S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 42

Match Game

Let's play a game. Match the writer with their unusual quirk:

The Writers

1. Charles Dickens

2. Dan Brown

3. Wallace Stevens

4. Sir Walter Scott

5. George Bernard Shaw

6. PBW

7. Dr. Maya Angelou

8. Ernest Hemingway

9. T.S. Eilot

10. John Steinbeck

The Quirks

A. Wore green-tinted face powder and lipstick while writing.

B. Always wrote standing up due to pain from an old leg injury.

C. Wrote in a shed mechanized to slowly revolve.

D. Wrote on horseback.

E. Would take a Bible, a copy of Roget's Thesaurus, a deck of cards and a bottle of sherry to a small hotel room to write.

F. Stopped every hour while writing to do sit-ups, push-ups and stretches.

G. Kept a comb nearby and used it hundreds of times per day while writing.

H. Could not write with loose hair; always wore it tightly bound, braided or pinned up while writing.

I. Wrote while walking.

J. Always kept twelve perfectly sharpened pencils on the desk.

Post your best guesses (no Googling!) and tell us if you have an unusual writing quirk, too. The correct answers will be provided in comments at the end of the day.

Outline 14

Someone (you know who you are) asked me to repost a list of links I put together back in 2012 to help with outlining a NaNoWriMo novel. Here you go:

Planning, Scheming, and Plotting by Stephannie Beman -- Stephannie talks about her method of sketching out a nice, brief checklist to loosely organize her stories in advance of the writing.

Keith Cronin abstains from Roman numerals in his hybrid pantser-plotter approach to outlining, The Big O.

For those who prefer to write the classic synopsis as an outline -- there are one or two of you like that, yes? -- Charlotte Dillon has a fabulous page of info and links here.

If you'd like to organize your outline online, I recommend trying Hiveword, Mike Fleming's free online novel writing organizer, which I demo'd and reviewed here.

If you hate the idea of outlining at all, you may get some comfort (and ideas) from Crawford Kilian's post Writing Without an Outline.

Advice from a master: Effectively Outlining Your Plot by Lee Masterson

Alicia Rasley's classic article Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes asks all the right questions; you provide the answers.

For a very brief outline, test drive my one-page ten point novel concept outline template (the first page is the blank template; the second is filled in as an example.)

If you like Randy Ingermanson's Snowflake Method of outlining, you'll probably also love TextTree, a freeware written as a companion program for it.

TiddlyWiki is a free service that provides a reusable non-linear personal web notebook (LJ Cohen did a terrific virtual workshop a few years back on how to use TiddlyWiki to organize your novel.)

Try virtual whiteboarding with the free online service Trello, which I demo'd and reviewed here.

Juliette Wade's Sequence Outlining offers an event-driven method of outlining.

Writing.com has a Blank Novel Outline worksheet here.

And finally, a post I wrote that after five years remains the #1 most popular on PBW, my Novel Outlining 101.

Off to Work

I have to finish up a project for a client, so there will be no Just Write this weekend. See you tomorrow.

Count 'em Ten

Ten Word Count Widgets for NaNoWriMo

AllIndieWriters.com's Wordcount Tracker

Another Little Progress Meter

Critique Circle's Word Meter Builder

Language is a Virus's simple NaNoWriMo Word Meter

NaNoWriMo's page of official participant wordcount meters

ProgPress is a word meter plug-in for the WordPress (hasn't been updated in a while, so caveat emptor)

StoryToolz's word count meters page (must register to gain access but it's free)

Writeometer, which I think is an Android App

Writertopia's two wordcount meters

Writing Journal, which is a free iTunes time tracker & word meter

Drifting Back

A bit of personal nostaliga this week: this lovely video was shot in Monterey, California, where I lived for while, and shows some of the spots where I'd sit and watch the sunset (with background music, for those of you at work):

Adrift from Brendan Lim on Vimeo.

It's Official

I'm in love:



So cool. Okay, you win by getting married, so probably not for the feminists, but still. How often do you see one of your all-time favorite novels get made into a board game? The web site where you can order it is here.

Image credit: September 2015 issue of Victoria magazine.

Sub Op

Sci-Fi Romance Quarterly has an open call for stories for their ninth issue:

"THEME FOR ISSUE 9: None (all SFR submissions welcome)

Length: 2,000 to 7,500 words.

Payment: 2.5 cents/word (US) paid upon publication, promotional biography with two links, and a complimentary quarter-page advertisement.

Deadline for Issue #9: 15 November 2015.

Rights sought: Six-month exclusive world digital rights from date of publication; non-exclusive thereafter.

Other info: One short story will be published per issue. Please send only edited and polished work. Due to time constraints, we are unable to give personalized feedback on rejected stories.

Stories that tie-in to a previously established world will be considered, but story must stand alone.

All sub-genres of science fiction will be considered.

Any heat level, from sweet to erotic, will be considered. Original, previously unpublished fiction only. No fan fiction, please.

Story should meld the Science Fiction and Romance genres, and must have an upbeat ending.

Not quite sure what we’re looking for? Read our original fiction in previous issues.

No multiple submissions. No stories that have previously been rejected by us.

Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please inform us if the story is placed elsewhere.

Submit: Standard manuscript format, please. Send brief cover letter with biographical information and publication history, along with attached story (.RTF or .DOC format) to Diane Dooley — Fiction #at# SciFiRomanceQuarterly #dot# org — by deadline."

Hmmm

I can't decide if I like the participant badge design for this year's National Novel Writing Month:



So it's not as awful as that one year when they went with the Gameboy-style design. I like the colors, but the graphics make me think more of writing journals than novels. The hodge-podge font is hard to read, and the design is on the clunky side (and before anyone asks, I was not the model for the crooked hands. Mine aren't that crooked.) On the other hand it's not as awful as that one year when they went with the Gameboy-style design.

What do you think? Let us know in comments.

Free Online Mapper

Wise Mapping is a free open source "web mind mapping tool that leverages the power of Mind Maps mixing new technologies like HTML 5.0 and SVG. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. It is used to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, and decision making. It is an image-centered diagram that represents semantic or other connections between portions of information. By presenting these connections in a radial, non-linear graphical manner, it encourages a brainstorming approach to any given organizational task, eliminating the hurdle of initially establishing an intrinsically appropriate or relevant conceptual framework to work within. A mind map is similar to a semantic network or cognitive map but there are no formal restrictions on the kinds of links used. The elements are arranged intuitively according to the importance of the concepts and they are organized into groupings, branches, or areas. The uniform graphic formulation of the semantic structure of information on the method of gathering knowledge, may aid recall of existing memories." You can download this one or use it online, and the currently supported browsers are: "Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and above. Google Chrome 19 and above Firefox 12 and above. Safari 5 and above. Opera 11 and above. Important: Internet Explorer 8 require the installation of Google Chrome Frame plugin."

Just Write Sunday Edition

Today I'm off to write something new and post it online before midnight. Everyone inclined to do the same is invited to join me.

For more details on Just Write, click here to go to the original post.

Image credit: My kid. :)