Nanotechnology (Or: what are you using to write?)

I'm a little bit disorganized, when it comes to my writing. I tend to write in multiple places, in multiple  devices, even multiple formats... it's not unusual to find multiple versions of the same stories in random folders on my computer!

I'm very fond of handwriting; I have at least one novel almost completely handwritten. But in reality, I have four major devices on which I write.

1. My main computer, my iMac.  On this computer, I usually use Scrivener.
2. My windows Laptop. I adore Liquid Story Binder on this computer. It's a lot like Scrivener, but has more features. A bit of a steep learning curve, but very powerful when you learn how to use it. I also use Scrivener on this one, synced with my iMac via Dropbox.
3. My Android Tablet.  I haven't really found The App on this one. I tend to use Evernote, since it syncs with my iMac, and it has basic formatting tools. It lacks word count, though, and I want something a bit more NaNoWriMo friendly, y'know? 
4. Good old fashioned pen and paper. I absolutely adore fancy journals. To the point if I get a too-nice one, I have a hard time finding the "right" story to go in it! I've found this is the best way to get distraction-free writing time in. It's slower, but the end result is usually better, and there's no NaNoWriMo forums to drag me away. 

This year I'm going to try writing my novel during write-ins on my tablet. In years past, I've lugged my increasingly enormous dinosaure of a laptop (it wasn't a dinosaur five years ago, but well, you know) to write ins for years, and now... I've gotten used to my tablet, and even composing blog posts on it! So I'm going to try and use it for actual competitive sprints. I may even take my mac's wireless keyboard to see if that'll work.

I have apps for outlining, storyboarding, notekeeping. I have looseleaf notebooks for random writing (And I'm always finding them lying around the house.)

Technology is a big part of our writing process... ever since the early days of whacking on a typewriter (oh, how I miss the feel, sound, and smell of my ancient, trusty typewriter), it's been part of the writer's mythos. As technology evolves, so does how we use it.

So what do you use to write? If you do NaNoWriMo (and if you don't, why not? Start with us!) does your process change? Do you do something differently than normal? Or is it business as usual? How has your technology changed as time has moved on?

Tracking spreadsheet for #WIP500

Because I'm writing offline, I'm finding it difficult to keep up with my daily totals. I'm writing them down, sorta, in my notebook, but I've been bad about it. I'm marking which day is which, but I don't want to re-count each time.

So I made a simple spreadsheet on Google Docs. See, I love spreadsheets... I'm not GOOD at them, but I love them. Eventually, I hope to have progress charts, reports, all kinds of things to show off how I did month-to-month and such, but for now, it's just the basics. I have it tracking your best day, how many days you've entered a count for, average words per day, totals, and the percentage of the total you've got so far.

I also have it flagging days you wrote under 500 with red, and over 500 with green.

Here's the clean copy so you can download it for your own use if you'd like to. Feel free to redistribute, edit, do whatever to your own copy. :)

My personal progress (which is terribly inaccurate for the first 6 days, because I kinda guessed based on G+ posts and what my totals are on Cara's site) can be found here.

I plan to continue adding to it as I figure out how to make Docs display the data in a useful way. I like charts.

Day 7: Even more behind, but a NEW COMPUTER

Well, I didn't catch up today like I'd planned. But I have a good excuse; I know own a new computer. NOt only a new computer, but a whole new operating system!

That's right, I've purchased a new iMac. And it is wonderful on a scale I can't quite describe. It's taking a lot of getting used to, though, so it's delayed my writing. I've installed scrivener, although I plan to run a virtual machine so I can continue with liquid story binder, scrivener's giving a free trial, so I'll see which I like better.

I've done so much running around today between setting up the new computer, church, and doing laundry that I've run out of hours in the day. But now I'm feeling motivated, so I want to write, write, write!

Only problem is, I'm not sure where to go. I've got my girls in a hotel room, where Elisande will get a little more acclimated with the human world, but after that? Just how DO you go from the Atlantic to the Capitol Building?

I'm inclined to have her fortuitously discover a congressman in the park. But that would be a bit too easy. I dunno. I need to do something.

Liquid Story Binder: Going on sale November 1!

My favorite Novel writing software, Liquid Story Binder, is going on sale on November 1st for NaNoWriMo! If you've been around long, you know I love this software. It's unbelievably powerful, and includes so many features that it's dizzying... the best thing is, there's no one way to use it. You can use as much, or as little, as you like! I highly recommend this software. I've used it for the past two years running, and love it so much that even though I have a legitimate free copy given through giveawayoftheday a couple years ago, I'm planning on purchasing a full license this month through this sale. I love the program *that much* - this is not my recommendation as a NaNoWriMo staffer, but as a writer who has searched for a program that does what I want it.

I haven't learned to use all of it, but it's shareware, so you can use it free for 30 non-consecutive days, with ALL features intact, before you have to purchase a license to keep it working. The developer of the software really *listens* to his users, through his discussion group, and makes changes based on the feedback he receives, and is single-handedly the most responsive tech guy I've ever seen.

Excellent customer service, unique, matchless product... and a discount. What's not to love?

Reasons I love Firefox

I sat down and thought, "I wonder if there's an add-on that will let me open multiple links at once without having to hit the CTRL button each time."

So I looked. And lo and behold... there was. 20 seconds, and I'm drawing boxes around massive numbers of links in the nano forums and opening them in new tabs. WITHOUT having to click each individually.

That is awesome. you think it up...someone probably has, and made an add-on for it for Firefox. That's the power of open-source. Stable, powerful, and flexible. I refuse to use Microsoft products if I have any choice. Heck, if I didn't have the programs I do for Microsoft OSes only, I'd switch to Linux completely, too.

That's what I love about Firefox... it's SO much more than just a web browser. In fact... I'm posting this blog entry from within the browser itself, using ScribeFire.