I’m Gonna Start Working on Byzantine Roads Again: It’s been a while since I seriously tried to develop this site: I overextended myself over the winter and had a few health problems. But I think I’ll Give it another Shot.
In the meantime, I’ve been playing with Open Office again. I had switched to AbiWord, but have recently Stumbled across a couple of websites that I Like:
First, Justine Larbalestier has a nice article on how to write a novel., focusing on Mental preparation. She Talks about setting up a Spreadsheet in open office and tracking Plots and characters. All around a Nice Article and very motivational. This One’s Been Floating around for a while and deserves to be read if you’ve been having trouble getting started.
And Finally, StephenW has uploaded an Open Office Template for Novel Writers. This template is a work in progress, but Stephen is looking for members of the Google Group to help him extend it. I’ve been playing with it for a couple days and am really impressed with the work that’s already gone into this project. Give it a shot and let me know what you think.
If you’re like me, you’ve decided to write a blog to share your writing with the world. You thought your writing would stand on its own, and readers would flock to your website, grateful that you decided to share your awesomeness with everyone.
Then, reality sets in. Developing content and working on your “Real” writing become chores, not fun.
Even worse, you realize that although you’ve trained yourself to develop plots and realistic characters, to edit yourself and set realistic goals, you know bupkis about SEO, CMS, WEB 2.0 and all the other things you thought you could get away with not knowing. After all, this blogging is supposed to be all about giving the masses a voice, right?
Tough. Like anything else, like writing, blogging has it’s own learning curve. Sure, wordPress is easy and powerful. But I collect Plugins the way I used to collect Lovecraft. Some help, some take up space, and some are useless. So here’s a list of the plugins I use on various websites and Why:
Akismet- The spam Blocker that’s included with Wordpress is still one of the best. You should have already enabled it. if not, shame on you.
Bad Behavior- The other Spam Blocker. Bad Behavior maintains a list of bad sites and blocks these users from ever seeing your precious posts.
All-In-One-SEO- Allows you to ad meta data to your posts to get them noticed by Google.
Democracy Poll- The easiest way to add Interactivity. And that’s a good thing.
Google Sitemaps- Helps Google Index all your pages. ANd if it helps Google, it helps you.
MicroKid’s Related Posts- Lets you search your posts and manually add related posts to posts. Posts. Posts Posts. ( Not Spam)
Popularity Contest- Alex King has written a whole mess of popular, useful plugins, but this is really useful. It allows you to rank pages and posts on a variety of criteria.
RSS-Footer- Ads a footer with a link back to your site to your RSS feed.
Sociable- Adds Social bookmarking buttons to your posts, making it easier for readers to share and recommend your pages. Try it now!
wp-Cache- Reduces Server load and speeds up page rendering by creating static pages of your posts. That’s technobabble for pleases your readers if you get a bunch all at once.
wp-Database Manager- Lets you update and manage your database from the dashboard. Great for Piece of mind.
WWSGD- What Would Seth Godin Do? Ask readers to subscribe a couple of times, then quietly disappear.
Bonus: 4 Firefox Extensions for writers
scribefire- Lets write blog entries and add site reviews from Firefox without having to fire up the old Dashboard.
Got A few more Online Office Suites to talk about:
Buzzword is now part of Acrobat.com, Adobe’s fledgling online office suite. Right now, it consists of Buzzword, chat, a whiteboard, Document Storage and not much else. But, like Buzzword, the flash based, animated menus are clean looking and easy to use, and it promises to deliver more in the future.
Then There’s Entrepreneur’s Zoho Based Entrepreneur Assist. Although it uses the Popular Zoho Online office Suite, Entrpreneur adds templates for the small businessman and a limited library of business books. Unfortunately, they’ve added these as an afterthought while crippling many of the features of Zoho and adding Visa Ads. Stick With Zoho.
I Don’t get AjaxWrite- It’s a Word Clone that runs online. So I guess if you think Word is the end-all, be-all of word processors, but always wanted to have an online version, knock yourself out. Oh, Except it works only on Firefox, Not Explorer. So you can’t be THAT into Windows. Also, It’s supposed to be part of a suite, but they’re not well inegrated.
So I guess it’s Google Docs or Zoho for the time being…. I Don’t think I’ll add any more of these to the links page quite yet.
I haven’t really been a big fan of most writing software.
I’ve used it off and on since the original Sol Stein’s Writepro. This software came on six 5 1/4 inch floppies. Each Disk had a different lesson. You would work you’re way through the lessons by reading a passage or two, then entering text into a little box. You would read some more, then your old text would pop up and you could revise it. When you were done with the lesson, you would compare the original with the “Improved” version. “Gee,” the software would ask, “Isn’t that better?”
Well, no. I didn’t know. That’s what I bought you for.
Then there was Writer’s Dreamkit, based on the Dramatica Pro engine. This program went out of its way to reinvent the wheel. Gone were terms like rising action, climax, and protagonist. Instead we had Throughlines, The Emotion character and Reason Character. The absolute worse part? Dramatica became The Language of Hollywood. Because, well, you couldn’t understand it. There was no there,there. as the saying goes.
This lead to a long dry spell ( Kinda like my writing career..) where I was more concerned about other aspects of my life…Wife, Kids, Real career… And now I’ve decided to give NewNovelist 2.0 a shot.
I’m sure you’ve seen them. They’re all over the top of Google Searches and are getting pretty popular.
NewNovelist is a combination of the two programs above: The ancient Sage and the New Wave.
Like Dramatica, NewNovelist guides you through the publisher’s theories of fiction. It’s easier to understand, and doesn’t get bogged down in jargon. Some of the choices are pretty basic, but hey, it is called NEWNovelist. Instead of trying to reteach you the theory, it takes a logical, measured approach to get you to think about your fiction. It’s split up into several sections so you can pick and choose which one you want to concentrate on in any given writing session.
And like the elderly WritePro, NewNovelist lets you type free text into it’s lesson boxes, and it lets you export them for further editing. Yes, They advertise that it includes a built in word processor, but it’s really basic and not much use by itself.
The big problem with the internet is that it seems like it’s designed to make you feel like an idiot on purpose.
I don’t mean the fact that every question you post on Yahoo!Answers is answered by some snotty 12-year-old. I don’t mean that every time you try to do research you have your choice of either an impenetrable thesis or incorrect wiki.
I Mean the fact that even though you try to stay abreast of news and features, even though you subscribe to dozens of feeds, constantly google, search Technorati and have alerts automatically sent to your cell phone, you still come across a nifty, cool, useful and entertaining site after millions of other people already know about it. On the Internets, you’re always a Noob somewhere.
Hulu is a free TV and movie Streaming site. Yes Free. As in , Get-your-fix-of-the-A-Team-right-now. As in no money down. Not $1.99. Not $.99. Free.
There’s a catch- The number of shows is inversely proportional to the age and DVD availability. A show airing today might only have the last couple episodes. A classic on DVD might have the entire first season. A show which is no longer selling might have nearly it’s entire run.
And, Of course they’re ad supported.
But this closes the deal: Embeddable content. That’s right. Embed your favorite show in your blog.
So, For Your viewing pleasure, here’s a classic Writer’s movie for Memorial Day Weekend:
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