I found this inventive:
Category: software
2 Days of Scary Savings. Offer expires Nov 1. I love Dragon Naturally Speaking. This is a great deal. Wish I could afford the newer version right now, but the old version is working quite well.
Dar49 Daily. Is out!  If you haven’t seen the cute YouTubes of the cub and the pup you need to see it. Smiling and laughing are the best medicine for all of us! 😀
Look what I found:
Though there are real books you can get at Amazon and the like, they are all very expensive, at least they are for my pocketbook. This one is free and in PDF format. I downloaded to my tablet so I can read as I work. So Now I can give a better review of Scrivener. I think I like it. In many ways it reminds me of how FreeMind (I’ll tell you about this one later) a mind mapping software. It lets you click or drag and drop. It calls the main (chapter) folder a parent folder and text (scene) the child. Those texts that are on the same level are siblings, etc. As with any program it takes playing with it a bit to understand. Scrivener has a free trial for 30 days. After that it is $40. If you were to get the above PDF you would have nice little novel/manuscript writer. Sometimes Scrivener has deals with NaNoWriMo so go to Scrivener to sign up for newsletters or contact the people there. They are very nice. I got my software a while ago but never could get started until I got that PDF to walk me through the first steps. Now I think I will like it.
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Sometimes when I am working out a story I like to draw out a mind-map. It gives me ideas on how thing will interrelate. Â Simon Hayes of yWriter suggested this one:
FreeMind is helpful for more than just writing novels, it can help you figure out other problems in your life that seem to run in circles. If you read about Mind-Mapping and how it works with pencil and paper You will see the advantages of working this map on the laptop or tablet.
I have actually used the manual method to write term papers. It helped my visual mind to organize my thoughts. And just like the one above you can color code and illustrate to your heart’s content!. By the way, those for the tablet are best bought rather than trying the free versions. It wouldn’t work as well on a small screen. As it is, I would like to have the wall-sized screens of the movies for things like this.
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Oh, when I was writing about programs yesterday I forgot to include RoughDraft:
I have a friend who swears by this software. For me it is no different than Word or OpenOffice. It is free or on donations,
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My husband recently turned me on to Grammar Check Anywhere
I am still learning to use it (when I remember to use it) It is a quick way to check on an email or scene or what have you.
Well, that is enough for tonight. Look how much I get done on other things when I have NaNo to work on! 😀
                               
With NaNoWriMo lurking on the calendar I have been busy getting ready. I want to have a working outline. I have plenty of ideas for my characters but not enough yet to feel I can get 50k words. So I have been playing with programs to go through what I have already written during Camp NaNo. In the process I have deleted over a thousand words bring the total there from nearly 21k to 19k. Either way I need to come up with enough story to bake a 70k+.
yWriter is my go-to program to write in. It is writer friendly. Simon Hayes has quite a great program and so far between yesterday and today it seems to be a winner. What it has that other programs do not is the read to me feature so I can hear how the scene sounds. I pick up many mistakes by listening. I can highlight in multiple colors to quickly cue me to things that need research, uncomfortable sentence structure to work with later, mark ideas that need to be elaborated, etc.I can grow the population of characters in one book and into a series should I choose, same with locations and items. The biggest feature of yWriter is the ability to send wordage directly to NaNoWriMo’s wordcounter without a chance anyone reading your novel. It is so simple and I have done it so many times. Nothing beats the feeling when NaNo’s site tells you you have won!! What it doesn’t have are questionnaires to help build character and personality descriptions.
     
WriteItNow has those questionnaires. So I build my people and places in this program. My husband uses this program extensively. He tried to help me get past the beginner’s stage on this one. He doesn’t seem to need the color coding that I do and for listening to his scenes he uses TextAloud. He picked that up quite a few years ago. Visually, WriteItNow is more exciting. You can click on the name of a person or location or ‘references’ to link items or webpages for your research. Â I will keep using this program to help develop characters and see the links to make sure no thread of plot gets tangled.
What confuses the life out of me is Scrivener. There are so many authors who swear by this but I can’t seem to get my story started on this one. One feature I want to use it for is the index cards on corkboard. It seems like that would help a person get better organized. But if I could have thrown it across the room today, I would have. Some people even use this one for writing their blogs. Since my IT guy (my hubby) doesn’t have it, he can’t help me figure it out. There is a lot of reading involved at the start and it is all on white screen with small font so it is hard for me to stay with it for long enough to get started. Maybe there is a Scrivener for Dummies book out there. One could only hope.
All of these programs can get your manuscript from outline to draft and to finished product to submit or send to Kindle or other readers.
What are the rest of you using for your writing?
Dar49 Daily. Is out! This one was so good I went into heavy research with a couple of the topic. Hope you enjoy it, too!
5 Reasons I Switched to Scrivener for All My Writing | Michael Hyatt. I just purchased my Scrivner with the discount Michael Hyatt offers on his page.
I just discovered that there is a blogging software on my computer called Windows Live. I hope it works. I get lost on the WordPress site. So, we’ll see how this turns out.
By the way, I am suffering from an ear infection so I haven’t been on here much the last few days. I felt up to hitting a few ‘LIKEs’ on FaceBook and maybe enough energy to write a sentence or two but then I would be worn out and blurry-eyed. So please be patient while I am a patient and not very patient.
Darswords 
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