Written Out in 2011
Before 2012 hits me like a freight train I’m taking a moment to look back upon 2011 with pride and a smile. I guess you can say that 2011 is the year I “outed” myself as a writer. In years past I’ve always kept my writing private and only mentioned it to a few close friends. The main reason for my mild secrecy is the content of my stories.
I’ve never been one to hold back or police my thoughts or opinions. I say what I think and if people don’t like it, then tough shit. So I’m that way in my writing too.
But most people I know don’t really know me and all my quirks. They like to think that I’m normal, which I’m not and never claimed to be. If they were to read my stories they might get a different opinion of me and start to judge me.
Don’t get me wrong, I would rather have the people closest to me, get to know the real me. But so many are stuck behind unrealistic expectations and can’t accept anything outside the normal. Some would even think that I must be broken and need to be fixed. So in order to avoid all of that, I’ve kept my writing in my drawer.
But is that fair or honest?
Why should I have to hide who and what I am just because it would make others uncomfortable? I came to the conclusion recently that I should be true to myself, and let the rest be damned if they can’t handle it. That is why I launched this new website and blog. It’s my attempt to let everyone know me, gradually.
I’m not hiding under a bushel anymore. I’m letting my light shine for all to see. If you don’t like the brightness of my light then avert your eyes.
–KRR
Prepping for the Holidays
As crazy as November was with late night writing frenzies, I’m taking it slow in December. One of the nice NaNoWriMo prizes was 50% off the Scrivener software (from Literature and Latte). It normally sells for $40, so the 50% discount made it much more affordable for this starving writer. Also I am fortune that this software, previously available only for the MAC, was just released for Windows, which means I can use it. Double good news!!
I already went thru the tutorial, though I did try to plow thru it on my own at first, being the tech-geek that I am. The tutorial was VERY helpful and it explained a lot of the features of the program. Granted I probably forgot most of them after using it for 10 minutes, but the tutorial and users manual are always there for me to refer to when I need to.
Write now I am transferring my story into the Scrivener program before I continue writing. I am about 60% thru the transfer and then I still have @ 20% of the story to finish writing. Using this program will help me to move around scenes and chapters easily. After only a few weeks using Scrivener I can tell you that I’ll never go back to MS Word.
With the holidays around the corner and the workload at my job picking up, I don’t anticipate being able to do much writing this month. I do expect to finish transferring my story into Scrivener and planning out the remaining chapters a little more before the end of the year.
I hope to make 2012 the year of the finished novel!
–KRR
Writing the write way!
Is there a right way and a wrong way to write? Most people have their own style or preference. Nowadays most writers use computers and word processing programs. But even they have come a long way. Having the right tools can help your story writing process, as I learned recently…
When I started writing my NaNoWriMo story this past November, I began with MS Word. I wrote a paragraph thinking out the beginning, middle and end of my story. Then I fleshed out each sentence and created a general outline with important plot points. And then I added to the outline, subsections and sub-subsections detailing where I wanted the story to go.
Of course I always kept in mind that my characters tended to hijack the plot early on so I wasn’t married to this preliminary outline. It was more like the dashed white lines on the highway. They keep you in your lane so you can get to your destination safely but they don’t prevent you from changing lanes if you wanted to.
By the time my outline was completely detailed and ready for the meat adding part (ie: dialog, narratives and actual complete sentences etc) I had a multipage 1-2k document. Unfortunately this is the part where MS Word started to piss me off big time!! As my document grew the auto-formatting gremlins would come out of the wood work and start tormenting me. Since I was still essentially in an outline form, Word would try to indent and add numbers or bullets to my entries. If I highlighted a line over here it thought I wanted to do the same elsewhere. No! Did I tell you to highlight that section? No, I didn’t. Bad MS Word, bad!
And if I tried to use the Outline View to control how much of this big bulky document I could see at one time, it would crap out on me and turn every section into the same level and thereby defeating its own purpose. It was more than this ADD-enhanced story teller could handle. Aye aye aye!!!!!!
Then the clouds parted, light streamed down from the heavens and a chorus sang in harmony “Scrivener“. Yeup, I was saved. I found the way. The write way to write. More on my Scrivener experience on a later post.
–KRR
