Category: Publishing

Full screen text editing seems to be all the rage for NaNoWriMo writers.

In preparation for NaNoWriMo, as well as connected to my recent explorations of emacs and general Terminal goodness, I’ve done some investigating of what options are available for creating a full screen writing environment.

The author reviews the freeware options, then moves on to newer solutions:

So much for the free options. The rest of the candidates are newer writing programs such as MacJournal, CopyWrite, Jer’s Novel Writer, and Ulysses. These are $29.95, $29.99, free (until version 1.x), and ~$120 respectively. Their full-screen presentations vary but are relatively equivalent. The real question is how much you wish to pay. Or if you do.

He doesn't mention my current favorite though, Scrivener.

Read full article: Full Screen Text Editing

Wouldn’t it be great if you could somehow automatically take a snapshot of your Scrivener novel's content and automate daily or weekly back-ups from your Mac to another location? Using Automator, it’s actually really easy.

Preparation

The following example assumes you have Panic's Transmit ftp software, which integrates well with Automator, to do backups to an FTP server. You can actually use Automator to backup files anywhere you want though -- another directory, your iDisk, you name it.

Open Automator

Launch Automator (find it in your Applications folder), scroll down the left column (Library) to find and select Transmit, grab the “Synchronize Files” action from the middle column (Actions) and drag it over to the workflow area on the right. Drag in other automator actions as appropriate. Following are some screenshots (click on the thumbnail to enlarge) to show you how I set up my backup workflow.

Here are the workflow steps you will need by the time you are done.

Add a 'Get Specified Finder Items' step. Here select your working Scrivener file. You can backup other files at this step as well.

Feed these files into a 'Create Archive' step. This will archive your files into a .zip folder.

You will want to have a separate copy of the backup each time you save. This gives you a version control system where you can always find versions of the file from days or weeks ago should you ever delete something and then not discover it till some time later! Add a 'Rename Finder Items' step and configure it to add the date to the filename.

Add another 'Rename Finder Items' step and configure it to add the time to the filename (this allows us to have multiple backups in one day).

Add the Transmit option to 'Upload Files' and configure it to the FTP server of your choice (or use Stronghold, cf. ...). Here you could instead copy the files to another disk attached to your Mac if you prefer.

Run a test to see if things work. You hit the play button near the top right corner of the Automator window, watch Transmit open up, connect to your FTP server, change to the correct directory, change the local path to the correct directory, then start uploading the Scrivener file. Once it’s done, it disconnects and closes Transmit. Perfect!

Running Backup On Demand
Save this Automater script to your Desktop (or wherever you like) choosing the “Application” file format, saving the file as BackupScrivener.app This creates a clickable application on your desktop that will launch the back-up whenever you like. You can also add this script as a plugin to your scripts menu so that you can backup right from your Mac's main menu.

Scheduling

Let’s say you want to schedule BackupScrivener.app to run automatically daily.

Open up iCal (yes, iCal!), and for the sake of clarity, create a new calendar (File > New Calendar) called “Scheduled Tasks”. Create a new event for this coming Friday "Scrivener Backup" with the following details:

• scheduled for 11am
• set to repeat daily (ending “Never”)
• an alarm that opens BackupScrivener.app 0 minutes before the event

Here’s a screen shot of the event:

Every Friday at 11am (a time my computer is usually on, and I’m probably looking for a second cup of coffee) iCal will trigger the backup, backing up my novel to the server from my local disk.

Other Features

• This will work if iCal or Transmit are already open or closed, which is nice.
• You can drag in multiple File actions to one Automator workflow, so you can bundle all your weekly back-ups of different folders into one script and one iCal event, then make another one for daily or monthly tasks.
• It’s an Automator workflow, so you can do all kinds of stuff – ask for a confirmation before running, tell it to send you an email afterwards, run an AppleScript, open your Strongspace account in Safari, etc etc.

Thanks to Stronghold

I’m not sure I would have ever thought of combining Transmit, Automator and iCal like this – the credit goes to the Strongspace blog. Check out their article on backing up files to Strongspace if you don't have an FTP server.

Looking at submission guidelines from a variety of CBA publishers at the Faith, Hope & Love website, it looks like 90,000 words is a good all-around target for a novel length. But you have to write more than 90k words to get 90k words.

I like Steven King's axiom for 1st draft versus 2nd draft word counts:

2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%

So, to target 90,000 final draft words, write 100,000 words!

Finally, a (nearly) perfect novel writing tool. Scrivener software (still in beta) is a light-weight but innovative software tool exclusively for Macintosh users. You can download a beta version for free at http://www.literatureandlatte.com. Click on the thumbnail images for full screenshots.

Scrivener's outlining and note card capability allow you to organize your novel. You can annotate and categorize content in ways to allow you to flexibly craft the outline to the way you write.

Scrivener also has a full-screen mode text editor that whose background color is an eyeball-friendly black. No distractions and a slim column complete this optimized environment for the serious writer.

A great summary of how every novel should begin:

As far as beginning the novel in general, I think the surest formula (regardless of genre) goes something like this:

1. Grabber first sentence

2. Provocative first paragraph. This can range all the way from high action to quiet narrative, but it should (A) impart pieces of compelling knowledge while (B) giving rise to multiple intriguing questions.

3. First pages of continued high interest in present story (not jumping to a backstory scene), leading to

4. Inciting incident at end of chapter, with final

5. Hook

Full article at Forensics & Faith

A great resource including printable template:

One of the oldest tools in the arsenal of writers is the modest and unassuming index card. It's used for jotting notes, sharing phone numbers, creating bibliographies, capturing ideas, making lists, and --heck-- even making indices. (Who would have thought?) But one of its primary uses, especially for people structuring stories, is in creating a plot outline. A pen, a table top, and a small stack of cards are all that's needed to turn a mish-mash of incongruent or half-baked ideas into a plot that's tight, logical and well-developed.

Have you ever come up with a concept for a story, video or presentation, but didn't know how to begin?

Read full article at D*I*Y Planner.

This is a VERY cool technique to take notes on books without actually writing within the book, dog-earing pages, etc.

I thought I might as well document one of my little "life hacks".

1. When I start a new book I stick a few post-its on the first page inside the cover. That way there's always some paper around to write notes on.

2. When I fill up a post-it I move it, either to the inside back cover or the inside front cover.

3. The added benefit of using post-its is that when I come to type up the notes (so I never lose them and can search them), the post-its stick handily to the side of the monitor.

Another trick I've adapted to the above is writing the page number on the Post It if there is a paragraph I particularly liked. I'll sometimes photo copy the pages I note on the Post It after I'm done with the book and file it for reference.

Read more

Michael Hyatt envisions the death of traditional book publishing:

I am convinced that we are only one device away from a digital publishing tsunami. Consider what happened when Apple launched the iPod in October of 2001. They provided an end-to-end solution that made downloading music easy, portable, and fun. Now,
30-plus million iPods later, iPods are everywhere.

Read more: From Where I Sit: The Death of Traditional Book Publishing

J. Mark Bertrand has something brewing:

"You'll have to supply the soundtrack yourself. Imagine the Gorillaz doing "Clint Eastwood" -- The future is coming on -- or maybe Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" -- I just know that something good is going to happen. Something good is going to happen, but I can't tell you about it yet. All I can do is flash the logo up and let you wonder. I can't tell you what "LiT" is or what the name signifies. I can't tell you what it means for you. All I can say is that it's coming. And it's gonna be cool.

Stay tuned...."

It apparently involves espionage, stealth dialog . . . and Ninjas. Or something.

Hmmm. What is it? Stay tuned at www.jmarkbertrand.com

Google launched a controversial digital book site:

The Internet search giant said the initial collection will include "public domain" works -- those without current copyright protection -- in an apparent effort to ease concerns that have led to legal challenges.

"Because they're out of copyright, these cultural artifacts can be read in their entirety online at http://print.google.com, where anyone can search and browse every page," Google said in a statement.

"They are fully searchable and users can save individual page images."

---

Google launched its controversial effort to digitize millions of books for online viewing -- but said it would limit access to any copyrighted material for now.

I imagine in a few years no one will give this a second thought, and will be amazed there was ever a world without this feature. There has been quite a furor over this, but I can't see this as anything but a good thing. 

Read more at Yahoo! News