31 Days...

[ladyseishou]

There are 31 Days until the start of NaNoWriMo!

Are you ready to write, Nano Writer?

(A) Yes, of course! I've been writing character
spreadsheets since February...
(B) No, no way..... already? How many days?
(C) ........NaNo-what?..... Wrimo-who?.........

If you've selected "B" or "C" (Both? Really?) Nano Writer, fear not and read on for a glimpse into our FAST START for NANO (no trademark pending) that we'll be running all October, a series of lean and mean exercises to get you in writing shape. It all starts ( here )

And for all you "A" people (you know who you are): carry on! We'll meet you at the starter's gate on November 1! Better yet, check out the FAST START posts beginning October 4 and offer a word or two of advice and encouragement to your fellow writers as we get ready to write this year's NaNo novel... in 31 days!

Signal boost: FocusWriter

[charamei]

Lifehacker has an article on a program called FocusWriter today. I highly recommend taking a peek - it's customisable, slick, and pared down without losing basic functionality like spellcheck. In fact it even gains some - it has tabs! You can set writing goals, by time and wordcount (default is 1000). Oh, and it works on all OSes, which is always good news for Linux-using weirdoes like myself.

The downside is that the only rich text format it supports is RTF and it doesn't have any commenting/reviewing tools - but hey, we're all starting new files in November anyway, and personally, it's probably for the best that I don't get to put comments in the margins until editing time.


The same site also has a Novel Progress graph maker, which looks interesting as a productivity prodder.

This sentence would be five words long if it were eight words shorter.

[cheyinka]

I was linked to Rob MacDougall's blog today, where he quotes Gary Provost (or, well, quotes Roy Peter Clark quoting Gary Provost) about the flow of a paragraph:

( This sentence has five words. )