NaNoWriMo 2012 - Day 2

[ladyseishou]

Day 2 - 28 days remaining


The maker of a sentence launches out into the
infinite and builds a road into Chaos and old Night.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson






Today's word count is 3,334! And because it's Friday, let's talk about backing up those words... It's not too early to think about it, Nano Writer! So what's your method of choice? Flash drive? Cloud drive? E-mail? Make it a habit now and you'll never have to worry about losing your work!

Questions? Comments? Excerpts to share? It's all good! So keep writing!

Comments

[iosonochesono]

Do you know how to do a word or letter scramble? I can't figure out how and I really wouldn't want to submit the whole actual thing even if they don't save it XD

[ladyseishou]

If you have some sort of search and replace command for your word processor, you're good to go. Just search for wildcards or type in the alphabet or some subset (I find that replacing all the vowels with "x" makes for a pretty scrambled looking document) and replace said letters with "x" (or your letter of choice).

Of course please use a COPY of your work and give it a very obvious name like "My Novel - SCRAMBLED" so you never accidentally scramble your good copy.

Some word processors will do this for you :-) I know that Scrivener will do it during the compile.

[iosonochesono]

Thanks! I tried it on an unsaved copy of one of the chapters. I'd be unlikely to lose a whole copy because I break everything up into chapters, flashbacks, and then also the original story... I have a few ways of keeping the data backed up. (Plus, I have several copies of the folder on both my computer, flash drive, my other computer.)

It took a while but it worked - the example has nothing but Zs now hahaha.

[ladyseishou]

Zzzz! ;-)

[eien_herrison]

The easiest way is to do a find and replace. I know how to do it in MS Word (as that's what I've been using up until now) -- if you go to the advance options and make sure "use wildcards" is checked, you can simply put in [a-z] for find and whichever letter you want to replace it (I use q). Do the same for [A-Z] (which will replace all capital letters) and a couple of clicks later you'll have a letter scrambled document.

I'm pretty sure most other programs would have a similar function, it's just a matter of finding it (wildcard replacement is probably a good search term to start with).

[iosonochesono]

ANIMORPHS ICON.

I had to do it manually A-Y but it worked, thanks for the help.

[eien_herrison]

I specifically chose that one because of your icon + username :) I've still got all the books I bought on my bookshelf.

Yeah, I know MS Word has a function to do it automatically but I had no idea if any other programs did. Still, it works :)

[iosonochesono]

Yeah, I find my icon tends to bring out past or current Ani fans. Sadly, I don't have all the books anymore. I gave them away to AmeriCorps Sonoma Serves. I'm trying to collect them and am having a hard time with the last few because the popular ones from that time get really expensive to buy in decent condition.

I use LibreOffice, so, as long as something works (which it did!) I actually have MS Office since my computer runs both Mac and MS operating systems... But I haven't needed to use Microsoft OS (where MS Office is) since I passed my stats class. Someday when I have the time and energy I'll work on removing the boot camp partitioning on my hard drive.

(Also, your Animorphs icon: The art is from The Andalite Chronicles and it's an Andalite's iris, not a hawk. It's the Animorphs meeting Elfangor in the construction site in theory :3

/end geek moment)

[eien_herrison]

It certainly does -- I've used that icon over at LJ a few times and gotten some nice responses/replies about it. I dislike throwing away books (my husband laughs when I cringe and shudder when someone cracks the spine of a book, folds down pages, or otherwise) so I have a lack of real space.

Regarding my icon: thanks! I've been wondering where the art originally came from; I found it years ago and it had no credit, note, or anything, so I just randomly guessed (I have the Andalite Chronicles, but not any of the pretty art I've seen some people have).