Saturday, January 31, 2009

Novel Writing Software

For any of fyou who were at our last meeting you know I had some frustrating moments with yWriter, the novel writing software I am using. This led to a search on the net for what else was out there. So then I found this Noveling Writing Software on the net. Its called New Novelist and it looked pretty good. I wasn't sure I wanted to spend the money on it though. I wished they had a free trial online or something like that.

I looked at other ones too and this seemed to have great reviews. I ended up going to PC magazine reviews and discovered yWriter has a new version and they rate it highly. So I downloaded yWriter5. This time I found a users manual, user group and more. They answered a lot of my questions. So I decided to work with the free software for now. yWriter5 can be found here I also found that I could import my file from word directly to yWriter and it will put it into chapters and scenes automatically. That was pretty cool. You might want to check it out.

You might wonder do you need to use something like this. For me I discovered all the different characters and locations etc in my novel started getting confusing. This software helps me to organize it all well. It even has a storyboard and you can move scenes around easily. Also by now I have made all the mistakes with it that you can so I can help anyone get started with it.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Neil Gaiman does it again

Hey everyone. I found this through a twitter friend. It is excellent. You can add this to the Pep talk he gave during Nano 2007 as a fantastic read.

Where do you get your ideas

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Changes at our meetings

As I mentioned earlier I am going to change the focus of the writers group meetings. Starting at our next meeting on February 20th. We meet from 2-4 pm so the first 15 minutes will be devoted to meeting and greeting. At 2:15 our business will begin.

This first time we will do a timed writing for 15 minutes on a subject that I will provide. Then we will read what we have written. These will be stream of consciousness writings. There is no way you can do it wrong.

In future meetings we will have programs where we discuss writing topics such as Point of View, Creating Interesting Characters, Setting, Plot etc. I will be looking for volunteers for some of these, If you feel like you would like to research any of these areas and present it to the group, please contact me and we will put you on the schedule.

I would also like to set up another time where we do another critique. I need your input on this. Perhaps in March or April.

Also since these meetings will be focusing on writing if you want a meeting scheduled just as a write in then let me know and we can reserve another date at the villa. I need to know what your preferences are.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

This is Amazing!!

Hello fellow writers! This blog is really cool!! I can't wait to hear what everyone is up to! Thanks Kate you rock. Love Amber