A Writer's Gush
Writing is one of the most gratifying things in my life. Writing is also hell in many ways. Over the years, I have found the fleecing of aspiring writers to be one of my biggest gripes. Buy this book, read this manual, take these classes, use this gadget or program and you, too, will be the next big author on the best-seller lists. Its disgusts me. So this month, with NaNoWriMo beginning shortly and the cool winter months for the northern hemisphere looming, I thought I'd gush about the free, excellent tools that any writer can use.
First, words. I love them. I love writing them. I love reading them. I love learning about them and I love to misspell them. They can be powerful, subtle, sweet, endearing or just plain rude. Any way that a word presents itself is all right with me, because I love them so. Something about words on a page, a screen or even in the air creates an energy that I find myself addicted to. One of my favorite things to do with words is write one hundred of them daily. Sound odd? Let me explain. I participate in "100 Words."
That last paragraph was precisely one hundred words. There is a reason I wrote it that way. Last spring I found the neatest website, 100 Words. It's a cyberspace place where anyone can participate simply by signing up and writing one hundred words every day, for one month. You can write your one hundred daily words at home, save them and then upload them at the end of the month, or you can log in daily and upload that day's word count. On the first day of each month, a new 100 Words Batch begins, and in order for your monthly batch to be published, you must have uploaded one hundred words for each day of the month. No more, no less. It's that simple but it isn't always easy.
I signed up to be a 100 Words participant in March and began on April 1st, 2006. That month I did write one hundred words each day. What a challenge, and what an awkward thing at first. The first day it took nearly two hours before I actually wrote a single word. Why? Well, truthfully, after the coolness of the idea wore off I was left with one question. What did I write about? It was browsing through the previous batches by other participants that gave me the answer. I could write about anything I wanted--they were my 100 Words.
Although you will find only two batches published online under my user name, Cylithria, I have kept up with my daily one hundred words. Even when my current duties did not permit me access to a computer, let alone the internet, I didn't stop writing. Because I could not always get those word batches to the website by the cut-off date, they were not published, but that doesn't really matter to me. It has been those one hundred words that pushed me to write, even when it was the last thing I wanted to do. And as any writer can tell you, it is imperative to write something every day in order to keep in good "writing shape."
Another online tool I like is StoryRight.com. An online software application, Storyright is a friend to any fiction writer. It offers a place to begin organizing your thoughts, plot, notes, summaries, scenes, chapters, and, most of all, characters. Using a simple, user-friendly interface, Storyright gives you a dashboard-type program that allows you to add numerous stories and then dissect them down from there.
When I write a story or even when I read one, I focus solely on characters. If the characters aren't real enough, no amount of words will make the story come alive for me. At Storyright, the character dossiers and the myriad questions you can answer on your character's behalf create the broadest character development tool I've seen. Any time I get stuck in a writing situation where I am unsure about what my character might do, I head over to Storyright, log in, go to that character's dossier, and re-read the entries I made. If I am still stuck after than, I move on to the in-depth questionnaires they offer.
With both the story/plot features and the character features, Storyright allows the user to add hyperlinks to note. This may not sound like a big deal, but if you do a lot of research and preparation online, having a place to collect useful links can be helpful. The blessing of having them in your Storyright account is that you do not clog up your personal bookmarks in your favorite web browser. That alone thrills me to no end.
Of course, such a useful tool is great for all the notes, bookmarks, documents and other such things that go into building a novel, but let's not forget the basics. We all need a good word processing program, and I have two suggestions. One is an online program and the other you download and run off your own computer.
The online program is Writely.com, owned and operated by Google. I log in using my Google account and I am free to upload documents, create new ones, and--my favorite part--invite collaborators to view and edit my documents. Many a chapter of mine has been placed in my Writely account where my editor Marg can access it. Even though I can't reach her daily, I can put my newest work on Writely and during her working hours Marg logs in and edits the death out of it. She even highlights her edits in red, simulating the traditional "red pen of death" she used to edit my work with. How can I not love such a program?
Of course being able to work online is not always an option for me during my current deployment. Whenever I can, I do make use of Writely, but when I don't have internet access, I write in my laptop's word processing program. On my computer I have two such programs. One is a well-known, expensive office suite offering a word program, and the other is an open source, free program, OpenOffice.org.
OpenOffice offers the best free, fully functional office suite I have found. With an online community constantly adding to the source code, helping new users, and finding bug fixes, this program is without a doubt one of the best I have ever seen.
So, even though writing can be hell, every once in a while we stumble onto little things that make it that much easier for us. I hope some of what I've shared here will do that for you. And if you are a writer, why not think about writing a piece for Mosaic Minds? We are always looking for contributors, so be it poetry, prose, fact or fiction, if you write it, why not submit it? Who knows maybe you will be the next one "Gushing."