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Instant Inspiration with iTunes
One of my most indispensable writing tools is iTunes. Now, I don't much care for playlists. I almost never have a playlist for any given novel, and I'm always amazed (and a little intimidated!) by...
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Tsjuz Your Blog With Jump Breaks
J is for Jump Breaks, or the things that keep your blog looking neat.Some of us are, erm, for lack of a better word...well, wordy. And so when we get going on a blog post, it's really easy to post...
View ArticleSpeed Up Your Keyboard
Unless you write in longhand and somehow have a typist you've hired (in which case, wow!), if you're writing, you're spending a lot of time at your keyboard. And if you're like most keyboardists,...
View ArticleLet Your Library Work For You
Do you know what's at your local library? The books, of course you know about: it's a super place to get other books to read, maybe check out some comp titles, or read some children's nonfiction. But...
View ArticleFoster Pavlovian Creativity with Music
I mentioned in my post about iTunes that most of the time, I write to the Bach unaccompanied suites for cello (the version recorded by Yo-Yo Ma). It was through this that I started to understand the...
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Make Writing a Sport with NaNoWriMo
In my creative writing seminar in my senior year of college, one of the other students kept coming in with a hoodie on. It had this strange word across the front:NaNoWriMoOur professor asked her what...
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Use OmmWriter to Write Your Zen
The NaNoWriMo before last, I discovered an awesome program. It's called Ommwriter (with two m's, like the chant). The entire idea is to get your writing to a Zenlike state—it takes over your entire...
View ArticleMake Creative Playlists -- Post 100!
I started my blog a little less than two years ago. By some strange fluke, I reached the same number of posts in 2011 as I did in 2012—exactly 33. This is my 34th post for 2013, which means two things:...
View ArticleGive Yourself a Quota
The first year I tried NaNoWriMo, I wrote about 700 words and then stopped completely. (I still count that as a year that I tried though—I'm masochistic like that!) But I think one of the reasons that...
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Format Pretty and Share Like Crazy with Rich Text Format
Writers often need to send things around. To your betas or CPs, if you're still working on that first draft; to an agent (and sometimes copied into an email), if you're querying; and to your agent and...
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Using Scrivener to Straighten Out Your Novel
(This one going up late today! I knew I should've written it and queued it ahead of leaving for the weekend, but I always think I'll have time to write a post in the morning. While I'm grading. And...
View ArticleMind the Time
T is for Time, and for Timers. W. Somerset Maugham has been oft quoted as being asked if he wrote at a set time or only when inspiration struck him. He answered, “I write only when inspiration strikes....
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Get Started Easily with Unfinished Work
(CC) by Wouter KielI was talking to my advisor one day about some of my academic writing, and how my fiction writing habits were resulting in better academic papers. I mentioned the bit about getting...
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Edit Better by Switching Views
I was opening a document from an email one day, and it launched directly into this beautiful, full-screen thing, where the print was sized large enough that it was easy to read, and every other...
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Take Word to the Max
I've talked about many of my favorite writing software packages in this A-Z, including Scrivener and Ommwriter. But the reality is, most of the time, you'll find me working in plain old Microsoft Word....
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Use X-Ray to Improve Your Structure
So, I'm not a giant fan of the 'Zon, for a lot of reasons (and actually, none of which have to do with my being employed by their main competitor, as it's a part time job and my world wouldn't crash if...
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Wrangle Story Research With Zotero
Merp? But it's the penultimate day, you say. Why am I posting "Z"? Well, as I was looking at my topics, I realized that the best and most important writing hack is "Y," and that "Y" would be a great...
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Get to Know You
There's a lot of greatsoftwareoutthere.There are lots of ways to better take advantage of resources you already have available. Many ways to create good, sustaining, writing rituals. And to protect...
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Voiceless..but Friendly
So a year ago, I tried really hard to get into a contest called The Writer's Voice, hosted by Brenda Drake, Krista Van Dolzer, Moni BW, and Cupid's Literary connection.The widget hated my guts, and...
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W is for Write
So in April, I participated in the A-Z Blog Challenge. It was an absolute flurry of blog crazy. I was worried at the outset that I wouldn't make it; given that it's only been in 2013 that I've managed...
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