Angela Booth's Writing Blog

Mac Writers: Tinderbox Reads Scrivener

Scrivener and Tinderbox are natural friends, and now they’re even better together. Have a Scrivener file? Tinderbox will open it! We’ll capture the structure, links, references, and notes. Fast, easy, and terrific.

via www.eastgate.com

I adore both Tinderbox and Scrivener, so I’m totally thrilled that Tinderbox now reads Scrivener files.

If you know me at all, you know I’m big on repurposing your writing inventory. You should be making money from your writing over and over again.

Once you have your Scrivener files in Tinderbox, you’ll be able to manipulate your data in many ways: you’ll see lots of opportunities for repurposing content.

Christmas Treasures For Writers

The holiday season is almost upon us.

This year, as always, we have a Christmas Bundle of products for you.

I've chosen your guides carefully. Now you can create the income you want, and work the hours you want -- from your kitchen table, or your living room sofa.

Relax, and shape the life YOU want in 2012. Get started today. You'll agree that it's a very special offer.

Enjoy. :-)

Creativity: Writing Tools And Emotional Tone

Writing tools have an emotional tone.

When you write on a computer, the words appear on the screen; the emotional tone depends on the application you use to get them there.

Word processors especially an emotional tone. If you've been writing long enough, you may remember WordStar, and WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Ah, memories. For me, these programs' emotional tone was one of relaxation,  inspired excitement, and creativity.

In 2011, my most-used word processor is MS Word, on the Mac. The tone? Briskly business.

When I need relaxation and inspired creativity, I write with a fountain pen, using J Herbin inks.

My favorite ink is Violette Pensee. Purple says creativity to me, so do turquoise inks. Blue inks are strictly for business.

Please share your thoughts on the emotional tone of your favorite writing tools in the comments.

Does your word processor inspire you?
 

Beginning Writer's Fast-Start Package

Are you a new writer, or an established writer who's STUCK?

Kickstart your writing career with the Beginning Writer's Fast-Start Package.

You can write for just four hours a day, and make more money than you're making now. Top writers are in high demand, so take the first steps now in building the writing career you deserve.

Vanishing Guides: Writing Tools Bonanza (if you're fast)

It's vanishing guides time again. Eight of my successful writing programs will soon be vanishing for good.

You know I love creating writing programs for you, and I can't promote them all. Some need to be retired, so I can catch my breath. This is your chance to grab eight products for less than the price of one.

On July 31, these guides vanish for good...

Keep Your Writing Safe

I received a frantic message this week from a writer whose computer had died. His latest backup was three weeks old... Ouch. Three weeks of work, gone in an instant.

What's your backup strategy? You do have one, right?

If you don't, implement a simple one today. It doesn't need to be extensive or time consuming.

Here's a simple strategy, in two steps.

1. Each day, before you start writing, make another copy of your current document. I like to add date stamps to my documents, so I've always got several copies of any long document. Just choose "Save As" from the File menu, and add the day's date to the end of the file name.

It's rare that a document will be corrupted, but it does occasionally happen. In my case, I create a fresh version of any long document every day because I know myself. I slash and burn when revising, and more than once, I've deleted material I wish I'd kept.

2. Get a Dropbox account (free) if you don't have one. Copy your day's work to Dropbox when you're done writing for the day.

Longer term, investigate painless online backups. There are many of these programs. Your material is uploaded online each day, so that even if your computer dies, you can be up and working again quickly.

I've heard good things about Arq (Mac) and Mozy (PC and Mac.)

 

Kindle: Beating Out Fiction

Movie: Inception

From your response to Words Into Cash, I know that many of you are using the 8 Hours method to write a novel for the Kindle and other e-reader platforms.

I wrote Words into Cash: Write and Sell Your Ebook in Just 8 Hours to give you a super-fast and super-easy method of writing nonfiction, but you can just as easily use the method to craft fiction. You just need to add a little something, specifically, Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You'll Ever Need... Yes, Save the Cat! is for screenwriters, but you can use the beats to craft fiction.

If you're thinking: Huh? Beats?! Read the Beat Sheet for the movie Inception, Save the Cat!® » Blog Archive » The Inception Beat Sheet:

"Nominated for over 15 awards for best original screenplay, and soaring away with the coveted WGA award for writing, Inception took the world like a storm. Part heist film, part mind-bender, and part love story, Nolan’s ethereal tale is brimming with visual articulations of the Jungian dream archetypes. Waves and trains crash as the harbingers of death, glimpses of the underworld fly onscreen, an Odysseus and his crew struggle to survive as worlds and realities collide, all to Hans Zimmer’s hauntingly fluid score. Inception appears on over 273 critics “top ten” lists; the film is a visual, emotional, and lyrical masterpiece."

Visit BlakeSnyder.com to download the Beat Sheet template. It's a wonderful way to structure your novel; it will stop you wandering off on tangents, and completely eliminates the "dreaded middle", which is the downfall of many a novelist. 

Have fun writing your novels. :-)

iPad for Writers: Writing on your iPad

You're a writer, and if you're thinking about buying an iPad, your primary concern is whether it will help your writing.

Can you write on it?

Image: iPad home screen

Yes, you can.

The big benefit is that the iPad just makes it easier to write wherever you are. I love the iPhone, but the dinky little keyboard is sheer hell. The iPad's keyboard, while still obviously not a full-size keyboard, is a pleasure to use: just watch the screen, and if you've made a typo, the iPad will usually auto-correct it as soon as you hit the spacebar.

After playing with it for a while, you'll be able to write on it almost as well as you do on your laptop.

Apple's Pages app, while not essential (there's the iPad's Notes app, and many other notepad apps) makes writing easier, and you don't need to confine yourself to simple text documents.

As you can see in the image below, Pages has 16 templates: you can create flyers, project proposals, recipes, and much more.

Image: Pages templates

Pages documents look wonderful. Unfortunately however, there's no word count functionality, which ruins the experience for me. I like to know how many words I've written.

(If you know of an iPad word processing app which has a word counter, please tell me -- I've been searching, but haven't found anything yet.)

Writing on your iPad is fun; it's not like work at all.

(Mac) Leopard upgrade report - my writing tools all work

Cover Flow in the Finder

I've spent the weekend upgrading software after the release of Leopard, and so far it's been fun all the way.

Several Mac-using writers have contacted me to let them know how the upgrade went, so I hope this information helps you.

The upgrade to Leopard took around two hours, and went very smoothly, no hiccups at all. All my peripherals work, even my Palm, which was temperamental on Tiger.

My Mac writing tools all work fine; MS Office apps work, and so does Scrivener. I've covered writing tools on the Mac before, so I won't list them all again, but I've used them all under Leopard now, and they're fine.

Adobe's not updating older products for Leopard, but Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications will be updated in December. I'm still on version 8 for Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and they both work great under Leopard, so no hassles there.

Technorati Tags: writers' software

(Mac users only) Upgrading to Leopard

Oh, the excitement! I can't wait to get my hands on Mac OS X Leopard. This guide has  whetted my appetite; it's 20 minutes long, but it convinced me that the upgrade is worthwhile, just for the new Finder.

If you'll be upgrading this weekend, as I will, do take care and make a complete full system boot-able backup first, just in case something horrible like a power outage happens when you're in the middle of the upgrade.

SuperDuper makes a bootable exact copy of your disk:

The trick I used for my system upgrades/moves previously, and with the Leopard beta, was to run an exact copy to a Firewire disk using SuperDuper. SuperDuper is nice because you can at least make an exact copy of your disk that works well in the demo mode.

Have fun. :-)

Mac users: I have five invites to Skitch

I have five invitations to wonderful Skitch to give away.

The first five readers who'd like an invite get one, so please contact me - angela.booth(AT)gmail.com and put SKITCH INVITE in the subject line... You'll love it. (Mac users only, sadly.)

UPDATE: All the invitations are now gone. Happy Skitching...

Technorati Tags: writers' software

Writing help: find the answers to your questions about writing

Got questions? Please get in touch. You'll find an online form at Fab Freelance Writing that makes it easy. Although I can't promise individual replies, I'll often answer your question on one of the blogs, in the ezine, or I'll direct you to one of my writing manuals, in instant-download format.

My other writing-related blogs are:

* Fab Freelance Writing Blog- a new blog which will help you if you're interested in selling your writing;

* Blogging For Dollars Blog - a new blog which helps you to become a professional blogger.

You can also check out my writing-related ebooks at Ebooks and Special Reports.

Often you'll find just the information you want on the blog itself. You can search the blog by using the Search function - scroll about halfway down this page to find the Search Query box.

Of, you can click on one of the Category headings on the left, or use the tag cloud, also on the left.

Technorati Tags: blog how-to, blog tools, blog your writing, copywriting, get started copywriting, get started freelance writing, make money blogging, make money writing, practice your writing, productivity

(Mac) Wonderful Scrivener offers beta 5

Scrivener is out in a new beta, so it looks as if it won't be long until the final version is released. As I've stated before, if you're on a Mac, this is must-have writers' software. Don't worry about the program's beta status. It's rock-solid, I've never had any problems with it at all.

There's a long list of updates and enhancements in this new beta. Read the forum, there are many Scrivener enthusiasts who can help you (including the developer, who's very responsive), and you'll find hints and tips on how to use Scrivener to make writing easier and more fun.

I've moved all my long projects to Scrivener, because the program handles them much more effectively than any combination of programs I've used.

Technorati Tags: Mac Tiger, novel, Planning, software, writers' software

(Mac) More on Scrivener, I LOVE this app!

Click to enlarge

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways... (apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.)

I've only been using Scrivener for a couple of weeks, but it's becoming my favorite, most-used application. (Note, don't download from the link on that page, it's beta 3.)

It's still in beta, and I can't wait for the final release. As with all beta software, remember to save your work regularly, but this latest beta 4, is wonderful, not a single bump in the smooth road of using it. Download it here.

The big benefit of Scrivener is that you can outline, research and write, all in a single application. The Scrivener forum, a bunch of knowledgeable "writerly" people (I can't think of another way to describe people who are serious about writing and who write), generously give lots of tips which will not only help you use Scrivener, but to write as well.

Last night I imported all the articles I've written for the Fab Freelance Writing Ezine into Scrivener, so that I could categorize them, and see at a glance what I've already covered, when I'm writing new articles. It took moments - just click and drag, and they were imported perfectly. I'm keeping all my notes and research and drafts for new articles for FFW Ezine in one Scrivener file. Delightful.

If you're a Mac user and writer, you'll love this program.

Technorati Tags: Mac, Mac Tiger, software, writers' software

Recommendation: Writing Tools, 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Writing Tools, 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

If you're serious about writing, you'll appreciate Roy Peter Clark's wonderful new book, Writing Tools, 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. I got my copy yesterday, and I'll be working through all the tools in it.

(Mac) Scrivener, exciting writer's software

Click to enlarge

A scrivener is a "clerk, scribe or notary", according to the Oxford American Dictionary, and fellow scrivener, you have a delight in store when you try this new (to me) writer's software, Scrivener.

As with programs like Jer's Novel Writer, Scrivener helps you to keep all your material for a project - drafts, research, and notes - in one place. However, Scrivener has unique tools that promise to make writing easier.

I've only played with the program so far, and haven't test-written with it, so I'll just tell you what impressed me most, from my initial tinkerings:

* The word count is visible in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Yes, I know, crass of me, but I like to see word counts, even though word counts don't matter in the first couple of drafts;

* There's a fantastic full-screen mode, so you can write distraction-free;

* The corkboard and outliner let you take a bird's eye view of your project and move material around;

* You can create files for scenes, or whatever you choose, and then mash them together in the 'Scrivenings' mode, so you can read and edit them all together.

Scrivener is beta software, so backup your work. From a first-view however, this is a writer's tool that's a must-have, if you work on long projects. I can even see myself using it for articles, so I can keep drafts, interviews and research notes all in one place. Great stuff, and many thanks to the developer for creating such an attractive and exciting writer's tool.

Technorati Tags: writers' software