Tag: writing

A Sort Of Anniversary, I Suppose

I don’t know what drew me back to Blogger last night. I changed this place over to WordPress in 2007, pulling over most of the archive over in the process, and have had little cause for complaint. I barely even consider the early years. Nonetheless, I logged in, to find a surprise.

According to the Dashboard, I joined Blogger back in April 2001. Which makes this my tenth year of writing and publishing online. Good grief.

The problem is, I have no way of proving it. In a dick move that I could only ever pull on myself, The Ugly Truth is open to invited readers only. I am not on that select list. I’ve somehow managed to lock myself out of my own blog.

Of course, there’s no guarantee that I joined Blogger and began writing straight away. I have vague recollections of a couple of false starts, vague entreaties of impressive future content followed by months of silence. The Ugly Truth (named after a Matthew Sweet song, not the godawful Katherine Heigl/Gerard Butler romcom) was my first serious attempt at a blog, and was closer to a Tumblr than the polished new-content machine you enjoy today. There were a lot of links, and the occasional stab at something heartfelt. It was intermittently updated at best, and no different to a thousand other sites out there. It was, of all things, a post by Warren Ellis on the need for original content that inspired me to ditch that approach and, once Blogger no longer suited my needs, the move to WordPress under a new name.

I have no record of any of this. The earliest post in my archives dates to December 2004, which means my early attempts are lost to the aether. I’m content in this. It’s no great loss to the world of blogs.

But the Blogger years were a start, and they led me here. I think all I can say with any certainty is that April 2011 marks the ten-year anniversary of my intention to blog. And that’s got to be worth something. I suppose. Hasn’t it?

Cerise Sauvage: A History

I’ve mentioned in the past how a long walk will often suggest characters or situations to me. It’s a process I’ve likened to having someone fall into step with me and start to tell their story as we go.

I had a hospital appointment this morning, and afterwards decided to take a stroll back through Southwark, across the river to St Pauls and up the Strand, revisiting a few old haunts. Damned if I didn’t get a companion, murmuring in my head as I strode up Carter Lane. She had a name which I’d heard before.

I wrote down the things she told me in a couple of caffeinated jolts in shops along the river. I haven’t told the half of it. The name Westinghouse is mentioned at one point. Astute members of The Readership might recall I’ve talked about her before.

Meet Cerise Sauvage. She has a soundtrack that you might find appropriate.

Continue reading Cerise Sauvage: A History

Nanowrimo: A Few Useful Tools

There are just under three weeks to go until the start of the 2010 Nanowrimo, and already there’s a sense of real anticipation and nervous excitement. Wordsprints (where you write as much as you can for a given period; say half an hour) and timed exercises are happening on Twitter, with the #nanolove hash getting a lot of … well, love. The forums at the Nanowrimo site have reopened, and are buzzing with activity. It always seems a shame to me that they don’t stay open for the whole year, as for November they are a hive of crazed creativity and overwrought drama. It would be great to get some of that feeling all the time.

The Nano forums are essential for those moments when you just need to bitch about how badly things are going, or crow about your rapidly expanding wordcount, or wail about your lack of inspiration. In the forums, you realise just how many other people are in this with you, and feeling and suffering and exulting in exactly the same way. Nanowrimo puts you in touch with an awful lot of like-minded people, and if you sign up to the regional forums, you could even meet up with some of them face to face!

And of course, software developers are there to help the aspiring writer part with their cash – in the name of productivity, of course. There are a few tools out there that are worth your time, and funnily the good ones are open source and free.

I had great results last year with OpenOffice, which has hella good error correction and auto-complete functions – a boon for sloppy typists. On full-screen mode it’s a good distraction-free option and really helps you bang up the word count. The team behind it have just broken away from their corporate masters at Oracle to create the new LibreOffice, which I will be viewing with interest. I’m also eyeing up FocusWriter, which seems like a neat, prettier version of the Gedit/Notepads of the world. I’m having some issues installing it on my little Linux netbook, as it doesn’t come as a prettily packaged .deb file, but I’ll get there, I’m sure. With a choice of background, word count and daily goals built in, it seems to have been designed specifically for the shenanigans in November. But frankly, I’m happy as long as there’s autocap and a little something to help out my dreadful spelling.

Meanwhile, have you got your Dropbox account yet? and if not, why not? It’s free, it’s 2gigs of storage that seamlessly syncs across all your machines (including your smartphones), it’s a complete no-brainer to set up and use. It saved my butt during Script Frenzy early in the year, and it’s an essential for me now. In fact, if it sounds good, drop me a line. If you go through an invite from me we both get an extra 256mb for free. Used in conjunction with PlainText, I can jot down ideas on my phone and know that they will be waiting in a folder in my Dropbox whenever I need them. If you’re a writer on the go like me, these two bits of free loveliness are my solid recommendations.

And oh look, Scrivener is rolling out a major update in time for November! Scrivener is brilliant for thwacking out a first draft and letting you organise it at the same time. I used it exclusively for my first three Nanoes, and it’s still a favourite. The upgrade will set you back about $25, $45 for a new licence, with a thirty day free trial – just enough time to complete your Nano challenge. Totally worth it.

But these are only tools. When it comes down to it, Nanowrimo is about a very simple act. Writing 1700 words a day for a month, and being consistently surprised at what comes out. I know I always am, and that’s what brings me back year on year.

Want to know more? Feel like giving it a go? then start HERE. And if you need a friend, then this is me.