Sunday, July 07, 2013

Sunday Review: COOKED, by Michael Pollan

Cooked: A Natural History of TransformationCooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


"Yet there is a deeper kind of learning that can only be had by doing the work yourself, acquainting all your senses with the ins and outs and how-tos and wherefores of an intricate making. What you end up with is a first-person, physical kind of knowledge that is the precise opposite of abstract or academic. I think of it as embodied knowledge, as when you nose or your fingertips can tell you that the dough needs another turn or is ready to be baked....Eating and drinking especially implicate us in the natural world in ways that the industrial economy, with its long and illegible supply chains, would have us forget....To make it [beer] once in a while, to handle the barley and inhale the aroma of hops and yeast, becomes, among other things, a form of observance, a weekend ritual of remembrance."


One review I read of this book claims this is simply a repeat of everything Pollan has written before. I find that to be a complete misunderstanding of this book. If anything, I find this book to be unlike his other food books, and rather more similar to A Place of My Own: The Education of an Amateur Builder in its almost spiritual approach to the subject at hand, and in Pollan's positioning himself as not the expert researcher, but the novice. Yes, some of Pollan's central theses remain: whole foods are good, industrialization of food has had terrible consequences on our health, but this takes it to a different level. This is less about the individual act of eating than the communal act of creating.

Although Pollan's other books contain anecdotes of his visits to various people and places to understand his topic, this book is more his grappling with what he learns and trying to apply it immediately. (Again why it reminds me more of APOMO rather than his other food books—he's again "building," just this time with food.) Yes, there's a good bit of information about the evolution of all these different kinds of cooking, but a lot of the focus is simply on Pollan's own transformations in his understanding of not only the processes of cooking, but their significance to him personally.

Where his other books are outward, I would describe this book as inward. Yes, it contains some scathing criticisms of industrial food culture (it doesn't stray from the theses in Omnivore's)And approaching it that way, I found it the most satisfying of all his food books to read. It's a book that will get you to think about why it's necessary to cook; not from a "this is good for your health" or "processed food is evil" standpoint, but from the idea that the act of cooking and sharing food is good for the soul.

I see this book as being the parallel to The Omnivore's Dilemma--4 foods, and now 4 preparations. The outward exploration of the purpose of food, and then the inward contemplation of preparing and consuming it. I look forward to it coming out in paperback, because I think the two books together will make a nice paired gift to my foodie friends (well, the ones who haven't already devoured everything Pollan has to offer.)



View all my Goodreads reviews

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love "the Rules"

(CC-BY-NC-ND)  by tamaki
My mother is a musician. She's a harpist, which is part of why my social media avatar is a cat playing the harp (I play, too, but not well). So when she had children, it was no wonder that she wanted all of us to have music lessons.

My brothers played the violin, learning via the Suzuki method, which is a method that teaches young children to play using the same principles of language learning—first you listen, then you imitate, then, when you are already proficient at producing speech (or music in this case) you learn to read.

When I was four or so, I started dancing to my brothers' "listening tapes," the music they were learning to play. My mother, instead of taking this as a sign to get me dance lessons (which was what I wanted), decided to get me piano lessons instead.

Now, in the grand, grand scheme of things, I don't play piano very well. I took lessons for seven years, until just after I turned eleven. One thing I remember most about piano lessons is how unbelievably tedious they were—having to learn to put my fingers in exactly the right order, practicing scales. I remember my teacher telling me things like "this needs to be even" or telling me to bend my wrist more. Her rigid insistence that it wasn't enough just to get all the notes right, I also had to bother with the mezzo pianos and the mezzo fortes (there's a difference?) and that even though fortissimo was a super fun volume, the keys still had to be struck just so.

And every day I had to practice for at least a half an hour. Crazy.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Shitty Scrivener First Drafts

One of my favorite (well, probably my absolute favorite) writing books is Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD. If you haven't read it, I recommend going out to the bookstore immediately and procuring a copy. It's a book that's as much about life as writing, and I find myself remembering things from it often.

The piece of her her advice I've always found difficult to put into practice, however, is the bit about creating the SFD: the shitty first draft. The ability to allow yourself, as a writer, to produce crap the first time around, so that you don't scare yourself out of putting something down on the page. I always think about it, and sometimes, I do better than others (NaNoWriMo comes to mind), but usually, I tend to get in my own way because the truth is I do produce better writing with relatively minimal attention to it. But it also means sometimes I get stuck, waiting for the next thing to move me forward.

However, after NaNoWriMo 2011 (and after they produced the Windows version), I bought Scrivener. At first, I just used it for revision, and preferred to produce my writing within Microsoft Word. But now I've transitioned almost completely to using it as my drafting tool.

And it's had a really unexpected effect: I feel a lot freer to make a mess.

Scrivener gives you the ability to work scene by scene, and to drag and drop those scenes into any organization you want. Currently, my method is to use the Blake Snyder beat sheet for drafting, and to organize my scenes into their beats, and then to go back and reorganize them into chapters.
Somehow, being able to drag and drop a scene anywhere has freed something up in my brain. Since it's not necessarily going to stay where I put it, I feel freer to write something that might not make sense right there. Or to jump to a scene I'm itching to write without writing the bridge (although I try to get to the bridge in the next writing session, lest I build up a writing project in which all the fun scenes are written and I end up with only the hard parts). I know that it's as easy as dragging the scene to "trash" to remove it, or back from trash to reinstate it, and somehow, that makes it much easier to write.

Additionally, I know I can tag the status of a scene. Scrivener's basic statuses are "to do" "first draft" "revision" and "final draft," but like all things in the program, they can be infinitely customized. So I have some statuses like, "WTF was I thinking?" or "Really  great" to clue me in as to how much revision a particular scene is going to take and/or how happy I am with it (because happiness may simply be a factor of it being in the wrong place in the book, which is easily fixed!)
I find I'm drafting faster, revising harder, and that all of it is a lot more fun. I wouldn't have thought that I would adapt to a program--I'm a techie, if you can't tell, and so I usually find ways to make programs adapt to me--but Scrivener has finally brought me around to having the freedom that I first read in Anne Lamott's book almost twenty years ago.

I'm glad to have found it.

Do you use Scrivener or another noveling program? How do you like it?

And just for bonus kicks: here's my Scrivener template for the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet. Feel free to use it and share!

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

5 Great Books for a Graduate

One of the best parts about bookselling is handselling, which is when someone comes in looking not for a specific book, but a good book for a category: "For my thirteen-year-old nephew," or "for my friend's twin girls who are turning 2" (both were handsells yesterday). It's fun because it's when you get to put all your great reader skills to work as a bookseller—what's good in this genre? What follows well on other things that person has liked? What are the obscure, but cool books that the person otherwise might not pick up?

This time of year, I'm doing a lot of handselling of graduation gifts. It may be a little late for some, but in the interest of helping folks who may have a graduation party or two coming up, I thought I'd talk about my five favorite graduation books (and no, none of them are OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO).

1. HOW TO COOK EVERYTHING, THE BASICS by Mark Bittman. I'd been reading a home blog all through my undergrad years, and so when I graduated, I wanted the original HTCE (we won't mention how many years that's been out, just in case). HTCE and HTCE: Vegetarian are veritable encyclopedias of cooking knowledge and recipes. For a long time, the full HTCE was my go-to graduation gift. But in the last two years, Bittman published HTCE: The Basics, which makes an even sharper gift for someone just venturing away from Mom and/or the college cafeteria. It explains all the basic techniques of cooking, and gives a number of easy, healthful recipes to try, and it has photos and fewer pages, which make it a much less intimidating tome than the full HTCE.

2. NICE GIRLS DON'T GET THE CORNER OFFICE, by Lois Frankel. This book should be handed  out along with diplomas to every woman entering the workforce, in my opinion. While lately LEAN IN has been all the rage, this one is much more tactical. It's full of small things that girls are socialized to do differently than boys that hinder them in their careers—everything from asking permission for things to leaving trailing voicemails. I first listened to this book on tape eight years ago, and I still often turn to it when I'm on a long drive and see something new. 

3. THE MONEY BOOK FOR THE YOUNG, FABULOUS, AND BROKE, by Suze Orman. When I handsold this to a couple, the man in the couple described Orman as "smarmy," and I suppose he's right. At the same time, this is the best finance book for people in their teens and twenties, particularly those who are graduating into the recession. Advice to save money by just not going to Starbucks or eating out as often doesn't work when the person is too broke to go to Starbucks in the first place. This book addresses *that* reality, and takes people from good debt management to financial planning for home purchases and the like and everything in between.

4. 36 Hours series, from the New York Times. These books, which compile itineraries from the Gray Lady's weekly travel column, provide a bunch of suggestions for great weekend getaways for most of the major regions of the United States (and one book is of Europe). If the grad is headed to a new city for her job, these can be the perfect reminder that R&R should go along with all that hard work.

5. A great (recent) novel. Across the board, most students haven't done much reading lately that wasn't for school, and it can be an awesome gift to be given a new novel to read. I like to pick recent ones (and paperbacks, because they're cheap!), as it's unlikely the graduate will have read them; some of my picks this summer are WORLD WAR Z, BRINGING UP THE BODIES, and WILD (which is a memoir, but it reads like a novel). Or, a really touching and personal gift is to give the graduate the book that most resonated with you at that age—plus, it's fun to reminisce.


It's pretty easy to reach for the staples: OH THE PLACES YOU'LL GO, or a guide to surviving college for a high school grad, but if you step a tiny bit beyond the graduation display, there are lots of wonderful, and out-of-the-box (see what I did there?) gifts to be had.

What's your favorite graduation gift to give, book or otherwise?

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Losing the Element of Surprise

I've discovered some of my favorite books by accident.

Growing up, my neighborhood library was one big room, kids books on one side, grown-up books on the other. When I was about eleven, I decided to read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE because it was a very grown-up kind of book to read. I loved it, and went in search of FRANNY AND ZOOEY.

I didn't find FRANNY AND ZOOEY, but in that tiny library, an author named Salzman was shelved right next to Salinger, and instead I discovered THE SOLOIST, a very moving story about a failed concert cellist rediscovering his art in the strangest way possible.

I read THE SOLOIST about once every couple of years (and have gone on to read the rest of Salzman's work as well).

As a bookseller, I have a lot of exposure to advance reader copies (ARCs), and so I end up taking home random books from time to time, which was how I wound up reading THE AGE OF MIRACLES last year. That book blew me away and then some, and I haven't been able to stop recommending it to anyone and everyone. The premise sounds crazy, but...trust me on this. It's wonderful.

But I've noticed something. These days, with social media, and book sites, and being so plugged in to Goodreads and twitter and the blogosphere, I am never surprised by a book any more. I add my favorite authors' books to my "to-read" shelf almost the moment they're signed. It started with HARRY POTTER, when the moment the release day was announced, it would be on my calendar. Now, it seems, it's almost everything—to the point that sometimes, I see a book on the shelf in the store and think, "Oh wow, that's just coming out? I've been hearing about it for ages and/or read it from Netgalley six months ago."

It's getting easier to know about most of the books you'd be interested in. It's almost impossible to be surprised by a new title these days.

Which was why, when I walked into the store last week and saw AMERICAN SAVAGE* sitting on the table, I just about screamed.


I had no idea Dan Savage was writing another book. (I realized I don't follow him on twitter, which might have something to do with it.) But he's been one of my favorite writers ever since I read THE KID—I'm one of the few people who discovered his memoirs first and his salacious advice column second.

Of course, I grabbed it at once and tore through it in a matter of days. It was a great and interesting read, although certainly preaching to a choir I'm already in, but what I was so much more excited by was the thrill of being surprised. It was the most delightful feeling, like somehow, someone had dropped a little gift just for me on the promo table—"Aha! Jess will want to read this...let's make a new book by one of her favorite authors appear!"

There are a lot of implications to the lack of surprise—it means that people come into a bookstore and don't browse. THey're not looking to be surprised by a book, they're looking for INFERNO or LEAN IN or the latest Jack Reacher novel (if they're coming into a bookstore at all—never before has it been so easy to buy a book without seeing any other titles as when you search for it in your e-reader store or online). For readers who want to know, all the information about their favorite books is readily at hand.

Now, I love goodreads, and I love twitter, and I love following authors' blogs and tumblrs. I hope some day, people will be trawling my website, looking for news on the book I'm releasing next.


But there's a joy in being utterly surprised that a book you want to read has been released and you didn't even know about it. It adds an extra layer of sweet, like you found something that no one else knew about, and now you can go hoard it all for you. And I feel sad that these days, that feeling is getting harder and harder to come by.

I'm glad I got to experience it for what might be one last time.

*I try very hard not to be political on my blog, but I realize my enjoyment of this book more or less 'outs' (if you'll pardon the pun in using that word to describe a book by a gay rights advocate) just about all of my political views at once. Ah, well.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

W is for Write



So in April, I participated in the A-Z Blog Challenge. It was an absolute flurry of blog crazy. I was worried at the outset that I wouldn't make it; given that it's only been in 2013 that I've managed to get the discipline of blogging every Tuesday, and also that April for me means end-of-term grading plus hunting for summer internships and jobs.  Well, actually that last stuff turned out to be the first week of May, which is why this post is going up on the Tuesday after I intended it to! But I'm pleased to say I turned in my grades Monday morning at 2:30 AM, ahead of the 8AM deadline, and that I also got an email offering me a great summer internship. So, yay! One week blog break...worth it. 

But despite all my busy, I did the A-Z, and I'm glad.

I was going to make a reflection about all the great lessons I learned from doing it—and there were many!—but really, there was only one main one I found myself coming back to, again and again and again and that was this:

It's not hard.

Sometimes I despair when I see people who are blogging day in and day out, at the fresh, breezy tone of their posts, and the way it seems to be effortless. In the past, I've felt like I needed to have Something To Say™ before I blogged. And I needed to think about how it sounded. And compare it. And worry about whether it was too long. Or too short. Or too unprofessional. Or too crazy-seeming.

A-Z forced me out of that. I had some things I was excited to talk about (cool things you can do to "hack" your writing experience), and a goal of talking about them every day, and the next thing I knew, I was blogging. Every day. In a breezy tone. Effortlessly. It wasn't hard. When I showed up, the words did, too.

So for that reason, A-Z was amazing. It reminded me of a very important thing, which has lately been getting lost in the world of twitter, and blogging, and social media, and revisions. The lesson that,  that to write, you simply...

...write.

And that's a reminder that we could all use from time to time.


Thursday, May 02, 2013

Voiceless..but Friendly

So a year ago, I tried really hard to get into a contest called The Writer's Voice, hosted by Brenda Drake, Krista Van Dolzer, Moni BW, and Cupid's Literary connection.

The widget hated my guts, and both times I failed to make it into the hopper.

But that was also post- me knowing that ISAAC IN THE MIDDLE needed some major work.

So this year, I found out with about two weeks' notice that TWV was going to happen again.

When I'm sitting here with a novel that is barely underway on its rewrite.

Now, the rewrite is pretty stellar, if I do say so myself. And I'm excited for it, and excited for how it speeds up all the necessary stuff, and excited for what the results may be when it's finished. (And I'll be excited when it's finished to send it off again!)

I'm no saint. It definitely occurred to me that given the structure of TWV, I could enter, put up my query and first 250, and frantically finish the rewrite over the next 23 days. The bones of the book are there, and it could be done.

But in the end, I decided it'd be foolish.

So instead, I'm sitting on the sideline, cheering. I've commented on what feels like  bazillion queries this morning (but what is probably only a dozen or so). The great thing about contests is that it's how you make friends, and I think (hope?) I can do that even if my manuscript isn't ready. 

I'm still going to try to have my rewrite done by May 24, though. The deadline is a good thing, and May is a great month for an academic...school's out, and summer research hasn't really gotten underway.

Good luck to all the TWV participants. You'll see me bouncing around the hashtag and commenting on your blogs. Let's be friends!


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Get to Know You



There's a lot of great software out there.
There are lots of ways to better take advantage of resources you already have available.
Many ways to create good, sustaining, writing rituals.
And to protect your time and writing space.

In almost every single post, I've found myself writing something along the lines of, "This may not be for everyone."

And the reason for that?

Because the best writing hack is You.

What do you want? What kinds of books do you want to write? Which things will most help you achieve those goals? Are you a morning writer, or an evening writer? Do you feel stifled by a daily wordcount, or does it energize you? Do you prefer a longhand notes notebook, or does storyboarding software make your fingers tingle with joy?

The best way to make the most out of your writing time is to pay attention...to yourself. Because what makes your writing time tick isn't what makes mine tick. What works for one person won't necessarily work for everyone.

The key is to know yourself as a writer. This might come through journaling about your writing process, or through trying different things and throwing them out, or simply by experiencing yourself as you write.

But most importantly, it involves writing.

Know yourself. When you do, whatever system you have will be the most "hacked" and the best one there is...

...for you.

Thanks for coming along on my first A-Z! It's been super fun, and I've loved getting to surf around to so many different blogs. I hope to write an A-Z recap next week, with some important new lessons that the A-Z experience taught me about writing, of course!

In the meantime, happy writing.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Monday, April 29, 2013

Wrangle Story Research With Zotero

Merp? But it's the penultimate day, you say. Why am I posting "Z"? Well, as I was looking at my topics, I realized that the best and most important writing hack is "Y," and that "Y" would be a great one to end this little journey. So I'm going to post "Z" today, and "Y" to end everything tomorrow.

As a broke grad student (wait, that's redundant), one is always on the lookout for inexpensive solutions to problems. And one problem I have as a grad student is citation management. A friend tipped me toward an open-source citation manager called Zotero.

Right. So Zotero does all those cool things like throw in an in-line citation (Schley 2013) and create a bibliography. Neither of which are things a fiction writer often has to do, though if you need something more robust, it can handle that.

But what really makes Zotero nice for my fiction writing is its ability to wrangle multiple types of sources at once. For instance, I can have a PDF of an article attached to its citation so that the citation automatically launches the PDF when I need it. Or, the reference might be for a URL for a website with great info. Or perhaps I check a book out of the library, and make notes about the important stuff that's relevant to my novel right into the citation, and then, if I need the book again, all the info about which book it was is right at my fingertips so that I can check it back out.

Then, I can group all my citations for any given book into a folder, so that all the resources I've used for one book appear in one place. 

Best of all? I can tag all those sources with their topics or any other tag that is relevant to me. The sources still stay in the main bin, but they can be pulled up by tag. For instance, I try to keep heavy research to two books, so that at any given time, I'm doing two spins on the same set of research. So for Book A I might need resources on topic Q, but I'll need topic Q resources for Book B, also. When I begin outlining Book B, instead of just browsing everything I set aside for Book A, I can just click on the tag for topic Q, and add those citations to a new folder.

We're all trying to craft a story that our readers can get lost in with full suspension of disbelief. But to do that well means potentially keeping track of a lot of little niggling details. Zotero lets me outsource some of that work, so that I can focus on the important part: the writing.

What do you use, if anything, to keep track of where your noveling research has taken you? Bookmarking sites? Goodreads or Library Thing? Your Amazon Wish List?

Zotero

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Use X-Ray to Improve Your Structure

So, I'm not a giant fan of the 'Zon, for a lot of reasons (and actually, none of which have to do with my being employed by their main competitor, as it's a part time job and my world wouldn't crash if suddenly my employer disappeared). But I definitely have to give them props for the things they do well, for instance, their fabulous book-finding algorithms.

One thing the 'Zon does really well is the X-Ray feature on Kindle. And it works on the Kindle apps, too, so you can discover it even if you don't have a Kindle. X-ray was designed to allow people to surf easily through a book for all the mentions of a particular character, to define terms, and basically to allow people to more easily navigate a book.

But I've found it is helping me think about novel structure in a way I haven't before.

For instance, here is a screenshot from my iPad of an X-ray from a Kindle book I enjoyed recently, SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL, by Trish Doller.




Looking at this page, I can see a few things. How often is the MC's old love interest mentioned? (Paige Manning) How about one of his close friends? (Ken Chestnut) How much time does the author spend explaining and talking about the Marines? (not a lot)

I can also see how dense these mentions are. The first part of the book is about Travis coming home to North Carolina; the second half is more about him reconnecting with his Marine buddies and coming to grips with what happened to all of them in Afghanistan. As I think about that in parallel with looking at how often and where these characters get mentioned, I can see that in the beginning, there's a lot of to-do about the ex-girlfriend, and while she's still present as the book goes on, her mentions get shorter and more infrequent. By contrast, the love interest, Harper, has exactly the opposite trajectory.

X-Ray lets you see a book's structure at a glance, and lets you peer into the clockwork of books you think work well (and perhaps books you thought did not). Where should it be unbalanced, and where should it be balanced? Which characters get a lot of screentime, and which do not? And importantly, how does that compare to how I've handled the same issues in my own work? It helps me see not only what works in another novel, but also what I can do to improve my own.

Do you have a helpful method for thinking about how you've structured your novels? 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Friday, April 26, 2013

Take Word to the Max

I've talked about many of my favorite writing software packages in this A-Z, including Scrivener and Ommwriter. But the reality is, most of the time, you'll find me working in plain old Microsoft Word. What can I say? I'm old school. I'm comfortable with Word, and I like the way it feels. I know the keyboard shortcuts. I get around it easily.

But I find a lot of folks open Word, write some text, and close Word, and if you're going to only do that, you might as well just use something like TextWrangler or WordPad. As they say, the secret's in the sauce. Here are a few ways to get exactly what you want out of Word:

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Edit Better by Switching Views

I was opening a document from an email one day, and it launched directly into this beautiful, full-screen thing, where the print was sized large enough that it was easy to read, and every other application I had was blocked out.

"This is gorgeous," I thought. "It'd be nice to write in this."

I had just discovered reading View.

Say what you want about Microsoft Word (and there's plenty to say), but it does have some pretty nifty features. And like Internet Explorer, MS software still is the default for many users. I actually happen to like Word quite a lot and use it for most of my composition, but I'm a bit nutty as techies go.

Reading view is one of those nifty features. To activate it, go to the "view" tab in Word 2007 or later, then choose "Full-screen reading."
Choosing full screen reading

When you do that, a single page will appear, with your font larger, and with everything else in Word blocked out. Easier to edit, easier to focus, and easier to simply be alone with your words. 

Full screen reading view in action!


This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Get Started Easily with Unfinished Work

(CC) by Wouter Kiel
I was talking to my advisor one day about some of my academic writing, and how my fiction writing habits were resulting in better academic papers. I mentioned the bit about getting started at the same time each day. He perked up. "It's also helpful to park downhill," he said.

Park downhill?

Parking downhill refers to leaving some part of your work unfinished. It's super-satisfying to finish a writing session by triumphantly capping off a scene or chapter. But the next morning, booting up and staring at "CHAPTER NINE" can be a stifling thought. It might stall you a few minutes, or it might keep you bouncing around the internet procrastinating for days.

Instead, what my advisor suggested was to leave one section unfinished. Leave with something you have a lot of momentum on, so that you can sit right back down the following day and pick up where you left of. Some writers I know even go as far as to leave off in the middle of a sentence!

Most of the time what I do is leave off in the middle of a scene (or, you know, the methods section of my dissertation) and jot myself a note or two directly into the document of where I'm going next. Then the next morning, when I'm still groggy, I can just connect the dots that I drew the day before...and by the time I've done that, I've got new momentum for the day.

What are your strategies for keeping your muse going from one day to the next?

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Mind the Time


T is for Time, and for Timers.

W. Somerset Maugham has been oft quoted as being asked if he wrote at a set time or only when inspiration struck him. He answered, “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately for me, it strikes every morning precisely at nine.”

I’ve written a lot in these hacks about ritual, with music and software and playlists and so on, but perhaps there is no better writing ritual than time. Sitting down at the keyboard at the same time each day pre-programs the juices to flow in a way that few other things do. It’s recommended in writing book after writing book after writing books (my favorite being How to Write a Lot by Paul Silva, which, while geared toward academic writers, does a great deal for fiction writers as well).

The other T is for Timers. Setting a timer to try to write for a set period is another way to push yourself to stay focused and to write a reasonable amount. Twitter wars like #WriteClub can serve this function, or you can set one yourself. I find that I can challenge myself to write my daily 750 words in one hour, which works out to about 13 words per minute, and I will check up on my pace from time to time. The tick of the timer keeps my momentum moving.  Often I’ll use the PomodoroTechnique of writing for awhile and then breaking; there are online timer tools just for its implementation. 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Monday, April 22, 2013

Using Scrivener to Straighten Out Your Novel

(This one going up late today! I knew I should've written it and queued it ahead of leaving for the weekend, but I always think I'll have time to write a post in the morning. While I'm grading. And lesson-planning. And trying to run out the door.)

So, about a year ago, I decided to take NaNoWriMo up on their offer for 50% off the price of Scrivener.

And like many writers, I was smitten. 

Scrivener allows you to break apart a novel and see it in pieces; you can see each scene on its own, re-order them, summarize a scene on a notecard (that stays with the scene), keep track of your notes, keep track of your progress with revision, and much, much more. It took me about a week to get used to using it, but now I write everything that is longer than a page or two in it, including all my academic work.

Some of my favorite features:

  • Reordering scenes—you work on your novel scene by scene, and if you need to reorder them, you can do so just by a simple drag-and-drop. 
  • Bulletin board—by the same token, you can summarize each scene on an "index card" and view your whole novel scene-by-scene on a bulletin board (and drag-and-drop if you need to). 
  • Revision status—when I'm working on a revision, I can mark each scene as to its writing/revision status: to-do, needs-revising, revised, final. These are also all customizable, so you can create your own set of relevant revision tags. 
  • Side-by-side windows—you can bring up two parts of your novel side-by-side, or your novel and a reference piece, or anything else. Great for doing a ground-up rewrite of a scene, changing a scene's POV, or, in the case of the other writing I do, referring to an article while writing a paper. 
  • iPad app—this is a "coming soon" feature, but I'm delighted I'll be able to interface with my iPad when it drops! 

I've found Scrivener to be absolutely invaluable in the year I've used it, and I'm anxiously awaiting Scrivener 2.0 for Windows (mac users are lucky ducks who already have the 2.0 version!). It was more than worth the $20 I paid for it, and would be more than worth the $40 at full price. And best of all, if you'd like to try it out, they have one of the best trials in the universe: 30 days of actual use, not just 30 days. So if you use it one day per week, you can use it for 30 weeks before you have to purchase the full version. I purchased the full version after about 4 hours, but your mileage may vary. :)

Do you use special writing software? Which ones have you tried, and what do you prefer?

Scrivener

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Format Pretty and Share Like Crazy with Rich Text Format

Writers often need to send things around. To your betas or CPs, if you're still working on that first draft; to an agent (and sometimes copied into an email), if you're querying; and to your agent and editor if you're at the publishing stage. You may have a PC running Windows 7, and need to send to a Mac running Lion, or an old Mac running SnowLeopard, or from GMail to someone on Outlook—the list goes on and on. And maybe you write in Word 2013, but they work in Open Office, or you're writing in Pages, and they're reading on a Kindle...

...you see where I'm going here.

I run into a surprisingly large number of people who don't know that there's a file format that solves 99.9% of the problems you run into sharing a file from machine to machine and device to device. It's called Rich Text Format, and has the extension .rtf.  It's a .txt file with just the bare bones of formatting: like .txt files, it's cross-platform, but unlike .txt, you can retain your basic formatting, like em-dashes, italics, and underline. You can dump its results into an e-mail program, and most will parse it easily, keeping your paragraph breaks and line spacing intact. And your critique partners can even make margin comments and text corrections, and they'll show up in your program (presuming both of you are using software that allows for commenting).

To use it, when you're saving your file in your word processor, look for the dropdown box below the filename. Usually, you can change it from whatever the default is for your word processor to an .rtf, and boom! Totally shareable file. 

It's a great "in-between" from a .docx Word 2007+ file that gets garbled on your friend's machine and a .txt file that kills all the prettiness you put into your document, and a great way to make sure that everyone who reads your manuscript can focus on your brilliant words, instead of whether or not they can open your file.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Friday, April 19, 2013

Give Yourself a Quota

The first year I tried NaNoWriMo, I wrote about 700 words and then stopped completely. (I still count that as a year that I tried though—I'm masochistic like that!) But I think one of the reasons that year failed so spectacularly was that I had no idea how many words per day 50,000 words worked out to be. I could've picked up a calculator, but the thought to do so just didn't occur to me.

The following year, I'd bought Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! which had a handy-dandy little chart breaking down each day's writing requirement: day 1, 1667, day 2, 3334, day 3, 5001, and so on and so on. (This was in the days before all the fancy metrics on the NaNoWriMo site itself).

And I finished.

Turns out, having the daily goal right there was part of the key.

Many authors swear by writing a set number of words each day. In On Writing, Stephen King recommends 1,000 words. Nora Roberts is said to sit at her desk and write 9-5, 50 weeks a year just like any other working stiff. One of the first novel writing books I ever read, How to Write & Sell Your First Novel recommended 750 words per day.

But whatever the quota is, there seems to be little doubt that the quota helps. Gives you something to keep track of, and keeps you moving forward as you see yourself inching toward you goal.

Right now, I'm using 750words.com to help me reach my 750-words a day quota. Do you have a daily (or weekly) writing quota? How do you track it? Do you find it helpful?

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Make Creative Playlists -- Post 100!

I started my blog a little less than two years ago. By some strange fluke, I reached the same number of posts in 2011 as I did in 2012—exactly 33. This is my 34th post for 2013, which means two things: 1, it marks me officially making 2013 the year in which I finally am hitting my stride with my blog, and 2, this means that this is my 100th post! Thank you to all of you, and to all my new followers as well. I'm tempted to run a giveaway, perhaps at the end of A-Z, as a thank you, so stay tuned! 

On to A-Z: I mentioned earlier this month that I'm a little intimidated by people who have playlists for their books. I'm not sure where the fad came from, but it seems these days every author has a list of songs that inspired her for different sections of the book.

But while I can't always find a one-to-one correlation between parts of my story and particular songs, I do find that often it can be useful to put together music that inspires. For instance, I have a "cleaning" playlist, which my friends point out really is more of a "songs I can sing at the top of my lungs" kind of list. And even though I do most of my writing to Bach, I have a playlist that contains six CDs worth of music.

So if you're a music person, think about putting some of the music that inspires you into a single list. iTunes is probably the easiest and most familiar tool for this (and its purchasing features are great for instant gratification), but did you know you can also create playlists on YouTube? Gather a bunch of songs you like, and place them in a playlist to run end-to-end. It's a great way to explore music without necessarily springing for the whole album. Online streaming services like Pandora and Spotify can serve up a genre of music that inspires you as well.

And if you need specific inspiration, the YA Misfits run a weekly feature about the music that inspires them, and Operation Awesome frequently run posts about good writing music as well.

Do you use a playlist? And if you do, is it the music or the lyrics that you attend to in deciding which songs go on the list? Do you write to specific genres of music? Are you an instrumental-only person?

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Use OmmWriter to Write Your Zen


The NaNoWriMo before last, I discovered an awesome program. It's called Ommwriter (with two m's, like the chant). The entire idea is to get your writing to a Zenlike state—it takes over your entire screen, provides you with a soothing background, gives you zen background music and typewriter sounds, and just cuts you loose with your writing.

Like with using music, I've found that the Ommwriter background sounds get me into the groove of writing; when I see the screen and hear the music, something inside says, "Aha. Time to let fly." I often finish a session in Ommwriter and am blown away by the number of words I've produced.

Best of all? It's free. And for the extended version, which has more sounds and more backgrounds, you give an at-will donation ($4.11 I believe is suggested).

A screencapture of Ommwriting in progress!
Check out the video on their site! It explains the software far better than I do.

Ommwriter 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Make Writing a Sport with NaNoWriMo

In my creative writing seminar in my senior year of college, one of the other students kept coming in with a hoodie on. It had this strange word across the front:

NaNoWriMo

Our professor asked her what it stood for. "National Novel Writing Month," she said. "You write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days." 

Like many, our professor scoffed at the idea. What kind of good work can you produce in 30 days? 

Well, with the ever-growing number of books that are coming out having begun as a NaNoWriMo challenge, the answer very well may be...a lot. 

I've participated in NaNoWriMo for a full decade now, and while I haven't finished every year (but I've finished more often than I haven't!), it's a funny thing...it works. See, NaNo creates competition. Humans thrive on competition. You know this firsthand if you've ever tried to get a little kid to clean up by saying, "I bet I can put more toys in the toybox than you can!" Something about feeling like you're doing something and accountable to other people for "winning" creates a primal drive that can get you to do almost anything.  

Now, the Office of Letters and Light sponsors two other noveling events each year, during Camp NaNoWriMo. So no matter where you are in the year, a 30-day frenzy isn't too far away. Yes, yes, ideally, we all write a little bit every day. But if you've fallen off the wagon and need a kick in the pants to get you moving, or just want to step on the accelerator with a work you've had jangling around in the recesses of your brain...log on to NaNoWriMo.org and make your writing a no-holds-barred competition.

And if you're not into NaNoWriMo, there are lots of other ways to create competition--try doing a word war with your critique partner(s), or for year-round NaNo-like craziness (including the fun of community!) join the #WriteClub hashtag for word sprints on Twitter.

 
NaNoWriMo (Novermber)
Camp NaNoWriMo (April and July)
What is Write Club? (Megan Whitmer's Blog)

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 



Monday, April 15, 2013

Foster Pavlovian Creativity with Music

I mentioned in my post about iTunes that most of the time, I write to the Bach unaccompanied suites for cello (the version recorded by Yo-Yo Ma). It was through this that I started to understand the power of Music in my writing routine.

I always start my cello playlist with the first suite, first movement, "Prelude." And after a long time, I started to notice something. Hearing the opening bars of Prelude would bring up issues in my work; either a spark of creativity for where to go next, an idea for a future scene down the road, or a way to go forward with something I'd gotten stuck on.

The music itself was creating the idea in my mind: "It's time to write."

Now, this tip probably isn't for everyone. Some people need silence when they write, or they really need to hear something different every time. However, it can be worth trying at least for a little while. There are lots of studies out there showing that routine and ritual are some of the keys to good habits, and incorporating sound into your routine to elicit a particular response...

...well, Pavlov discovered the value of that technique ages ago.

 
Not Yo-Yo, of course, but uploaded by the performer himself. Here there be no pirates!

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 



Saturday, April 13, 2013

Let Your Library Work For You

Do you know what's at your local library? The books, of course you know about: it's a super place to get other books to read, maybe check out some comp titles, or read some children's nonfiction.

But did you know that many libraries also give you access to things like:
  • Electronic books and audiobooks
  • Academic journals
  • Free classes (maybe on things you're researching, or maybe just yoga to de-stress!)
In addition, often you can "hack" your library by ordering books through your library's website and reserving them for pickup. This can save a TON of time, and can make the difference between borrowing a book and feeling as though you need to buy it for convenience. My neighborhood library was recently renovated and is a gorgeous place to read and browse (they even have a whole floor just for YA!), but I still don't often have much time to spend there. No worries—I order books to pick up, stop in on my way to or from the bus, grab them, and then drop them in the book depository when I'm finished.

As writers and readers, one of the best places we can support are our libraries. So make sure you're getting the most out of yours.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Friday, April 12, 2013

Speed Up Your Keyboard

Unless you write in longhand and somehow have a typist you've hired (in which case, wow!), if you're writing, you're spending a lot of time at your keyboard. And if you're like most keyboardists, keyboarding is one of the major places you can speed up your time.

I'm not talking Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (although really, if you type slowly, a good typing tutor will help you out a lot!) but making a few tweaks to how you use your keyboard. These are Windows based, because that's my OS, but these work on Apples as well (usually substituting the Apple key for Ctrl.) I've read places that using a mouse slows down your computing experience by 30% or more, so the more you can control from your keyboard, the more efficient you'll be.


Thursday, April 11, 2013

Tsjuz Your Blog With Jump Breaks

J is for Jump Breaks, or the things that keep your blog looking neat.

Some of us are, erm, for lack of a better word...well, wordy. And so when we get going on a blog post, it's really easy to post something that takes up ALL THE SPACE on the front page of our blogs. And if you're using your blog as your main author page, presenting a page that scrolls forever and ever is just sort of unsightly, and it can make you appear even wordier than you actually are.

So...insert a break. When you know you're going to go on more than a few hundred words, write a pithy intro to your post (you're doing that anyway, right?) and then click the jump break button. Here's what it looks like on Blogger:






And on Wordpress:




If you have some HTML and CSS skills, you can even customize what the jump break looks like  I created a little scotch-taped "read more" paper scrap to match my blog's template. Using jump breaks keeps your posts tidy, and your readers' browsing experience even tidier. Happy blogging!

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Instant Inspiration with iTunes

One of my most indispensable writing tools is iTunes. 

Now, I don't much care for playlists. I almost never have a playlist for any given novel, and I'm always amazed (and a little intimidated!) by writers who do have a list of songs that inspired them for each part of their books. I do most of my writing to the Bach unaccompanied cello suites or to the background music in Ommwriter (that's O, by the way—more on it later!).

But every now and then, I do have a need to hear a specific song. I'll just get this weird sense that one song would be a great catalyst for the scene or chapter I'm writing. So for that reason, I ask for gift cards to iTunes for small occasions, and let my friends and family know that iTunes cards never go to waste. That way, I keep a balance at all times, and whenever I just have to have a song to write to, I just go and buy it with my balance, utterly guilt-free. 

You can find similar services on Amazon Music. And if you want to be truly cheap frugal, these days a lot of artists are putting professional recordings on YouTube/Vimeo, although you usually have to create a playlist to get the songs you want to loop, and the non-pirated versions (if you're picky like me and try not to listen to pirated music) usually have ads. 


This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Cancel Noise With Headphones

One of my most useful writing tools is my pair of noise-cancelling Headphones. My sister-in-law gave them to me for helping her move, and I admit, I might not have dropped $150-$300 on a set when earbuds seem to suffice.

But let me tell you a story about my headphones. See, last summer, this strange straight-line thunderstorm called a derecho hit Washington, D.C. like a freight train. I'm fortunate to live in an area where power lines are buried, but a lot of people lost power for weeks. Basically, it consisted of hurricane-force winds, rain, hail, thunder and lightning.

I had absolutely no idea it was even going on.

The storm hit on June 29, the day before Camp NaNoWriMo ended, and as usual, I was frantically typing away, trying to get my 50,000 words in.  So I had on my noise-cancelling 'phones, and it wasn't until I stopped to take a break that I looked out my window.

The weather was so crazy that I kid you not, I turned back to my computer to be certain I hadn't missed a tornado warning.

So, take my word for it—these suckers WORK. And they let you write in just about any environment. For me, that's more than worth the price, and when/if mine ever die, I'll be shelling out for another pair right away.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Monday, April 08, 2013

Shelve for Your Purposes on Goodreads

G is for Goodreads, or rather, tweaking Goodreads shelves so that the info you need appears together.

Although I'm a little skeptical about the long-term effects of Amazon purchasing Goodreads, at this point in time, I get a lot of use out of the service, and so, at this time, I'm still recommending it. I've blogged before about how its progress-tracking tools have resulted in a huge increase in my reading this year, and I think it's a great service. And one thing I think is particularly great? The shelves.

Sure, you have the default shelves: reading, currently-reading, to-read. But on top of that, you can add your own. I've seen shelves that serve as metacommentary on the books themselves: "swoony-book-boyfriend" "obnoxious-vapid-female-leads" "drop-everything-and-read-now" and the like. And then there are people who mark things like genre, etc., with their shelves, for instance, "YA," "New Adult," "Paranormal" and the like. But there are a lot of other great uses for Goodreads shelves beyond simply identifying how much you liked the book or what genre it is. 

The great thing about Goodreads shelves is that they cause your books to appear in groups. So it's a great way to keep your data on books in one place. For me, as an author who hopes to get back on the query-go-round later this year, one of the big things I'm concerned with is who is repping what. So as I find out a book is repped by Agent A, I will shelve that book under "Agent A." That way, when I go to query, I can quickly bring up all the books I know that are repped by that particular agent.

Having worked in publishing, I also got used to thinking about books in terms of the imprints that publish them, so you'll also see my goodreads full of shelves like "Ecco" and "Sourcebooks Fire" and "Ember." I can bring up a list of books published by any given publisher, and, at a glance, see which publisher's books I'm reading a lot of.

Some other things I use Goodreads shelves for: identifying advance copies versus published titles, books on my nook versus books I have physical copies of, and I have one shelf (that I really need to go to town on!) called "needs-review."

So think about what information you'd like to have easily at your fingertips, and shelve your books accordingly. It's a great way to keep tabs on whatever it is about your books that is most important to you.

How do I create my own shelves? (Goodreads FAQ)

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!


Saturday, April 06, 2013

Get "Freedom" From Distraction


We all know the internet can be one hell of a timesuck. It's so much easier to view that nineteenth cute cat video than it is to sit down and work on the WIP. I've written before about how to firewall your attention with a lamp timer that's set to turn your internet on and off at set times. But there are also software options as well.

A number of writers swear by using Freedom, a software designed to disable your access to the internet for predetermined intervals. If you want to get back online before your time is up, you'll have to save your WIP, close all your windows, and reboot your computer—enough of a hassle to keep most people on task. It's used by writers like Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, Timothy Ferriss  and Seth Godin. Here's hoping a little of their success rubs off on all of us who use it!

Freedom

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!



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