cafe I’m sitting in and the parking deck. I also enjoy jotting down scene ideas on cards and shuffling them around. Here, I’ll show you what I mean.

I just found out I can change the background appearance on the different tools. Good! Buh-bye, blue background! Hello, corkboard. For now, anyway. At least the corkboard is somewhat less distracting to me than the others. You can change it to colors using a standard color picker pop up box. But this is good, makes me feel like I’m working and playing at the same time. Which I am!

Using the Journal tool in Writer’s Cafe (above) with the appearance customized, showing the corkboard option.

I just found out I can add shortcuts to the desktop so I can access the apps, files and folders I need from within Writer’s Cafe without having to get out of it to hunt around for what I need, thereby losing my train of thought (which is so easily derailed). How cool is that? I’m liking this software more and more all the time!

Add notes of various kinds and even shortcuts to the desktop (above) in Writer’s Cafe.

Using Storylines in Writer’s Cafe (above).

These tools alone are worth the price for me, but Writer’s Cafe has much more to offer. I especially like the fact that I can use linear and non-linear thinking, working and playing inside WC. I like being able to move things around. I like that after I write and delete and re-write and move things around, WC will show me a nice little linear report of my story which I can print out. (There are options for doing this that I have not explored. There are options for doing all kinds of things that I haven’t explored yet!)

Also useful are the Notebook and Journal tools. I’ve been using the Journal to do the writing exercises I mentioned earlier, to keep up with random thoughts, even to start a list of names that I might use in writing projects down the road. Did I mention that WC has a Name Generator tool too (not shown)? Ordinarily I don’t care much for such things but I’ve had some snickering fun with this one. I may actually have to write something sometime so I can stick some of these names in it. Just for fun.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with WC so far, although I do wish the GUI was more, shall we say, attractive. Okay, I really wish it looked more like Scrivener. I’ll probably like WC even better when I use it on my desktop at home with my much larger wide screen monitor.

What else did I look at?

• WriteItNow: A bit overwhelming for my taste, but I might try it again later. (Unless one of these days I find a Mac in a basket on my doorstep and I never have to buy anything else for a PC ever again. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?)

• PageFour: A bit less than I was looking for. It looks to be perfectly good as a word processor with some flexibility, letting you have unlimited separate notebooks (in the registered version) with pages and note pages in them for whole projects or chapters within books, or however you want to use them. But I was looking for a way to help me see and play with structure.

• StoryBox: Some good ideas that suffer, in my opinion, from overcrowding on my mini laptop’s small screen, and the GUI needs some work.

• Scrivener: Only for Mac’s, waaaaaaah!.

• NewNovelist: I want the software to be a tool that allows me to do my work, not a tool that tells me how to work. To be fair, I didn’t download this one. What I read on the website turned me off so I didn’t pursue it. Plus you have to buy the software to try it instead of getting a free download like the others. They say they’ll refund your money if you don’t want to use the product, but I prefer to try it first, then pay for it if I like it. So I won’t be trying NewNovelist any time soon.

And, of course, I still have my trusty old standby duo: yWriter and RoughDraft. Best thing about these: they’re both free and fairly easy to use. I’ve used yWriter (and other software by Simon Haynes) and RoughDraft for years. I hope you’ll find something in this post that will help you with your projects, whatever those may be. Peace be with you. Now crank up your favorite writing tool and write something!

Unfortunately, the cat next door thought of our babies as his hors d’eouvres. And ate ‘em.

I hate that cat. Stupid cat. I’m never gonna stop my dogs from chasing that mean old stupid cat again. I didn’t even have a chance to take a photograph of my itty bitty pretty little birdies.

And don’t talk to me about the “circle of life” and “oh, that’s just the way things are, darling,” and “that cat’s only following his nature, honey.” Stupid cat. Ate all of our poor little baby birds. Well, ate three and a half of ‘em, left half of one for me. Gee, thanks, cat.

Stupid cat. I hate that cat.