(Image credit: Photos Public Domain) With National Novel Writing Month (aka Nanowrimo) wrapped up (heck no I didn’t participate, though it feels like I did- 29,000 new words added to my manuscript in the past couple of weeks!), it seems an apt occasion to explore what’s good and bad about the word count goal. The Word Count Goal Is Great On its face, it just makes sense. It’s the easiest possible way to quantify writing and measure progress. Most people…
(Image credit: Gratisography.com) Have you ever surprised yourself by half-assing a homework assignment, and getting an A on it? Or by posting something to social media you thought was dumb, but it really took off? Sometimes, the amount of sweat you put into something is inversely proportional to how well it comes out, and how well people receive it. Weird, but true. The makers of Goat Simulator only spent 10 weeks on development, yet have sold 1.1 million copies. Meanwhile,…
(Image credit: imagebase.net) November 2014 is a big month for me. My spouse and I have been together for 10 years- and it’s now 6 months since I jumped ship to write full time! I can’t believe how fast it’s gone. Am I glad I did it? 100%! Do I feel any yearn to go back to my old full-time schedule? Not at the moment. Though I do miss certain coworkers of mine, I’ve enjoyed a lot less anxiety since…
Help! There’s something I really need to write, but ugh! I just don’t want to! Have you ever felt this way? Careful- your spider-sense is tingling! Sit back for a moment and think about why. Your reluctance may just be pure procrastination, especially if it’s a homework or job assignment. To get past it, you’ll need to flex your discipline muscle, plunk your butt in front of the computer with minimal distractions, and after a few crappy sentences, you’ll be…
Or, ask both. (Image credit: Bill Main) Now that it’s November, I’m aware many of you are involved in an obscure, little-talked-about, mass binge-writing event. If you number among the participants, best of luck to you! Let me offer some help with the planning stages, so you don’t throw down 15,000 words and then realize you don’t know where the hell you’re going with it. Oh, you’re already at that point? No worries! I’ve got some rewrites of my own…
SIGIL is a popular tool for generating EPUB files. I’m still getting the hang of it. “Hey, I know CSS and HTML. I’ll make my own ebooks! How hard could it be?” Famous last words… :) Anyone who creates ebooks from scratch- without using a tool that promises to handle it with the push of a button, and doesn’t let you see what atrocities it’s actually committing- knows it can be a, um, trying process. Usually a multi-day slog that…
Let’s see if this little guy is up for some vacuuming… If you have a WordPress blog, or frequent the comments section of any high-traffic site, chances are you know all about comment spam. This blog doesn’t get much traffic, but boy, spammers love it. At one point, I was getting upwards of 30 spam comments daily- comments I’d clear from my WordPress dashboard and from my email several times a day. What a waste of time! But I embraced…
Run! Run like zombies are chasing you! Hey, there’s an app for that… Most of my mornings start the same way: alarm blaring, cat pawing at my hair. I crawl out of bed (eventually), have breakfast and coffee, and post a new “Today I learned” factoid to my Google+ page. Then, unless I’m sick enough to be bedridden, I sit down in my office and write until lunch, with occasional breaks to stretch and read items of interest. What I…
If normal people get one lightbulb over their heads, I get three. Then my brain overloads. My last full seizure occurred back in 2012. I woke up strapped to a gurney and wearing an oxygen mask. A pair of EMTs wheeled me out of a place that kind of looked like work. Oh. Did I have a seizure at work? I wondered. Where do I work? What day is this? All the usual confusion flooded in along with nausea and…
I miss college. In the five years I’ve been writing this novel, I’ve done everything you’re not supposed to do. I let things sit for weeks or months, until I “felt” like writing. I wrote slow, under the misguided assumption that the words had to come out perfect the first time. I edited, edited, edited well before I ever had a first draft done. Don’t feel much like writing today… I’ll polish that last chapter I wrote! Only to have…