Listen, since NaNoWriMo, my life is nothing but lists. I am editing using Word’s Editor and now Grammarly. The list in the editor is punctuation, spelling, concise, readability, grammar, etc. I don’t remember the exact list, but I spent the day yesterday and today going through Pandamapocalypse tick by tick. I finished Word’s editor, finally reaching zero mistakes. And now I have started Grammarly’s checklist. I can’t believe that having no mistakes on Word shows as 1,773 mistakes to remedy in Grammarly. As I get that done tomorrow, I will be copying and pasting from the Word version into my Scrivener, yWriter, and WriteItNow. Once that is done, I will reread the whole thing listening to the text-to-speech to catch the weird or uncomfortable turn of phrase that the editors don’t catch. And I still have a couple chapters to write, then send those chapters through the editorial lists. Gah!
I’ll bet most of those doing this exercise are speaking of Clause and naughty or nice. But this year was punishment enough! My happiness will be checking my list of books out of the library of novels in the raw and getting them into the real library someday. Goals take lists.
On day 1, the politicians and NaNo writers say, I will… here it is day 2. Yeah, I did all the things, LOL!
That was a bit more than one line. But you get the gist. That was my answer to One-liner Wednesday. Thank you Linda G. Hill for this fun, easy prompt.
Just a bit about my day, I spent the day finding more pictures to represent characters I hadn’t found images for before. I find it helps me as I write to get a better handle on them. Mostly I am trying to make sure all my programs have all I’ve done so far. I promised my blogging friend jenanita01 I would share my experience with Scrivener as I go. This copying and pasting from the other programs, Word, WriteItNow, and yWriter have given me the first experiences. If you like ctrl/a, ctrl/c, ctrl/v, like I do there, is a new step when you land in Scrivener. I kept pasting to Scrivener and the result would be one long URL (blue underlining of the copied work). I finally figured out that if I did ctrl/shift/v it pasted perfectly.
I probably need to back up a bit. After two days of reading the instructions of writing in Scrivener, I was lost. I found the tutorial on their website that said you can start with a template of the kind of document you want. I chose the 2 part novel. It will probably be 3 but for now, this will do.
One of the first neat tricks I learned is ctrl/n that is for a new text (scene). One was already there but I didn’t know beyond there what to do. Right-click and the new text and a lot of stuff I still don’t know are right there. Oh, and ctrl/shift/n is a new folder (chapter). Figured out character templates, too. I should have copied the template and used it over and over. Instead, I made one character then duplicated the template, and just filled in the new character’s info. It works!
According to WriteItNow, I have 79,268 words. My guess is I lost fewer words in that program and managed the right saving system. So I say I won more than my 50K. But with all the maths and programs losing full chapters to full novels my word count on the NaNoWriMo site is still shy of 2K. The story continues and suddenly there is a new character that feels like another novel coming up. My brain is not ready for that! Yet I love this new person and what she knows about the Havenverse at large, especially the history and future for all true Gene-Poppers. I only have two in all my novels. But this one will bring us a population unknown until now. I think the last part of the words I need will be an introduction to all the questions my favorite character, Dusty has had most of her life.
The fun math says that tomorrow I will have over 80K. I don’t think I’ve written a book this long, ever. And though it is a jumbled mess I like all the ideas that are streaming in there. Yes, editing is going to be a bear, but it is a bear I want to meet!
I have options. I can accept the word count on WriteItNow that says of my CampNaNo/NaNoWriMo combination novel that says that I reached by writing the two words ‘The End’ 75,000. Or I can accept that my adding and subtracting with all the computer glitches, including finding yWriter an empty project as of this morning. Grr! My husband and I found my saved RTFs, and I copied and pasted the missing parts to WriteItNow, then added a few scenes today, making an additional 2,000 to NaNos word count app, bringing that total to 46,235. That one should be the goal for the 28th of 46,676. So, in that case, I am 441 words short. In that case, I need about 2,000 a day until the 30th. I think I will opt to try and find a better place to put that ending. There are lots of loose threads to tie-up. So I will just keep writing until I am satisfied. Then comes editing. Ugh! I doubt I can write 2K a day for the next two days, but I will try for the record.
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “opt.” Use it as a word or find a word with “opt” in it and base your post on that. Have fun!
There one line! Today was difficult in that I no longer have any main characters to develop. So it was all story. And then the electricity went off. Thank goodness it didn’t stay off. It’s going to cold tonight. 29 degrees Fahrenheit. Not the coldest but without heaters would be uncomfortable. Apparently, there was a blown transformer. I’m grateful the people get on things like that right away. Isn’t it funny how the family gathers and gets a little antsy as we are all out of our element without our electronics to work on?
Okay word count: 30,065 words. Barely made it over the goal for today of 30,006.
I’m still trying to get my Scrivener version up and running so I am not just reliant on yWriter or WriteItNow. My eyes have a harder time with Scrivener. I have had to use a text-to-speech program to read the instructions to me. And it has taken me a couple days to get through the QuickStart. Imagine how long it would have taken to get through the whole thing? But it does have features that look like it would help me be more organized. And I think I can change the backgrounds and fonts to make it easier on my eyes. By the way, there are videos on the Scrivener website that bring it down to what I wanted: How do I get started. Boom! There is was. Tutorials.
Despite everything, I have managed 27,549. What I had to rewrite I wasn’t nearly as happy with. But today’s writing was fun. So I am happy. And quick math of the goal equals 26,672. So I am still a little ahead.
Meanwhile, I found my Scrivener’s license, so I will copy and paste the whole story to both WriteItNow and Scrivener so that there will be a lot of copies of the story. Tonight was writers group and one of the writers there, who has been published, said that she printed out her work as she went. I don’t know if I can afford to print out the draft. But I don’t want to lose bits as computers haven’t been the most reliable for me of late. How do you all do that?
Yeah, that is an actual picture of me around 10 when I wake up. NaNo, this time, is turning me into a night owl. I spend my day developing characters and plot ideas and write a little. But real writing seems to be happening after midnight. I was up again past 3AM.
So, drumroll. My new total wordcount is 4,058 Once I start typing the story comes alive. Trouble is new characters that show up that need to flesh out. I even need a town name that is in the middle of the woods that no one knew about that is safe from the virus. I’ll do without it as long as I can put up with [town without a name] replacing a real name. Meanwhile, it adds three more words to the count that would have been just one word.
Isn’t it funny how fictional characters can come in and steal your life? They are just names until I imagine them more. Sometimes, heck, most of the time, I pick the name from WriteItNow, then I pull out my favorite book: Building Believable Characters by Marc McCutcheon and look up the characteristics I see for that person. Soon they feel real to me.
Well, time to get busy writing more story. So far, this one is fun!
At midnight I got into the Night of Writing Dangerously. That moment when Halloween is over, All Saints Day began and NaNoWriMo rings the bell to start. Well, I don’t know about the bell. It must be in my head. There are tons of writing groups that get together and type for a couple hours. I have done that a couple times. But usually, I just pretend I am with a group and get it going on my own. I will watch this when I finish here as I didn’t watch it last night. I just wanted to share the excitement and fun.
My theory is that if I can start large I will be slightly ahead when the mid-month slumps or people-time interruptions occur. But I managed 2,329 words last night. And like I said I will be doing more when blogging is completed.
As I have said I am continuing the novel I started way back in March (I think-2020 is hard to keep track of it after months of editing and rearranging bits and pieces, taking out all journaling, complaints, and prompts that didn’t work for the story I ended up–yesterday, at 25,172. So my goal is to add 50,000 to that this month. I know I said this in part last night but I felt I needed to waste some time spelling things out better.
So for the months between the writing of the beginning and now, I have been using three different programs, each featuring something unique to help the writing, editing process. yWriter is my favorite. I can outline on the fly, keep my characters, locations, and items up-to-date, etc. The biggest downfall, for me, has been that it wants to save locally. I learned long ago that computers break down and then where will your documents be? I tried saving to dongles, but that had its own problems. Finally, I started to export the project and save it in my cloud drive. But once you have a new machine you have to reset-up how you had it before the breakdown. That happened in September. My laptop nosedived and my husband loaned me his to try and keep up my writing. Good thing I had that export to rebuild from. Then my husband turned me on to yWriter7. Now we can save everything to Dropbox. I was new to it so Hubby had to teach me how that works. And it does! And I can open the project on my Fire or tablet or even my phone if I get the inspiration. Here’s a YouTube of how it works:
The second favorite that I use a lot at the beginning of a story and then just try to copy and paste to keep it updated is WriteItNow It is great for setting up characters. You can do a random search of names or add ones you have already created. Then you can find personality traits, set up who is related to whom and how. I like the colors I can make the background and fonts. Anyway, here is a YouTube on this amazing program:
The last step for me is opening one of the latest exports from yWriter in good ole Microsoft Word, where I open Grammarly and do the editing. I don’t think I need an URL or YouTube on Word. But as I was writing this I saw a bunch of tutorials that I may want to stroll through and learn other ways to use what I have.
By the way, I have Scrivener but somehow in moving computers I can’t seem to figure out how to get it up and running again. I did find it had its uses but I often found it confusing. To each their own, I suppose.
Okay, I’ve procrastinated writing long enough. Hope you found something here that is useful for you.
I spent today editing my CampNaNo story, Haven in 3D. I don’t do it like the picture, though I think I might near the end. My process is: Open yWriter project. Open Word with the RTF of that project. Then I open Grammarly Pro. Though I don’t think I am down to the words but the actual overall story, why not fix what I can as I read?
After I have cleaned up a scene in Word, I copy and paste it back into the yWriter scene and move on to the next scene. I think I added 26 words. That was a surprise because at first, I was killing words left and right. I spent from around noon to just an hour ago. I covered one chapter and two scenes from the next chapter. I needed to do this one to have all the information I needed for the one I just finished. It is fun to get back to the spring novel. It has all my favorite Haven characters. I can’t wait to get the series up for everyone to enjoy. It could just be me. I hope not. But if so I have had a fun time living part-time in another universe!
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “dough/d’oh.” Use one, use both, use ’em any way you like. Enjoy!
I choose D’oh! I would use a picture of drooling Homer Simpson here but figure that has to be a copyright infringement.
I was not only surprised at the sudden appearance of Saturday but of the sudden appearance of April and that means:
No. Not NaNoWriMo. But CampNaNo. (Couldn’t find an icon for that). And that sudden realization put me in a rush to get ready. After a day of reinstalling WriteItNow.
And setting up for choosing characters and a place to figure out plots, etc.
And because I can’t seem to put my own pictures in I made sure to install the latest version of yWriter, where I usually do my writing.
After watching OA I was inspired that they could actually keep writing on that show through infinity as there are that many possible dimensions. Then I remembered that postcard my friend sent:
I felt there was a story there. But I didn’t feel like writing historical fiction of the Little House on the Prairie has already been done.
Then suddenly the picture and OA crashed in my head and I think I have a synopsis. As I wrote in the CampNaNo info:
Haven the sentient planet has learned to travel to other worlds, times, and dimensions while maintaining Her own world. What does She look like? What could possibly happen to this unearthly body?
Haven hasn’t talked to me lately but this looks like fun and a lot of potential problems to work out.
OH but then I realized that this is:
So I challenge myself to somehow do both. Maybe what I blog for A2Z will show up in the story or vice versa.
Do you think I will ever get these novels out there and make some dough?
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
How does a free blog site work when everything is tied to dollars? How do you create content without using proprietary themes when it seems even the colors and fonts are tied to upgrades for usage? Is it even possible? I hope to find out.
Darswords 
You must be logged in to post a comment.