Apps for focus, drafting, and file prep

The skinny on apps, from someone who doesn't use many:

For Wrangling Your Brain into Writer Mode

Years ago, my critique partner Sloane Calder recommended this iPhone app called Brainwave, and I downloaded it immediately. Have never looked back. It's better than playlists for getting my brain right into the writing groove fast. I draft best to Euphoria/Medium Rain and switch that to Concentrate/Medium Rain for editing. YMMV

For Drafting Your Manuscript

Okay, so most writers start off with Word. I'm not saying that's a bad choice, but do read all their info. A friend recently discovered that -- surprise! -- Microsoft no longer autosaves unless you are using their cloud storage gizmo for your saves. So if you're using Dropbox or your hard drive or literally any other thing, I recommend manually saving and OFTEN. This friend lost a lot of work, and we are all whoa sad about it because her stories are ah-mazing and the world is less sparkly because Microsoft is a greedy beast.

(Confession: I have a long and very unfriendly relationship with Microsoft. Next time we hang out,  ask me how Billy G and Co lost more than a year's worth of client emails when they migrated from Hotmail to Outlook and never acknowledged their mistake, apologized, or compensated me for all that money I wasted on a subscriber account. Yes, I am extremely bitter. We hates them, precious.)

Anyhoo... I now use Google Docs for drafting and back stuff up on Dropbox. I love Google Docs especially for co-writing, which I'm currently do it. If you're co-writing and you aren't using Google Docs, you should absolutely try it.

For Preparing Your Book for Publication

In terms of file preparation, I recently bought Vellum for my Mac (as it is only available for Mac), and y'all, it is the cat's meow. I mean, if meow meant "better than super stinky sardines" and also you were a cat. In other words, if you're in a position where you have to make your own book files (i.e., self-publishing), this is the premiere software for the task. And if you write a lot, it will save you its cost pretty fast because you'll no longer have to contract file prep, which can be pricey. Recommend.

3 Useful Author Apps Beyond Word

What apps in addition to Word & Exel do I use to support my career?

1. Book Brush
The guys behind the image design app are constantly innovating new features that are actually helpful. From expanding their background image offerings to animations to book trailers to book covers to one-click background removal. The app was built specifically for authors who aren't graphic designers, which gives them a leg-up on other design sites. If you're doing your own marketing creative, I highly recommend this very easy-to-use app. They offer free features, pay-as-go credits, and two levels of annual subscriptions.
       Note: Canva.com is also a good image design site with free, pay-as-you-go, and subscription levels. However, their audience is a general audience, thus lack book-specific features.

2. Book Funnel
This is a distribution site that allows you to put digital books in readers' hands. They handle the hosting and tech support. Billing is done through your preferred service (e.g. Paypal Integration) if you want to get into Direct Sales. They offer the ability to bundle, coupon codes, eARCs, etc. Have a newsletter and want to give new subscribers a free story? Use this service. They take the headache out of delivering your finished product to readers. They offer free features and subscription-level features.

3. Dropbox
Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files. Keep a copy on a thumb drive. Keep a copy on a cloud. Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files. Back up your files.

Bwahahahahahaha...!

This week's subject is to discuss any new tools that we use for writing.

YEah. None. I do not change. I am legitimately opposed to altering my routines.

Do what works for you. That's what I do.

THE FIERY CROWN today at GRRM's Beastly Books!

Check out this super cool video of THE FIERY CROWN from George R.R. Martin's Beastly Books here in Santa Fe!

This was supposed to be a live event, but it's virtual now. Instead of a live interview, Melinda Snodgrass, of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame, interviewed me via Zoom and we had a great conversation. You can watch it this afternoon at 4pm Mountain Time here. You can also support this wonderful local indie bookstore by ordering a signed copy of THE FIERY CROWN from them - plus get it well before the May 26 release date! (Or you can preorder via the links below.)

Afterward, I'll be doing a Facebook Live *and* Instagram Live Q&A. Look for me on Facebook or Instagram, according to your preference. I'll be on once the Beastly Book event ends, around 5pm Mountain Time.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Updated writing tools/apps - what's new and different in your writing world." My answer? Umm... nothing? I'm pretty happy with my current system, which I've been using for years now. I write in Word, track everything on my own spreadsheets I've meticulously retooled in Excel, and I save everything in Dropbox. It works well for me and I see no reason to add more "tools."

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Writing Is Like Polishing an Uncut Gem

Detail from  rug woven by Author's late Father-in-law

Our topic today is whether we write scenes piece by piece and knit them together, or if we have ever had to knit-in scenes?

I don’t knit, I don’t weave, I don’t garden (because the other metaphor for writing books is often gardening) and although I loved Marcella Burnard’s dinosaur bones analogy in her Friday post, I don’t do that either.

I sit down at the keyboard and I write. I start at the very beginning and I go straight through the story until the end. When I begin working on a book, I usually know the overall situation, the two main characters and several key scenes. The rest comes to me as I write and as I’ve said many times, I’m superstitious about my process and I never examine it too closely. The Muse is as the Muse does and the words flow…I’ve learned to trust the creative process I was lucky enough to be born with and that as I write on into the story over the days, the plot developments, other characters and insights I need will present themselves. And they always do. It’s been working that way since I was seven years old so why mess with success?

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve had one scene I was so super excited about that I wrote it out of sequence and fit it back into the narrative. Or else then proceeded to write the events leading up to that now semi-completed scene.

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I’ve had a few occasions in the developmental editing phase where the editor made a really good point about adding something else to the book, or a comment from them set off a train of thought in my head which caused me to write a chunk of new scene or scenes. I think the biggest case of this was in Warrior of the Nile, where the editor really wanted a specific thing to occur between Khenet the warrior of the title and Nephthys, the Egyptian goddess. I wasn’t quite on board with all of the suggestions but I did write an entirely new scene, which then rippled through the rest of the book and probably did make it stronger. (This was my second and last book written under a contract.)

After I finish the first draft of a book, I immediately start over on page one and go through in my own editing process, adding depth, more action, more feelings, more everything. I’ll be doing that today in fact on my next scifi romance novel, having finished the initial draft at 64,330 words last night. I always say the first draft is meant to be ugly and clunky (speaking for myself). It’s “get the words on the page” time and then in the edits I smooth everything out. The process takes me a few days and then I set the book aside for two or three days to cool off, after which I read it again, make a few more tweaks and send it to the editor.

The story's in there, somewhere! From the Author's collection.

So if we must have a metaphor, and since I love jewelry and shiny sparkly things, maybe for me the process is more like being a jeweler, who takes a raw clunky gemstone surrounded by rocky material and shapes it and polishes it to be a thing of beauty. I assure you, I have never explained myself in those terms before when it comes to writing and probably never will again!

Luckily, there is no one perfect process for writing a book. An author has to do what works for them and not worry about anyone else. I totally get that for some authors it’s very useful for them to consider what other people do, and/or to adopt or adapt a recommended structure or technique. More power to them! For me, sitting down and writing is what works.

And taking long drives on the SoCal freeways, with music blasting also helps whenever I have a plot issue to ponder. This probably developed because at one point I had a three hour commute home from the day job, which was boring and stressful, so I’d think about my stories as I went. Usually at an infuriating 0 to 25 mph too, given the traffic! Well, at least I had my music…

Not the Author, not her purple car either but sure looks like fun!
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Piecing it All Together

Some books want to be linear. You get a nice, neat formula that takes you from point A to point B, you may find you have to detour at point C, but whatever. You mostly get to The End without a hitch.

The has never happened to me. My books are archeological digs with millions of bone shards that I have to put together a single piece at a time only to find out that psych! That piece doesn't really go here, it goes way over there.

Here's what I can say about the process, though.

I always have a general idea of the thing I'm digging up. I know the ending. I may not know how I'm going to get there or how I'm going to reconcile beginning to end, but the ending of the book is my starting point. I know where my characters must end up. Then I look for a beginning based on the characters' flaws and/or weaknesses. Some books can be written beginning to end. They are rare for me. Far more often, I write scenes from all over the place. I'm firmly of the opinion that if I don't know what happens next in a story, I move on to where ever I DO know what happens. This is wasteful. I do write scenes I end up not being able to use. One some books, it means overwriting the book to the point that I have two of the thing. It's useful in that I gain insight into what the core conflict of the book is. Eventually. The day comes, however, when I have to take my collection of disparate and oddly jointed scenes, pin them together into a skeleton, sculpt some flesh and features and see what looks back at me.

That's the easy part. Getting the original bones out of the ground, that's hard. Once I have a collection of scenes, I can pin those together with transitional scenes and a the glue of a few sentences about POV character drives. The initial revision pass polishes up the structure, and adds the flesh. It's the developmental editor who really gets me to put the features on the critter. We glue in the glass eyeballs so they stare into you no matter where you go. The copy editor does the airbrushing to make it look like it could move at any second.

Yeah. I far prefer the archeology metaphor to knitting or weaving. Cause, dinosaurs! and I guess I'm still twelve.

Why I avoid knitting...scenes that is.

I’m a Type A, technically-minded person…that’s why I was a laboratorian! And working in lab you’re trained to follow point A to point Z in the correct order. 

And knitting is like that. You follow a pattern, you piece it together in a certain way. So I should be good at knitting? Except…we’re not talking about the yarn kind of knitting today. We’re talking about knitting scenes of a book together.

So it’s really not surprising that I write from beginning to end; no detours, no skipping ahead, no passing go to collect $200 dollars. It’s how my brain is wired. And knowing how your own brain works is key.

Some writers I know need the candy bar method Vivien mentioned yesterday. They have that one perfect scene complete in their head and once they put it to paper, the creative floodgates open and they can knit their story together. Does that way of writing work for you?

If so, huzzah! Go forth and write! If it doesn’t…maybe your brain’s more analytical and the following might help. 

Each book I’ve written, and the manuscripts I’ve outlined and started, all began with that one perfect scene for me. Usually the scene comes from one of my dreams, like it’s been handed to me in a mini-movie format. But I never try to write it as a chapter right away. Because…that would be out of order.

Instead, I take my perfect scene, or you take your instigating idea, and sketch out the scene in outline format so I don’t forget the details.

*Note: I always know exactly where my scene fits in my story: beginning, end, climactic moment etc. If you don’t know this yet, take some time to brainstorm and ask yourself: what happens after, what needs to happen before, what changes for your MC (main character) in this scene?

Now that you know exactly where your perfect scene/idea sits in the timeline, it’s synopsis time! 

*Second Note: Lots of writers do not use a detailed outline/synopsis to write. YMMV This step is included here because my technical brain follows a well-laid plan easiest.

When writing my synopsis I build from or around my originating scene and the rest of the world and plot details flow from there. I like to go for super detailed here…remember, lab girl here? The more detail and direction I put down in this stage the better off I am in the drafting stage and THE LESS I HAVE TO TRY KNIT IN LATER!

All that because I suck at knitting in scenes. Why? I say it’s because when I plot out my books I do a lot of detail on the frontside and when I’ve needed to weave in new scenes that change things in the timeline…it gets messy. 

Sort of like Ullr’s rope bone that started out all tightly woven together (pictured at top of post). The rope was smooth and strong, but once my pup started tugging here and there it began to unravel in spots. That's what I feel like happens to my books when I mess with them and try to knit in scenes. 

So I do my best to not have to, or at least not have to knit in major scenes that shift the trajectory of the story. That’s like…like, your chemistry analyzer going down before you even get your day’s samples loaded! 

I’ll keep attempting to avoid that nightmare. How ‘bout you? Do you avoid knitting or are you a master weaver?

Confessions of a failed knitter

Little story: In middle school I drew a lot. Like, a lot. Most of my sketches were of women -- fairies and princesses and crazy 18th century gowns and hairdos -- and they were pretty okay for a kid. As I was drawing, I'd devise whole stories for these characters, and eventually I decided it was time for me to draw not just the character but the background too. I had it all in my mind, the way the castle and grounds should look. I even checked out some books at the library to see pictures of the sort of thing I had in my mind.

When I sat down with my pencil and sketchbook, I was ready to go. And blew it. Big time. I started over, and even a third time, with similar results. I just couldn't ever make the background match my character. It always looked too cartoony or too... something. Wrong.

That's how I am with "knitting in" scenes in stories. Yeah, I can write a scene out of order and make an attempt to write toward it, but almost every time I have to significantly change it because the scene I wrote out of order never quite matches the story as it feels by the time we get to that scene.

Years ago I took a writing class with Holly Lisle where she suggested writing the "candy bar" scenes to get started on a project. You know, those couple of scenes you just really, really can't wait to write and are compelled to sketch out long before the story gets to that point, just to "see" them on paper? After roughing them out, per her process, you'd put those scenes in order, fill in the blanks to get from one candy bar scene to the next, and *insert-miracle* poof, you'd have a complete story. Gotta say I love this process. It sounds so amazing, and I am super envious of folks who can make it work.

But I haven't been able to replicate it. I have a whole folder of candy bar scenes of books that went somewhere else. I still love those scenes, and they were great inspiration for developing and getting started with stories, but they never made it into the final books and will never be seen by anyone but me.

So, yeah. I can't knit, neither yarn nor story. But I admire those of you who can.