Better than silly putty

Pulse is working beautifully again for me. I'm able to write a few lines as they occur to me while I'm doing other things. It's lovely to be so productive.

The text conversion tool does a very good job of translating my handwriting. Not perfect by any means, but pretty darn good for all that. It really seems to try hard to come up with something that is English even if it's not always right. And therein lies a source of great mirth for me. Occasionally it will come up with something that is totally inappropriate. For instance, today I uploaded half a page of stuff, ran it through the conversion program ( just takes a single click of the mouse) and dropped it into LSB. Then I stared to check it. There on a line all by itself, three tabs out from the left-hand edge, was the following.

I ovulated.

Totally NOT what I'd written. How it came up with that I have no idea. I'd written 'I hesitated.', but now I keep giggling at the sheer lunacy of the sentence in the context of the scene.

Hmmm. They do say that small things amuse small minds, don't they?

Not so fast...

I had a little glitch with the Pulse today. When I docked the pen in its USB cradle it didn't upload the words. It hung there, looking as if it was working but it wasn't. I ended up having to call their support line. I spoke with a real human being, and that's a note-worthy thing. Sue was very helpful but didn't know what was wrong. She suggested that I undock the pen wait a few moments and try it again. That worked. I had the idea that I could lose a load of work but eventually sense prevailed. Even if I couldn't upload the text I wouldn't have lost a thing. Everything is written down so at worst I'd have to type it in. It did give me a bit of a turn though.

I only wrote 265 new words today, but they came out even better than I planned last night. Ohhh, this is such fun. I can't understand why I was dragging my feet for so long. Anyway, I wrote the end of Chpter 2 and I love it. It's a cliffhanger, of course, and a really cool, one at that.

Thudump...Thudump... Thudump

The Pulse is certainly beating for me. I'm writing loads of stuff and I love it all. It's so much easier when I can just write a few sentences in between doing other things. I'm getting so much done it's incredible. The story is taking off. I wasn't too sure about writing in first person to begin with. It certainly is a challenge, but it feels right for this one. I could have written a couple of thousand words today, but I'm holding back for now. It gives me something to look forward to tomorrow. This is terrific. Definitely the best present ever.

I Have a Pulse

For those who may have thought that I had dropped off the face of the planet or had in fact expired -- good news. I'm still around. And I have a Pulse . I'm not just talking about the kind that can be felt at the throat and wrist either. I'm talking about the latest techie gadget, the one I received from my spouse as a Christmas gift. So what, you ask, am I wittering on about? I'll tell you.

The Pulse looks like a pen but it's actually a rather nifty paper-based computer from Livescribe. It writes just like a pen, but it has a very specialized digital camera at the pointy end which, if you write on the Livescribe "dot" paper, can be uploaded to your computer. It also has the really neat ability to record sounds and "attach" the recording to your notes or to a drawing. Amazing. And what's more it really works! Add on an additional software package called MyScript for LiveScribe that transforms your scribbles into text and you have a very powerful writing tool. One that can be used just about anywhere.

I often find that pounding the keyboard sort of locks my Muse up in a cage. Oh I can see what I want to write all right. It just won't flow to the fingertips. Writing longhand helps, but then I have the chore of transcribing my words into Liquid Story Binder so it takes at least twice as long to get my words into the chapter I'm working on... and my time is limited. But with the Pulse I'm able to write a scene, upload it, change the scribble to text (okay you DO have to write fairly neatly), edit the text to put right the words that come out as garbage because of the bad handwriting, and save it as a text file. Then, when I have a few spare moments I can import the file into Liquid Story Binder. Simple. Effective. And totally cool for techies like me. And I can use it on planes without having to haul out the laptop. Marvelous!

The downside is that you do have to use the special "dot" paper but if you have the right kind of color laser printer you can print your own. My package came with 5 college-ruled notebooks so it isn't a problem for me. There are ruled and plain journals available too, if that's your prefered writing medium.

So now I really don't have any excuses at all not to write, do I?

Freebies

Am I slipping back into my old ways? No. At least, I'm trying not to but something big is brewing for me work-wise and if it comes off it will be incredibly exciting. I'm longing to share it with everyone, but until I get the final go/no-go decision I want to keep it a secret. And that's why I haven't posted anything new on here for almost a week.

However, in the on-going effort to improve my writing skills I've found a great offer that you might find helpful too. ConceptDraw is offering a free download of an older, but fully functional ( anyone remember Data's classic line from one of the very early ST-TNG episodes? Well, it's not fully functional in THAT way. Honestly! You writers have minds like sewers :) ) -- to return the subject at hand -- version of MINDMAP. It normally costs around $200 so this is a steal. As you might have guessed from the name, it's software that helps you to draw mind maps. Assuming you don't already know what mind-mapping is, it's a graphical technique for generating ideas and linking those ideas together in eye-opening ways. And that's what we writers have to do for our stories to really take off.

If you'd like copy free you can download it from here for PC and Mac then get your serial # here. I've only just downloaded it, but it looks good and seems easy to use. So now you can't say I never give you anything for spending your time reading my blog!

MIA

Now this is strange. During the week I put a new post on here. I swear I posted it. I even check it to see that it was okay. But it's not here now.

And that's not all. The comments I made on other peoples blogs are missing too.

Am I suggering from delusions? Did my posts get eaten by the Internet termites? Have aliens secretly abducted me and placed false memories in my swiss-cheese brain? I have no idea but those are all strong contenders for what happened.

It wouldn't be so bad if I had a copy of the post that's MIA. I'm anal about backing things up, which is why I STRONGLY enourage you to go to Mozy's website and sign up for their backup service. 2 GB for free is a bargain in anyone's book. I use the paid version because of the huge amount of stuff I keep on my laptop that I just can't be without in the event of a disk crash or other emergency. But in this case, like a complete twit, I deleted the document BEFORE the backup took place. So it's lost to the world for all time.

How sad.

Techie stuff -- LSB

I've been remiss. Theadra asked for more information on Liquid Story Binder ages ago and I haven't responded. Well, that's just like me, I'm afraid. But now I'll set the record straight.

What is Liquid Story Binder? It's a terrific piece of software that runs on PCs and Linux ( but not on the Mac as far as I know) that combines a word processor with a herd of other useful, dare I say essential? tools for a writer. With it you can plan, track and manage your writing projects from conception to query. And it keeps backups for you, which is huge if you're like me. If that's not enough for you, it can be installed on a USB drive, so is totally portable. Take it to work with you and use it during lunchtime, going to babysit for a friend? You can work on your project while the kidlets snooze ( always supposing their parents have a PC you can use.)

And now for a few of the features.

Like to keep detailed notes about your characters? Dossiers accomplishes that and, what's more, you can use dossiers for world-building too. Have an image of your MC in mind? Does that photo of the Scottish Highlands remind you of the setting for your story? Pop it into the dossier and it will be there ready to display whenever you open it up, along with as much or as little detail as you wish to enter. It's incredible flexible, and you can keep multiple dossiers open while you write too.

I don't like to listen to music when I write, but I know a lot of people do. LSB can manage a playlist for you so you can have music while you work effortlessly.

Timelines your thing? You can keep track of your characters and timelines with ease, and color coding them makes it simple to see who's where and when. A related but different tool is the Storyboard. You can use them like you would an index card, and you can move them around until you get the story straight. I color code them the same way as the timeline so I can tell at a glance which scene is in which character's POV.

Need to track your goals and the time you spend writing? It does that. Tell at a glance how many words you wrote in this session, how many you still have to go to meet your goal, are you ahead or behind your schedule?

These are only a few of the great features that LSB has. You will have to put in a bit of time getting up to speed with it, the learning curve is fairly steep, but it's very worthwhile, and there are tutorials on how to use the major features, plus a very active community of users who'll help you find your way around the software, and the most responsive developer of ALL time. Jesse Wall answers questions about the product and requests for enhancements like no one else! AND… you can try it free for 30 days. Download it from Black Obelisk Software

If you don't love it don't buy it, but I think you will.

Christmas Thingy

I had a lovely Christmas and I hope you did too. Received a new wireless mouse... not many people's idea of the ideal gift but this is a Logitech Nano and it's brilliant. It has the tiniest USB connector and is all around the best mouse ever! I love getting new toys that make my work easier.

I haven't been playing with SpeakingNaturally much. The headset that comes with it is rubbish, and the USB headset that I've been using has been snaffled away by my other half. As soon as I get it back I'll start testing again.

And Chapter 15 revision is going well. I should get it complete over the weekend at this rate. So all-in-all I'm a happy soul.

Where did the time go?

Oh boy! Have I been busy or what? Too much work and not enough time to even think about the blog. Hopefully things have calmed down a bit now. What little spare time I've had I've spent on ASF, and it's been precious little. I'm falling way behind with the revision but I'll get there.

On another, but somewhat related theme, I have an early Christmas present. Dragon Naturally Speaking, which is a speech recognition software package that hooks up to most Microsoft ( and no doubt other) Office programs. I'm going to try it out to see if it is a good as I've been led to believe. I'll post my thoughts on it in a few days. I'm hoping that it will let me get my ideas down on "paper" fast while they're still fresh. If it works it could be a wonderful way to do a first draft. We'll see.

The Future is Here

I promised to write a few words about digital books today, so here they are.

Digital books are here to stay, whether we like it or not. It's clearly the way things are going in the publishing industry. I don't see digital books taking the place of the printed word any time soon, but the digital reader technology is improving. If you haven't already looked into it, you should. I noticed what looks like a pretty nice reader on www.sony.com/reader. It's "feature rich" -- but I can buy a whole lot of mass-market paperbacks for $299! Of course, a paperback doesn't look as cool as reader, but then again I'm not really very interested in looking cool.

I travel quite a bit and one thing that, for me at least, is a major drawback to using a digital reader is the "10 minute" rule on aircraft; having to switch off anything that runs on batteries during the first and last ten minutes of a flight. That's a lot of reading time even if you're on a direct flight. The cost of the reader is also hard to swallow especially as it's the kind of thing that could get popped into the seat-back pocket and forgotten in the rush to deplane (I lost a pair of Bose QC headphones that way -- ouch!) I won't be buying one any time soon, but I'm keeping any eye things. And one thing is certain, there are tens of thousands of titles out there. The revolution is here to stay.