What We Use to Write

Everyone is going to be bored with asking this question year after year because my answers haven't changed in a very long time. 

Writing Applications:

1. Word for Windows. I started with Word way back in the stone age. It's what we're required to use in my professional life. It's where I am most comfortable. Could I learn something else? Yes. Other authors extol the virtues of Scrivner, for example. But there's significant learning curve. Why spend time on that learning curve when I could be use the time and brain space for story? Not to mention that whenever I see authors compare notes about something like Scrivner, I invariably hear that plotters love it and pantsers hate it. Add into it that in the day job, it's literally my task to learn all the technical things. I don't have to fully learn a thing. I dip my toes in just enough to understand a technology, write about it, and then walk away to go learn about the next thing. I am not all interested in forcing myself to do that super deep dive into a new writing software. Word is simple. I don't have to think about what needs to happen to create a file I can submit to an editor or to format for self publishing. I've learned enough tricks in the application that I can make it do just about anything I need it to do. The only down side is the fact that grammar and spell checker in Words are idiots. They are tweaked for business speak. Not fiction. For that reason, neither can be trusted. I fully admit to being horrified at how many actual words aren't in the spell check dictionary. I wish I'd kept one example for you but I naturally can't think of one at the moment.

4theWords: 4theWords is an online gamification of word counts. It isn't a competition - you aren't competing with anyone else or even with yourself. You fight creatures who have been infected. If you defeat them, you've helped cure them. As you 'battle' creatures by attaining a word count in a set amount of time, you win in-game cash and prizes. This really is a case of the pen being mightier than the sword. There's a narrative story arc through the game that you can follow and a million special events that take place in the game through out the year. It works because there's a vibrant community in the game and with the developers. It's a fun, supportive, no pressure way to practice. To experiment. It's private enough that you can try out anything you'd like with writing and not have to worry about it being seen. If you like what you come up with, you can publish your work to the other writers on the site. Or take your work out into the broader world. I like it just as a means of experimentation and a bit of a sandbox where I can low-stakes mess around with words and bits of story and thought.

OmmWriter: OmmWriter is a lightweight environment meant to eliminate distraction and help silence the critic. The writing screen is tiny and sits within a full screen landscape. OmmWriter blocks all other alerts and notifications that run underneath. You won't hear your email pinging into your inbox, for example. You determine your preferred landscape, your preferred color scheme, and your preferred background sounds. Some are natural, some are musical. You can decide whether you want a key stroke sound or not. If you do, you pick from a variety of sounds. This is purely a drafting tool where the point is going fast without much thought into spelling, grammar, or structure. It's about getting words down and shutting down analysis until you copy and paste the words into something more formal. Like Word. Upside: Very inexpensive. Very zen. Does reduce distraction and helps induce flow. Downside: No formatting at all. When you pull your text over to Word, you will need to format the text into something decent.

Bonus tool
Tidal: Music streaming. I do not live by words alone. Music is vital. Especially whilst living in a house of four adults, three of whom are hard of hearing. I am not being facetious. Everyone in the house but me has or needs hearing aids. It is very loud where I live. A good play list and noise canceling headphones are a necessity.

4 Useful Writing Apps

 This week's topic: The writing software/programs/apps I can't live without.

Weeeeeellll, Imma show you just how old I am. {grabs walker, adjusts tennis balls}

1. MS Word -- once Wordperfect was pried from my cold, collegiate hands and I was forced to learn Word for corporate life, I haven't left it. Despite "improvements" that Microsoft insists I need just to please their stockholders, it's still the most widely used word-processing software app that's readily accepted by editors. Yeah, yeah, I know Google Docs is trying to make fetch happen, but it's not there yet...
• MS Word "Read Aloud" Feature -- before I send a book to be formatted, I have Word read the entire manuscript to me. Yep. It's the final, final, no-really-final editing pass. I learned the hard way that relying on visual-only review exposes me to the great "feature" of the brain that sees what it thinks should be on the page, not what's actually there. Also, Read Aloud helps catch skipped/missing words and excessive word repetition. E.g. Did my OC just "giggle" six times in the last chapter? ACK!
2. Merriam-Webster Online -- "You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means." (Princess Bride) From homophones to synonym searches to that word that's on the tip of my tongue (or should it be the tip of my [finger] tips?), it's MW for me. Why this dictionary over the others? 'Cause my editors use it when they send me corrections. I find collaboration easier when working from the same reference source. 
3. Urban Dictionary -- For us olds, it's sadly necessary for us to verify that what we just heard/read means what the yewts meant for it to mean. Definitions don't always align with Merriam-Webster, since language is a living, evolving thing. I don't tend to be too slang-trendy in my writing, but I like to make sure that certain words/idioms from the last century (I can't believe I just typed that) still mean what they used to mean. *Caution: because this site is open to unvetted public contributions, it contains a lot of cruel, homophobic, racist, misogynistic, etc. definitions. Make sure you have a sea of salt at hand and are wearing your "ugh, humanity" t-shirt when using this site.
4. Grammarly -- I usually run my manuscript through this twice. First, to catch All The Things that MS Word "Editor" misses before I send it to my professional line and copy editors. Second, to catch post-editing errors because, godsdamnitall, it is absolutely possible to correct a mistake while simultaneously creating a new one. {shakes fist at sky}

Word Processor Who?

This week's topic at the SFF Seven is Writing Programs! And software/apps we can't live without.

I hate Word. I really do. I've lost too many documents to that program and wanted to burn my laptop too many times over it. It's the industry standard, so I use it as the last step in my writing process before I send my MS to my editor. But other than that, I avoid it. For a long time, I preferred Google Docs, and I still do. I like the easy and instant collaboration with critique partners, and I've never lost words or entire documents. That said, it's still not my favorite writing software. My fave isn't even meant to be used as a word processor.

It's Vellum. Vellum is actually formatting software. I found myself randomly drafting a novella in it, and my writing process changed forever. Suddenly, I was writing so much faster.

I'm such a visual person, and seeing my structure on the left, what I'm typing in the middle, and the final product on the right has changed the game for me. I tried setting Scrivener up this way, but that didn't work for some reason. I even tried a newer software called Living Writer that's set up similarly, but it had too many beta issues. Nothing has beat Vellum for me for getting words down quickly. I even have a Freewrite Traveler, but it's Vellum that works magic with my brain, and I can't imagine ever writing a book without it. Maybe I like it because I'm a control freak? And I need to see the finished product? I dunno. But it's my go-to, and you'd have to pry it from my cold hands to get me to stop using it.

As for other things... I don't really use much else. Etymonline is a website I frequent to check dates of word origin and usage, but apps aren't my thing. 

What about you? What writerly program can you not live without??

~ Charissa

Collaboration Station

How many of us have group project trauma from school? I know I do. I was ready to come in here, shrug, and say 'of course I don't do collaboration'. Then I got to thinking. Of course I DO collaboration.

Collab Lite:
I have a critique group. I talk with other authors. We just naturally toss ideas around. We consult with one another or with the group when we're stuck on a plot point. I realize this amounts to talking out sticking points in our work. I submit, however, that it is a form of collaboration. None of us is working in an idea vacuum. That author's idea over there sparks three more in me which hopefully spark five more in someone else. It's a positive feedback loop and I'll claim it as a form of collaboration.

Collaboration fer realz:
Okay. The kind of collaboration you really came for today is the kind with coauthor credits. Again, I was ready to come in today, laugh uproariously at the notion that I'd ever consent to do any such thing. And then. And then I realized I had done a coauthored thing.

That aforementioned critique group. Four of the members came up with an idea for a cozy mystery series involving past lives in ancient Rome colliding with present day lives in Seattle. The notion was that each of us in the group came up with a character in the story. In ancient Rome, we'd all been together until a murder got us all charged and executed. In present day Seattle, the group are scattered and have no memory, of course, of that shared past until one of the present day women is suspected of murdering her husband. We all come together to solve that murder while resolving the murder in the past at the same time through a slow reveal series of flashbacks. The construct was that each of us would write a chapter and the others would edit for character voice and such. The grand vision was a 9 book series.

We hit the ground running with a plot map and a plan. We got six or seven chapters into the story. Then everything fell apart. The thing about any group project is that it is only as strong as its weakest link and in this case, our weakest link was a lymphoma diagnosis for one of our members. She's fine. Finally. But the project was mortally wounded and never recovered.

I'm not sad. Y'all, it was HARD. No joke. Everyone comes to the page with different strengths and different ways of executing story. This was never more evident when trying to corral five very different writers into some kind of homogeneity. It pressed every old group project button I have. Having that project slip quietly in the rear view, especially given the reason, was sad, but freeing. Writing to a story that isn't solely yours and where you need to tone match someone else feels (to me) a bit confining. I wanted to go dark with parts of the story because I felt like it called for that. My coauthors vehemently disagreed. So yeah. GROUP PROJECTS. O_o

 

Who would I write with if I could? Andre Norton. That would have been fun. She might have hired assassins to come for me, but I would have enjoyed the shared world and writing as long as I could. As to why - I guess because her stories were the first ones when I was a kid that lit me up and made me want to do exactly what she had done with a set of characters. I suppose I started learning how to construct a tall tale from her books. There have been many, many more worthy teachers along the way, but I've heard you never forget your first. I don't care if this isn't supposed to mean that, quite. It works.

Hiking, unlike writing, is Always a Collaboration

Hiking, unlike writing, is always a collaboration...

If a writer’s work is solitary, can you call it collaborating when there are two or more in the room?

I’ve never written with anyone. I think it would be a fun experience, but it would have to be someone whose style meshed with mine so that it wouldn’t be glaringly obvious there were two voices at work.

A great example of two authors who make magic when they write together is Kit Rocha. Read Mercenary Librarians and you’d never guess that it came from the brains of two people. 

An anthology would be a blast, but I haven’t been part of one. Early on I was invited, but the stories needed a touch of horror. I had an idea I loved, started writing my short story…and suddenly I had a fleshed out idea for a novel with a solid start! But. I was too new, I had no idea how to write anything shorter than a 300 page book, and I regretfully bowed out. 

Since then I’ve written some shorts and have a better grasp of novella story structure. It amazes me how different my writing processes are for various lengths of work, and it also surprised me at how working at both helped improve my skills. 

How about you? Have you written shorts as well as novel length pieces? Do you have a favorite? 

Jeffe's Collaborations - Real and Imagined

 I'm just loving these autumn/Halloween collages of the Czech translation of the Chronicles of Dasnaria books!

This week at the SFF Seven, we're discussing collaborations - if we've done them and what our dream collabs would be. 

I've never (quite) collaborated with another writer on actually composing a story. I added in that "quite" because my friend, Jim Sorenson, and I did start writing a book together. However, even though we wrote several chapters, our mutual agent (Sarah Younger at Nancy Yost Literary Agency) didn't ever love what we came up with. Getting our voices to gel together was a challenge. We've talked about going back to the project, which I'd love to do someday. It's definitely a different way of working though!

The collaborations I do regularly are anthologies! My bestie Grace Draven and I love to put together anthologies, either of stories from just the two of us, or with more writers. Our next project is THE WATERS AND THE WILD, an anthology that will include fae novellas from Grace, Dana Marton, Maria Vale, and myself. It will be out in late April, with a special print edition available for Apollycon attendees, and then available in ebook and regular print form after that. I'm very much looking forward to what everyone comes up with!

If I could collaborate with any writer, living or dead, it would've been Anne McCaffrey. I was too late to meet her and too slow in coming to writing fantasy to be one of the several writers privileged to write in her worlds. I would've LOVED to do that and, in one of the sliding doors versions of my life, I believe it totally happened. 

3 Questions: Collaboration

This Week's Topic: Do I ever collaborate with other authors or do I work alone? In a perfect world, with which writer would I most like to collaborate, living or dead? 

Q: Do, Have, Will I ever collaborate(d) with other authors?
A: Not yet. 

Q: Do I work strictly alone?
A: Ayup, so far. 

Q: With whom would I most like to collaborate?
A: Ya know, there are plenty of authors whose works I love, but I don't know that our creative processes would be compatible. Every author has their own weird, so it's less about end-product styles and more about the stuff that happens before/during/after the finished product. I've been a fan of Poe's works since I was wee, but I don't think my liver nor my sanity could support his process of genius. I'm a slow writer, and that's not a typically desirable trait in a collaborative relationship. Also, I have a low threshold for drama that's not part of the plot. OTOH, yes, I'm a recluse, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to finding the Steven Tyler to my Joe Perry, or the Björn Ulvaeus to my Benny Andersson. I'm in awe of partnerships like Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (aka James Corey of The Expanse) and Illona Gordon and Andrew Gordon (aka Ilona Andrews of Kate Daniels and the Innkeeper Chronicles). 

So, uh, the short answer is dunno, haven't found them yet. 

The Death of the Team Project

Happy Sunday!! This week's topic at the SFF Seven is Do you ever collaborate with other writers or do you work alone? In a perfect world, which writer would you most like to collaborate with, living or dead?

I haven't had the best of luck with writerly collaborations. I'm a pretty determined individual, and when someone says LET'S DO THIS THING, I'm in 200% and ready to DO THE THING NOW. Not everyone is like that, and that's fine. I'm fully aware that my mode of LET'S GET SHIT DONE isn't for everyone. But, I'm the person who--when assigned to a team project in school/college--ended up doing the entire project because no one else showed up with their part of the work on time. I'm the nice team member who says "It's okay! I got this!" It's a horrible response from some part of my childhood, I'm sure, but I'm that person. For people like me, team projects are a heap of work, and that's what co-writing has felt like.

Brainstorming with other authors is fun, but writing a novel or series with someone hasn't proven to work for me. I've tried twice and only ended up with half-written stories I can't use because they aren't solely mine, even if most of the words are mine. I can't say that I'd ever try a co-writing project again for that reason. When it's just me, I know the level of effort I can expect. I know that the only person who can let me down is me. That isn't to say that co-writing projects don't work. They totally can. I have authorly friends who've done it. It just isn't my jam, but perhaps I haven't met the right person to collaborate with.

For the second part of this week's topic, if I could sit down and talk with someone who has made writing their career and collaborate with them?? It's actually two people, and they write screenplays, not books. Christopher and Johnathan Nolan. Years ago, I watched The Prestige, a film by these two brilliant brothers, and it changed my way of thinking when it comes to planning novels. They've written and directed some mind-bending movies, so I would LOVE to see how that process unfolds.

What about you? Do you work better in duos/groups or alone?

~ Charissa