I have given up using Word for writing books. I may have given up on it for writing articles too. I have decided to move over to Scrivener instead.Professional writer
National story-telling week
The only thing wrong with Spark London is that it is confined to London, which is only to be expected of course! However, the good news for people who like the idea of story-telling as a way to improve their writing (see 4 ways that Spark London is good for writers) is that there are story-telling clubs and events all over Britain.Is it possible to write better if you write faster?
I’ve been prompted to ask this question because I recently picked up, in a second-hand bookshop, a book called “No plot? No problem!”. The author is Chris Baty, who started the "Write a novel in a month” competition, otherwise known as “Nanowrimo”.
I haven’t read very much of it yet, but from what I have read I’m impressed.
Bash first, craft later
There is a “law”:
Ninety-nine Rule of Project Schedules
The first ninety percent of the task takes ninety percent of the time, the last ten percent takes the other ninety percent.
I never really understood this in the context of “projects” as normally understood. But in the context of a writing project or assignment, it makes perfect sense.
Writing a book as a blog
It is almost a year since I suggested 7 reasons writers should blog. I’ve recently discovered another one.The key criterion of a writer’s success
How do you know if you are, objectively speaking, a success as a writer?
Although I may be accused of taking too simplistic an approach to this question, I really do think that it comes down to just one thing.
Well, in practice, of course, there are many potential indications of success. For example, people telling you they like what you write. People asking when your next book is coming out. That sort of thing.
However, nice as such accolades are, they don’t pay the rent, and talk is, or can be, cheap.
7 Key Characteristics of Successful Writers
What do you need to be a successful writer? Here are my thoughts on the seven main attributes you need to have in order to make it as a writer – or at least, to give yourself a fighting chance! I believe these hold true for any genre, and any form (ie book or article).7 Attributes of Enjoyable Writing
What are the characteristics of writing that is enjoyable to read? Is enjoyment purely a subjective thing, or are there some objective criteria? I don’t know! But here is my thinking aloud on the matter.Technology-inspired words are definitely buzzworthy!
New words are always interesting, I think, and not just the ones that have been inspired by technology. But before I say any more about that, I feel the need to get something off my chest. Don’t worry, I won’t make this a long post: the last thing I want is people tweeting me to say TL;DR (too long; didn’t read).Do writers need to be able to spell?
According to newspaper reports, the educational academic Sugatra Mitra, lessons in spelling 'have no place in 21st century schools'. His view is that the technology will sort it out for you.
I suppose he is thinking of things like predictive text, because he says:
A Writer’s Reference Toolkit: Quotations
Books of quotations are important, I think, for those odd occasions you need to have one. And that phrase “odd occasions” is the rub: do you actually need to buy a reference book for occasional use when there is so much available on the web these days?A Writer’s Reference Toolkit: Style Guides
There are two broad kinds of style guide. There is the generic type, containing advice on such things as whether to use “different from” or “different than”. And there is the specific type, ie specific to a particular publication. For example, should “internet” be spelled with a lower case “i”, or as “Internet”?. The specific style guide will tell you.
You need both types, of course, but unfortunately it’s not quite as simple as your needing only two books or two documents.
A Writer’s Reference Toolkit: Thesauruses
Before anyone tells me that the plural of “thesaurus” should “thesauri” rather than “thesauruses”, which is what I’d have thought myself, apparently it can be either, according to the Oxford dictionary.
I find a thesaurus to be indispensable on those occasions when the most appropriate word is on the tip of my tongue,
A Writer’s Reference Toolkit: Dictionaries
I don't care how good a writer you are, at some point you are going to need dictionary. Whether you need to check the meaning of a word, or the sort of context in which it’s used, or simply to double-check how it is spelt, you will want to use a dictionary. The question is, which one?A writer’s Reference toolkit: What?
If you are going to put together a Reference Toolkit, having been convinced by my article A writer’s Reference toolkit: Why?, what should be included?A writer’s Reference toolkit: Why?
A couple of years ago I wrote an article called Some of my reference books, which described some of the reference books I use, and why. Two years on, I thought it would be interesting to revisit this subject, but in a little more depth.Combining different versions of a document
Suppose you’re in this position: you have created a document. You have sent it to someone else for their comments or to edit it. They have now sent it back to you, but in the meantime you have made some changes to your original. How are you going to sort out this mess?!
If you and your colleague have been using Microsoft Word, then you don’t have a problem. All you need to do is use the Combine Documents feature.
Writing advice from 1937
On one of my visits to second-hand bookshops I picked up a copy of The Writer, from January 1937. There are some things which haven’t changed, but the technology definitely has!A writer’s word processor
I’ve been playing around with a word processor called Jarte. It isn’t specifically intended for use by writers as such (as far as I know), but it does have some features which many writers will find useful.From Paper to Computer
It’s confession time again. When I said that I like to work on paper, for instance when drafting an outline for an article, I omitted to mention one important fact. Apart from when I jot things down in a notebook I carry around in my inside jacket pocket, all the notes I write the old-fashioned way are converted into a digital form as soon as possible afterwards.
There are two main reasons for this, both of them pragmatic.