#Writeitnow ebook export software#
Occasionally the siren song of some piece of software that says it will help me outline and make timelines and keep my characters straight and provide handy links to notes and stuff will lure me to distraction away from the job of actually writing. (Of course, kicking the booze and coke undoubtedly helped, too.)Īnyway, back to writing software. Even Stephen King has become tighter and more polished in his later books, and I suspect a lot of it has to do with his moving from typewriters to word processors. Really, the reason "tightness" and "polish" is valued so much in modern prose is because you can fiddle endlessly with sentences and move paragraphs around and rearrange chapters with an ease that earlier writers would surely have envied. I shudder to think of how much harder it was for Tolstoy or Joyce or Proust to do revisions BY HAND. What can all these "organizers/mind-mappers/outliners/write r's workspaces/etc." fooferaws with all their bells and whistles do for me that a plain old word processor can't? I mean, the word processor alone is a revolution in writing that I don't think anyone who's ever written a novel without one can appreciate.
If you're like me, you're pretty skeptical of anything that purports to "help writers write" or any nonsense like that.
If you start hanging out on writing forums, you will see that there are a lot of software tools "for writers." So maybe I will let my draft sit and cool a while while I start writing AQ5. Originally, my plan was to be ready to start submitting by the end of the year, but then I remembered that NaNoWriMo is coming up, and agents and editors apparently are beginning to dread year-end submissions because so many naifs are submitting their freshly-written NaNoWriMo manuscripts. But my ego has recovered from its bruising and I'm back at work polishing and rewriting. Lots of writers who can write as well as I can don't get published. Just like all you nice people telling me my fan fiction is awesome and that I'm good enough to be published is great, but doesn't count for beans when I actually write query letters. Now, this means diddly squat about my actual publishability. In fact, says it's better than some published novels he's read. One of them has already read the entire first draft and judged it Pretty Good. And I now have a few dedicated beta-readers who are critiquing each chapter in detail. I did not ever tell anyone their writing makes Baby Jesus cry.)Īnyway, aside from the Be Nice Police, all the other critiques I've gotten have been more or less positive. So, I did learn my lesson: I assume now when writing a critique that the recipient might be really thin-skinned and prone to throwing a tantrum, so I am working on kinder ways to say "Please stop using words because your writing makes Baby Jesus cry." She and (I suspect) a sock and a couple of other non-socks but people who thought I was too blunt in my own critiques had decided to "teach me a lesson." When I found out that the reviews weren't "real" ones but a butthurt recipient of one of my less than laudatory critiques, it put things in perspective.
#Writeitnow ebook export skin#
When I got flaming criticism of my original fiction, though, on a site explicitly intended for constructive and intelligent commentary by and for writers, I will admit it got under my skin a little more. The one or two people who've written nasty excoriating but intelligent reviews because they hated the very concept I was writing actually made some valid points amidst all the "Fucking fucker writing about a fucking American witch and fucking characters I fucking hate" fuckery, and I took what value I could out of those valid comments and brushed off the rest, since it was based on hating the concept I was writing. Now let me point out here that I've gotten really nasty reviews for my fan fiction before, and they didn't bother me, because I knew they were mostly drive-by trolls who simply hate the very concept I was writing.
Okay, I am over getting all twisted up by people who leave unconstructive criticism.
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