Recently in Resources Category

I thought I understood what was going on.

I mean, it seemed fairly reasonable. I'm writing this new story, and I'm using a lot of footnotes -- a LOT of footnotes -- and I've never used them before, and for all I know that cross-referencing and so forth might require a lot of behind-the-scenes data-tracking ¹ to handle -- the fact that my 35+ page document was already one and a half megabytes in size... around 1750k... well, it surprised me, I'll admit, but I assumed it was mostly my fault for using all those footnotes.

But something happened yesterday, Microsoft Word. I was using a different laptop than normal, one on which I had tried to put my copy of Office 7. But it didn't work -- you decided that I'd hit my limit on the number of home computers on which I could install the software THAT I HAVE PURCHASED, so not only is the new Office not working, but the install wiped out the old Office 2000 install that HAD been on there.

So, out of desperation, I grabbed a copy of Open Office 3 and installed it. It was quick (the entire software suite is the same size as just the Word 7 installation), it was easy, and it was free, but even more importantly it actually let me install it on as many computers as I liked. I'll admit that I was nervous that if I opened my super-hyper-complicated-footnotey story in Open Office, that I'd lose formatting or the footnotes would all become endnotes or the world would drop to a Blue Screen, or something.

But none of that happened.

I shut off Open Office's inexplicable word-completion option, set hot keys for the two main special functions I needed ("Insert Footnote Here" and "Word Count"), toggled off two settings in the screen appearance, and off I went.

When I was done, I saved it and emailed myself a copy.

During the save, Open Office warned me that I might lose some OpenOffice formatting options if I saved to the Microsoft Word format -- and that the size of the file itself might be affected. I sighed and confirmed the save, knowing that if the venerable Microsoft Word couldn't squeeze my story down under a meg, the open-source, free Open Office was probably going to hand me a file that was barely small enough to be attached to an email.

The save completed, I attached the file to my email, and checked the file size.

103k.

Less than 1/12th of the size it had been before.

I reopened the file in Open Office, in a bit of a panic. All my precious words were there. ¹

I opened it on another machine using Microsoft Word... and the formatting was perfect.

In short, nothing was wrong; my story's file was just much, much much smaller.

I'm sorry to tell you this way, Microsoft Word, but we need to break up.

• You're using too many of my resources.
• Your new Version 7 outfit is distracting. And not in a good way.
• You won't go all the places I need you to go.
• Finally... and I hate sounding so superficial, but you're just... you're getting too big. And you make all my friends fat, too.

Please don't call me; it will be hard enough seeing you every day at work.

Best regards,

Doyce

¹ - By the way: "behind-the-scenes" is three words, and "data-tracking" is two. According to you, those five words only count as two; it seems like a small thing, but the way I write, believe me when I say it adds up. I like working with someone who gives me credit for what I do; you're just not there for me when I hit Ctrl-Shift-G.

Just in case a little shame and sarcasm helps you get your butt back in front of the keyboard...

Over at House of the D, De muses about the nature of conflicts and scenes in a story.

Any scene with NO CONFLICT = DOOOOOOM.

Two characters fall happily in love? One of them has a fatal disease. A mother and daughter quit arguing? The mother has called the men in white coats to come pick up the daughter and wants to keep her peaceful until the girl's sedated. The villain invites the hero in for tea? Strichnine, my friend. Strichnine.

I honestly think she may have just summarized the entire writer's bible for the Battlestar Galactica team.

Once faced with a rule like this, what is any writer going to do buy turn 'round and look at their own work with the shiny new microscope.

Result: In Hidden Things, I have two conflict-free scenes in the book; one with Gerschon, and one with Calli's mom.

Am I going to change them? No, not at this point; the scenes work as they are written -- they are pause-points in the narrative where both the reader and the protagonist get to take a short breather. (Also, any added wrinkles in the story at either of those points would require a number of additional scenes to address and resolve, and the story already feels 'done' to me.)

However.

There is a tiny bit of rumbling from certain quarters that it wouldn't really hurt to add a bit more.

"Tight narrative," say these voices. "Great pacing, but... I wish we knew a bit more about the secondary characters... perhaps about 75 more pages would help flesh that out?"

Now, to my mind, if you finish a book that's designed to have a sequel, and the reader wants more... well, that's exactly the response you want.

But if it turns out that those extra pages will sell an otherwise iffy publisher on the book, I'd for damn sure rather get those pages by adding a few more conflicts to the story, instead of filling in the cracks with extra globs of unnecessary exposition-mortar.

This weekend marked Kaylee's third birthday. While she's enjoyed the parties of past years, this was clearly the first time she really understood the central concept.

"This is a special day for me, and everyone is here and eating cake and singing because of me. Also, I get to wear a crown all day. Bonus."

Another upgrade (considerably less significant in the grand scheme of things, but still nice) was that I got a new computer system (see picture, which is entirely accurate). This new Dell XPS comes in as a replacement for my five and a half year old workhorse (getting quite wheezy and easily overheated in its later years), which has served me very well (easily the best run of any of my previous machines).

I'll be completely honest -- this new comp is primarily a gaming rig -- it's got a lovely (and huge) video card, obscene amounts of storage space and memory, a quad processor setup, and runs all my current games and entertainment with a kind of flawless perfection that makes me waste fifteen minutes taking screenshots of the intricate stitching on my avatar's leather pauldrons.

So, clearly: gaming. Which is fine, since I'd rather do my writing on a laptop most of the time anyway, and I now have a fair number of options in the house for doing just that.

One other thing that makes writing on my laptop(s) preferable to writing on my PC: Office 2007. Specifically, my new desktop has Office 2007, my laptops don't, and I think Word 2007 should win some kind of not-award for discouraging the actual act of writing in what is (still) rumored to be a word-processing program. I'd honestly rather write a full novel in Notepad just to avoid the intensely intrusive tool bars at the top of the window - massive Publishing and Layout buttons that seem to scream 'WHAT YOUR NEW STORY REALLY NEEDS ARE SOME EYE CATCHING FONTS, DONCHA THINK?"

No. No, I really don't. For writing, I need a program that:

• Spellchecks with some degree of intelligence.
  
• Allows you to boldface and italicize type.
  
• Allows you to center the occasional line.
  
• Saves the file into a format that pretty much anyone on the planet can read.
  

And that's about it. Everything beyond that is probably a distraction.

For my money, Rough Draft (a free, 1.6 megabyte program with both American and British English dictionaries installed) is all I really need, For that matter, there are a couple good reasons for me to at least consider writing Little Things my next story using Google Docs.

How about you? What's your preferred sandbox?

Jesse van Dijk did a wonderful design project, coming up with a visual presentation of a vertical, sea-side community, built inside a dormant volcano. The result are exactly as cool as you'd expect from the premise.

I'd desperately like to write stories in that city.

Or maybe you just want to have a little fun. Check out the Random Conundrum Generator at Abulafia.

Some of them are interesting...

Once, your moral depravity nearly killed you - will helping those in need finish the job?

And some are ... well, kind of silly.

Now its just a question of which will pull you down - deep-seated prejudice or a natural disaster.

To which I say: "It's a random generator: interesting + silly is what it does."

Characters for an Epic Tale.

My name is Jonathan Coulton and I’m a musician, a singer-songwriter and an internet superstar. This site is chock full of music, news and me-related merchandise - if you’re not that familiar with who I am and what I do you can use the links above to get started.

First: Johnathan is a great musician, and his songs are fantastic. You should be listening to him.

Second: this is a really smart series of pages for introducing new fans as well as suggesting where to go next. Steal this idea, internet people.

First I talk about money management advice from John Scalzi, and now time management?

Well, it's a crazy time for me right now. When spring is in the air, and a wedding (and marriage) are on the horizon, a young(er) man's thoughts turn to...

Google Calendar.

Thanks to a tip from the terribly useful Parent Hacks, I've been poking around the Zen Habits website, which has really been resonating with me, mostly due to the timing of my discovering it -- right now, I NEED some good advice or organizing multiple, unrelated tasks.

How unrelated? Consider the bullet list of 'to-do' items on my 'as they occur to me' notepad:

• Bendy straws.
• Send hard copy of Hidden Things to [agent]
• Copy [list of DVDs] to external HDD (DRM can Die in a Fire, in my humble opinion)
• Get replacement tuxedo elements
• Get tux info for groomsmen
• Short story for Wicked Words
• Car shopping
• SPACE WHALES! BUBBLE NETS! SINGING!
• Research preschools
• For Galactic: [...] (plot thing that people don't need to see)
• [TV Pilot idea I dreamt last night]
• Editing Galactic RPG for Matt

And that's just what I've written down in the last two days. Most of those have been crossed off in the last hour or so, as I have transferred them from the easy-to-carry notepad to Google Calendar and generous time slots where they have the best chance of getting done (early in the day, before other stuff can pile up) -- all of which is part of the "Zen to Done, Mini-version" that's proposed by the Zen-blog author, an edited version of which I have scribbled down in the front of that same notepad.

1. Collect - tasks, ideas, projects, information. Categorize as you collect.
2. Process - take that collected list (and/or your email or snailmail inbox) and:
   1. Trash it.
   2. Delegate it.
   3. Do it (if it's quickly done).
   4. File it (such as writing ideas or tax information).
   5. Add it to the calendar/to-dos (see "plan")
3. Plan - Set up Big Jobs for the week: either Important Stuff or an intentially-clumped series of little things.
4. Do - Do the big things early in the day. Don't multitask. Focus.

I recommend checking out the site if it's something that seems remotely useful; it's helped me get a tremendous amount of important things done in the last week or so since I've started working through things with this method, and (far more importantly) leaves me the time I want for things like:

• Date Night!
• Swing dancing!
• IMAX with Kaylee!

Which, to-do lists aside, are far-and-away the most Important Things.

John Scalzi offers up some tips on handling money when you're working as a freelance writer.

Why am I offering this entirely unsolicited advice about money to new writers? Because it very often appears to me that regardless of how smart and clever and interesting and fun my fellow writers are on every other imaginable subject, when it comes to money — and specifically their own money — writers have as much sense as chimps on crack. It’s not just writers — all creative people seem to have the “incredibly stupid with money” gene set for maximum expression — but since most of creative people I know are writers, they’re the nexus of money stupidity I have the most experience with. It makes me sad and also embarrasses the crap out of me; people as smart as writers are ought to know better.

I'm lucky (*knocks on wood*) that in addition to fiction writing (which brings with it what I tend to think of as not-entirely-ironic Fictional Income), I have a 'regular' paying job that requires, at it's core, good writing as a key talent (note: Scalzi's rule #2, and my own realization, long ago, of rule #1). Thus, I continue to hone my use of those little word-thingies, and get paid like a regular joe (complete with all the behind the scenes tax-paying that I don't have to deal with).

Still, it might be nice to one day work only on projects that interest me. If or when that day arrives, I hope I remember where I put this link.

For that matter, a number of his points are useful for anyone who -- you know -- uses money.

It makes absolutely no sense to save or invest money if the return rate for that investment is less than the annual percentage rate of your credit card debt. Net, you’ll lose money (especially if you’re investing from scratch). You need to buy down that credit card debt as quickly as you sensibly can. It is your number one debt priority. Once you’ve paid down your debt you can begin saving and investing. But pay that debt first.