Tag Archives: tools

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No, App, You Are Not Allowed to Call Yourself Productive

Because if I wanted to go back in and re-space every single stupid letter in a document, I would not have attempted to use you in the first place.

You see, I had mobile word on my phone for a while, and then I was given the opportunity to get a used iphone. It was a great deal.

Except… The writing apps are really, really starting to piss me off.

Yesterday, Evernote lost what I’d been working on, and so I was a little miffed. I decided, in the end, that the thing was crap and didn’t attempt to recreate it, so I more or less forgave Evernote.

I say more or less because I’m still ticked at Evernote’s inability to process spaces. I did a search to see if I could turn off the wrapping thing because I’m not liking this whole my note is one big crappy mess without a space even though I know I used the space bar several times thing. Then it puts in these gray blocks and makes me fix every single space in it when I go to put it in my file. This wouldn’t be so bad, you know, if I wasn’t already OCD enough to need to fix all the stupid quotation marks so that they looked the same, with the curves instead of the straight up and down ones.

So, Evernote was already frustrating me a bit with the spacing issue, but then again today, it lost my changes. More than once. Now, I was told that it saved like crazy, but I’m not seeing it. I’m seeing that when I push save, I don’t get a save. I go to another app on the phone, and I lose what I just did, even thought I know I hit save. More than once.

Frustrated, I downloaded an alternate to this, one that I thought would be better because it was going to upload straight to google docs. I thought that I’d found something that would skip this annoying step.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Not only did it not save part of what I was working on, just like Evernote, but this new one has a spacing issue of its own. It put in a space between every single letter in the document. At least with the other one, it was just the spaces between the words that I had to fix, but this one? Every freaking word.

I’m not pleased. I’m going to delete that app, and I guess I’m back to Evernote, but if I can’t resolve the formatting issue, the iphone might be a lost cause. I need a phone I can type on when I’m not at my computer, and if it can’t do that, then forget it. I have too much to write to waste time fixing these format issues.

Granted, the word mobile wasn’t perfect. It had the quotation issues, and yes, I still hate Word with a passion, but there has got to be a better solution than this.

Hell, I’d be better off sending myself emails! Maybe that’s what I’ll do instead.

I’ve got half-finished scenes for three stories that I won’t have time to fix before I sleep. Awesome.

On the other hand, I can play Plants vs. Zombies and actually see my email on the iphone.

*sigh*

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If I Was an Artist with Something Besides Words

If I was an artist with something besides words, then I would already have beautiful cover art finished and ready. I’d have my little scene dividers ready made and inserted.

I’d illustrate my own children’s book. I already wrote it. It’s there, finished but for the art.

Alas, I know my strength is with words, and if I do have any real artistic talent, it lies with my ability to tell a story, an entertaining and amusing one that diverts a person for a short time. I like to share stories, let people see the world and the fascinating characters that I’ve met along the way.

Since I am not an artist with pictures, I trust that to the other half of Kabobbles. Third, I suppose, since the cat is the ringleader, after all. Anyway, at the end of the day, I managed to accomplish… finally getting the right size and format for the scene divider for In the Family, multiple editing programs (Paint.NET, Gimp, Inkspace, Open Office Draw, and a couple from her Mac) later, many saved files (either of the document with the divider in it or the divider itself), many tests converted with Calibre, and a bunch of frustration (it’s too big! now it’s too small! it’s not transparent! it’s fuzzy! it’s in pieces!)
my brain hurts and I don’t understand half of the programs I played with, but I finally have it where it works.

I think. My brain hurt too much to be sure, so I’ll look again tomorrow.

The cover art for The Not-So-Super Superhero is coming along, and I edited a good part of The Monster in My Garden Shed and finished The Memory Collector. I even got my hair cut.

I was hoping to finish Variety Store today, too, but perhaps I was a little too ambitious.

I’ve still got a bit of time left before the end of the day and month, though, so… Here goes nothing. I know what’s supposed to happen. It’s just a matter of getting it on paper…

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The Necessity of Computers

A writer’s most important tool is the computer.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to have a computer to write. You can picture scenes in your mind, perfecting the dialogue and the characters’ movements. You can use any phone that has note taking capabilities to make notes. You can record scenes like you’re dictating to yourself. You can also use the old tried and true method of a pen or pencil and paper. You don’t even need large sheets of paper or notebooks. A few small scraps, and you can still continue your writing no matter where you are.

For a long time, I didn’t have a computer, and certainly not one of my own. Did that mean I wasn’t writing?

Absolutely not. I’ve got stacks of notebooks, folders, and loose sheets of paper that show just how much I was writing when I didn’t have a computer. I have shelves full of these stacks. Drawers of them.

So why is the computer so important?

Because it allows the stories to be shared.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. People can, assuming they can get past my unique handwriting, read the stuff I write by hand. They just have to be here, in person, to do so.

So the paper part limits things considerably, especially when the bulk of people who give me comments on my stories are not here in person. They’re across the country or across the world. Without a convenient way to type them up and share them, it’s harder to make progress.

Transferring the handwritten notes to typed documents is not something I’ve been all that good at in the past, as the years worth of untyped stories would attest.

It used to be that I was extremely against the idea of typing. I did not write anything on the computer. I didn’t like the way things looked on a computer screen. It didn’t seem the same, not like “writing” when it wasn’t done by hand. In fact, I used to say that it was only “writing” if I did it by hand. If I was on the computer, that was “typing.”

I must, I think, credit my change in attitude to the years I spent writing fanfiction. Say what you will about it, the experience I gained there helped me in a lot of ways (giving me a place to share my stories and receive criticism, that sort of thing) but also in the fact that I actually had to overcome my stubbornness when it came to typing.

Now, typing is the same as writing, and the computer is essential. It is as much of a necessity as coffee.

Naturally, this makes my laptop’s recent issues with “oh, look, I have a loose connection so I shall pretend to die” very distressing. I’d say I have fallen behind schedule, particularly with the editing, as the computer becomes inaccessible for days at a time. I still write, but it’s not as easy to do when borrowing a computer. Then I get mine working again, and it suddenly quits again. This has been rather a technological nightmare, and the ups and downs of it are extremely stressful. Picture me, ready to curl up in a ball and cry because my computer will not turn on.

It was only because I’d been in the middle of a scene. I swear.

It is working now, by the way. We shall see how long this lasts.