In 31 days National Novel Writing Month will begin once again, challenging writers to complete a 50,000 word novel in 30 days (that’s 1,667 words per day).
My success rate with NaNo has dipped below 50% since I started in 2009 and this is the first year where I’ve seriously considered not participating. However, my writing has largely stalled over the last two months, thanks to a combination of vacation time getting me out of the habit, an unfinished short story leaving me flummoxed and frustrated, and my preferred writing program suddenly and obnoxiously switching to a subscription model, leading me to dumping it.
They’re all excuses, really. I could have kept writing because the writing program (whichever one I may use) is just that, a tool. I have a plethora of options to choose from, so saying I can’t find a good replacement for the one I’ve stopped using would be like saying I couldn’t use a particular keyboard because it wasn’t the right color (I was originally going to say typewriter instead of keyboard, but a lot of people probably don’t even know what a typewriter is anymore, except as a prop sometimes seen in old timey movies).
The problem is the usual lack of discipline. I mean, look at me right this moment–I am once again desperately cheating my way through that one-post-per-day thing by attempting to write nine posts in one day so I’ll have 30 for the month (this post will bring me up to 25). The reason I’m doing this is because I lack the discipline to write one post per day (a simple and relatively easy task as I’m not exactly writing thesis papers here) and instead must cram in many posts on the final day (a not-so-easy task that may result in posts of less than great ambition and/or quality. See: the next post, which is going to be a haiku).
NaNo is a great way to reignite discipline, assuming the chosen novel keeps on rolling instead of smashing into a brick wall on the third day. I tend to write NaNo novels that feature roads dotted with random brick walls.
I can make this deal with myself: If I don’t get my writing back on track by the end of October, I do NaNo. If my writing is on track, I skip NaNo, because interrupting a project humming along to start another that may crash and burn in short order does not seem like the best plan.
This means I’ll have to start thinking of ideas, too. I hate this part.
I’ll report back in one month with my decision, possibly with a new keyboard in hand. But probably not.
On August 10 the company behind the markdown writing application Ulysses announced that the program was switching to a subscription model and that people who had already purchased the Mac and iOS software would get a lifetime 50% discount on the subscription rate (offer available for an unspecified limited time). You can read a lengthy explanation for the switch in this Medium story (the first paragraph contains the line “Our users expect a continuously evolving high quality product,?” which suggests the company is somewhat clueless about what people want from a writing program.
The regular Canadian yearly rate is $50, so I would qualify for a $25 rate or roughly $2 per month.
$2 per month is not much money. It’s the same I pay for a medium steeped tea at Tim Hortons if I throw the dime I get as change into a donation tin (which I do, I’m not a big hoarder of dimes). My decision to sub or not to sub, then, is not based on ability to pay, but willingness to pay.
After thinking it over for some time I finally came to an answer: I’m not paying.
I’ve stopped using Ulysses and will only keep the apps on my iPad and MacBook Pro long enough to move over the projects I’d been working on. The main one, my 2014 NaNoWriMo novel Road Closed has already been exported back to WriteMonkey, the program I originally used to write it back in the olden days of three years ago.
I really liked Ulysses. The interface was clean, effective and it had just enough features that I was sure it would be a good fit for this year’s National Novel Writing Month. It supports markdown, it has a very clean interface, with various ways to eliminate distractions and provide focus. It allowed you to set goals. Like Scrivener, it let you move around scenes or chapters easily. It offered customizable themes and could export to a variety of formats. It had seamless behind-the-scenes integration with iCloud. I never thought about saving, it just happened in the background, and I never lost a word or experienced any corrupted files in the time I spent using it.
There were problems, too. Macs render I-bars (used for selecting text) as thin black lines and Ulysses offered no options to change this, meaning it was surprisingly easy to lose the cursor if you used a theme with a darker background. I also found moving files around was prone to glitches, with nesting sometimes being hit or miss. There’s also no Windows version and the company behind Ulysses made it clear it wasn’t in the works.
Mostly, though, Ulysses worked well. As a simple markdown editor and writing tool, it did what it needed to.
Why am I unwilling to cough up a measly $2 a month, then, to continue using it? A few reasons:
I don’t want my writing locked to a subscription where some glitch or oversight suddenly means I only have read-only access to my projects. I have Microsoft Word as part of Office 365–a subscription service–but if I want to, I can buy a single license copy of Word and never have to worry about losing write access (ho ho) to my work.
Poor value. Even at $2 a month this is a middling to poor value. I get access to all of the major MS Office applications for free through my Office 365 work account but prior to that coming into play I subbed to the Office 365 University edition. It costs $80 and gives you four years of access–$20 per year or about $1.66 per month–less than Ulysses for a full office suite and cloud storage. But even if I went with the full singe user version (Office 365 Personal) I’d be paying $69 per year or $5.75 per month. This is slightly higher than the non-discount rate for Ulysses but instead of access to a single writing program, you get access to a range of products and services. The value comparison (regardless of whether you think Office is the best or worst thing ever) is incredibly lopsided. Office 365 gives you all of this:
Word (word processor)
Excel (spreadsheet)
Publisher (desktop publishing)
Outlook (email)
Access (database)
OneNote (cloud-based note-taking)
1 terabyte of storage on OneDrive (cloud storage)
60 minutes of monthly calls on Skype (web video phone conferencing)
Ignoring the competition. There are a lot of markdown and distraction-free/zen writing applications out there. Most of them are either free or have a one-time and relatively low purchase price. Even when it was a buy-once program Ulysses was expensive, separating itself from the competition in a negative way (but at least that high price was only extracted once). My favorite payment scheme is probably the one used by WriteMonkey. The software is free to use but if you want plugin support you need to donate. Plugins offer some very nice bonus features but the program itself otherwise works fine. The author is essentially engendering good will in the hope that you will donate and get some nice extras. And it worked, I donated.
Ignoring all of the other subscription software and services. Microsoft and Adobe can get away with it because they are big companies that sell to corporate users and can provide updates and services across an array of products and services. At some point people will draw a line and say no more to the next app they like that demands a subscription for use. I pay for Office 365 but I’ve bailed on my Adobe sub because I don’t get enough value from it and cheaper alternatives exist. I pay for Netflix and a few other services, like my mobile phone plan and internet, and I’ll pay for stuff like ad-removal in phone apps I use regularly. But I’m pretty close to the limit when it comes to adding more subscriptions to my load. A single-use program that is already complete and functional just doesn’t rank.
A writing app doesn’t need a subscription. Microsoft can add or change functionality across seven programs and its cloud service, as well as web-based versions of the same. The Ulysses team can…update Ulysses. But as a writing program it is already feature-complete. If I was pressed I could make up a list of “might be nice to have” features but none would be essential. I can’t begin to imagine adding enough stuff to make me say, “That’s worth $25 (or $50 for most people)” a year.”
Several other competitors to Ulysses, such as the teams behind Scrivener and iA Writer, have said they have no plans to go to subscription. I wish them continued success.
As for Ulysses, I would never wish the company ill, but I hope that it doesn’t pan out for them and they switch to a different kind of payment scheme, whether it’s “pay to remove ads” or “pay for infrequent major releases” (the Scrivener model) or something else. I really don’t want to see single-use software continue down the road of constantly dinging the user for marginal value.
This, of course, leaves me looking for a writing program to use now that I’ve stopped using Ulysses. I’ll cover some options in another post.
As the weather has improved I’ve noticed attendance for the weekly write-ins has gone down, with only three of us in attendance today. People are no doubt vacationing and such, but I think there’s also a bit of that “Do I really want to sit in a room and write for three hours when I could be lazing in the sun/swimming/[random sporting activity] instead?”
I once more attempted tackling my Camp NaNoWriMo 2017 project, a 5,000 word short story that would be “spooky.” After a few minutes I tried something I’d done before (but failed to get any traction on): write a story about someone having trouble writing. I even gave it the same title, the ever-so-imaginative “Writer’s Block.”
But this time something clicked and I managed over 2,400 words with a premise that promises to be all sorts of Twilight Zone creepy and out there. If I stay on pace I could conceivably finish the story next week, then have another week to polish it to a brilliant shine. Or at least polish it so its edges can no longer gouge innocent readers.
In all, a successful session and weirdly it wasn’t nearly as cold in the store as the previous session, though both of the other attendees agreed it was still cold.
Also, this particular Waves store moves/removes furniture every week for no reason I can fathom. It’s strange and could be the basis for a weird tale all its own.
Today’s writing group was well-attended despite some SkyTrain shenanigans that delayed the arrival of some. A fire or something fire-like led to service being closed between New West and 22 St. stations, meaning anyone at Columbia had to take a special bus to Edmonds station. For those not familiar with the SkyTrain network, this is what qualifies as a major pain in the butt, especially since we meet at the Waves Coffee one block away from, the New West station.
I only faced the minor inconvenience of getting off at Columbia and having to walk a few extra blocks. I was first to arrive and apparently the drizzly weather was a major turn-off for people as the place was empty (business picked up as we moved into the afternoon).
We had seven total, though one had to leave early for a spontaneous house-viewing (don’t you hate it when that happens? I’m speculating because I never knew such a thing could happen.)
My plan today was to write the chapter where Christian goes to his first AA meeting but despite turning out over 2,000 words he has yet to attend because I found myself putting him through mind games instead. Specifically he can hear what may be the tinkling of the beer bottles in his fridge calling to him. He dismisses the thought and heads off to a local bakery…where he hears the tinkling again.
Then Rachel–from the house party–shows up. I’m not sure what happens yet but I’m eager to find out.
He’ll eventually get to that AA meeting.
I have been subtly reshaping bits of the story to create more ambiguity on whether Christian is actually experiencing things or merely thinking he is because his drinking and current mental state are such that he can never really be sure.
In all, a productive outing. I am still amazed at how gigantic most of the others’ laptops are. One person has a purple Dell laptop that I’m pretty sure you could land a Cessna on. I still think my MacBook Pro at slightly over three pounds could be lighter and these behemoths probably cause permanent damage to your muscle tissue if you actually try placing them on your lap.
Still, if the tool works for you, it works for you.
While the weather was an uncertain mix of cloud, sun, and “will it rain?” (it didn’t, hooray) my writing was a lot more focused and I’m now confident that the first draft as written so far, at around 66,000 words, is basically where it should be, with inconsistencies smoothed over and scenes that no longer fit removed (but put in safe storage for possible use later). The only major piece still left somewhat unresolved is the whole piece that the novel currently takes its name from, namely the closed road and the mysteries of Miller Woods.
Ultimately I don’t want Miller Woods to seem more important than it really is. It’s where the murder victim was buried and another person dies but beyond that it doesn’t serve much purpose in the story. It’s almost a red herring of sort as it stands now, with Christian and Kevin investigating it, trying to find answers, while also grappling with who or what Wendy is.
On the other hand I currently have Christian receive secondhand information from Wendy urging him to go there to find clues to a “dark past”–what he interprets as a possible clue or clues to her murder. And indeed there may be clues there that help lead him to the killer and ultimately closure for Wendy–should he survive (himself).
Anyway, all good food for thought and I’m comfortable with writing the rest of the novel, wrapping the first draft and then letting it sit for a few weeks before plunging back in again.
As for the actual group, two of us were early, three more arrived and it was a quiet but productive session, with lots of typing to be heard. We only had two hours instead of the usual three, so maybe that egged everyone into doing more with the time we had.
I’ve missed making a post or two for the writing group so I’m switching to titles referencing the date as it’s easier to keep track of by my small yet manly brain.
Today I had a case of the blahs. I got there first and early, a second person also showed up early and eventually, we had four, with a fifth arriving midway through.
I read the last few chapters of Road Closed and got caught up on the story, making a few minor tweaks to wording and fixing a few more small continuity errors (I’m pretty sure Wendy now consistently dies in the same year). I got all of this done with plenty of time left in the three- hour WOW (window of writing) but couldn’t muster any real enthusiasm. I switched for a while to rereading some of my last NaNoWriMo effort, Last Exit, but that only left me equally unenthused about it. I read a smidgen of Weirdsmth and nope, still wasn’t feeling anything.
I surfed a little. I went to the bathroom three times. I figured out (again) how to convert straight quotes to smart quotes and actually documented the process so I’ll have reference instead of needing to figure it out all over yet another time.
In the end, I almost wished I had gone for a run instead, as overall it would have been a more productive use of my time. Still, it’s important to keep the habit going, so ultimately it was worth it, if just barely. I did think about inventing an excuse to leave an hour early, though, an option I may keep in mind should I hit a big fat wall of ennui again.
We got into the meeting room early today, yay. Three of us were there at the start, with two slightly late arrivals and one arriving halfway through. Using my amazing math skills, we had a turnout of six.
I came in with no specific plan of action, only knowing I would be fixing more things in Road Closed. Somehow I managed to fix one of the last big remaining lumps in the carpet I’d created. The one vexing me this week was the spooky room in the old house that Christian visits twice for house parties, the first time alone (and drunk), the second with Kevin (and sober).
Initially, I had him discover a room that appeared to be a study, complete with very old Remington typewriter sitting on the desk. He hears or thinks he hears a voice telling him to leave. Spooky.
On the second visit, he meets Brandon, the son of the owners of the house. Brandon tells him the room is Grandpa’s study and Grandpa died a long time ago. The room has been sealed as a kind of memorial. He agrees to unlock it so Christian and Kevin can have a look but refuses to go in himself. Still spooky but it didn’t feel right.
I pondered and then it came to me rather obviously–I had to ditch both Grandpa and the study. Instead, the room becomes a bedroom, one occupied twenty years earlier by Brandon’s aunt–his mother’s sister. Christian doesn’t know it at the time, of course, but he has literally come across Wendy Kerr’s residence and effectively gets her spirit attached to him by entering the room. The proverbial ghost magnet, just as he laments later on in the story. Perfect.
The next lump in the carpet is what to do with Miller Woods. Right now I have it as the place where Wendy was buried and where Simon meets his end. Is there more to it than that? Early parts of the story suggest it has some significance but now I’m not so sure.
Once I resolve the Miller Woods dilemma (MWD) I will have smoothed out everything that seriously bothers me in the first draft and can jump back into finishing the first draft proper. I am cautiously optimistic.
I’m a sucker for “how to write a novel” books and when How to Grow a Novel was on sale, I picked it up as I was interested in Stein’s perspective not just as a writer but also as an editor and publisher.
There’s some good stuff here and the advice is practical and precise, if sometimes contradictory. Stein both advises writers to read their own work aloud–and to not do so (because novels are read, not heard). He offers some genuinely interesting glimpses into how the book publishing business works (or at least worked, as the book was originally published in 1999, predating the rise of self-publishing through e-books).
I enjoyed the use of specific excerpts to underline the points being made but was less enthused with the self-promotion. The book Stein recommends the most is his own. At times he makes Stein On Writing sound better than this book, perhaps hoping to net a few more sales.
By the end, I found How to Grow a Novel more interesting as a reflection on the book publishing industry and less on the actual writing of a novel. A beginning writer could do worse (the stories of six-figure advances may be depressing in a way Stein didn’t anticipate) but could also do better, especially if looking for help that more readily mixes nuts and bolts advice with inspiration.
In a highly unusual turn of event the sun came out today and temperatures almost reached seasonal levels. Almost.
Energized by the weird glowing yellow ball in the sky, five of us showed up 15 minutes early, which naturally meant the group in the already in the room was tardy in leaving.
In all, we ended up with eight, which is just enough for everyone to sit at the table. One more and we would have chosen someone to be the outcast sitting on a chair in the corner, Lottery-style. And given the gargantuan size of some of these laptops, I would not want to subject some of my fellow writers to actually using their computers on their laps.
The writing session went fine, too. I immediately jumped in and fixed the problematic house party. Changes made:
the first house party now has Christian actually go into the basement. It’s no big thing and is thus dealt with as a plot device. I may go back and remove the scene altogether in the second draft.
the second house party, previously fleshed-out, is now further expanded, by having Christian meet the son of the house’s owners, a young and pensive young man named Brandon. He willingly gives Christian a key to enter the study but refuses to go in (or to say why). I have not finished this scene but it’s clear things are not quite right in the study.
I’ve still got some further work to do in aligning other parts of the story, notably Miller Woods, which comprises a good chunk of it, but I’m confident that even if I don’t come up with fixes that will stay, I’ll be able to get the story as is on a proper course so that I am comfortable expanding it beyond where it leaves off now.
I finally went back and scanned the story using OCR software, cleaned up the stuff that didn’t translate (there was a fair bit. The OCR program either doesn’t like the font used by my old portable Smith Corona typewriter, my writing style as an 11-year-old or probably both), but left in all of the typos to preserve the “you are there” feeling of reading a story written by a kid who wasn’t going to let spelling stop him from unleashing his creativity.
It is one of the worst things I have ever read. It is the worst thing I’ve read that was penned by my own hand. At times when I was re-reading the story, I became convinced it was a parody. I fancied myself quite the funny guy even back in elementary school, so it’s a plausible theory, but in the end, I think it’s just terrible writing lapsing into self-parody.
There is a temptation to do an annotated version that would offer commentary, sort of like you get with movies on DVD/Blu-ray/holographic projection where the director tells you what he was thinking for each scene, but in this case, it would be more, “What was I thinking?” period.
An example of that would be the introduction of the character Jim Fuller, described thusly:
He came up to Jim Fuller, a tall negro officer.
This was written in 1976, remember, not 1876. My defense here is that a) my mom described blacks/African Americans as negroes and b) eventually I got to the point where I gently corrected her on it. She was simply reflecting her own upbringing and I was doing the same, neither of us realizing the word might have evolved into a derogatory term, though I came to discover this on my own.
For now, you may “enjoy” this unfinished tale by clicking on the zipped file below (inside is a standard ePub document but WordPress won’t allow direct uploading of ePub files. I feel bad because the extra step of having to unzip this just to inflict it on yourself seems a bit cruel). Don’t read it late at night because you could end up having nightmares (over how horrible it is).
As a fun (?) experiment I ran CLAWS through the Hemingway editor and it’s not as bad as I thought, which nicely demonstrates how the Hemingway editor won’t actually stop you from committing terrible acts of writing if you are sufficiently motivated/unskilled. It reminds me of the Homer. Sure, it’s a car and it does car-like things, but would you really want to own one (unless you were Homer)?
Here’s the Hemingway editor summary:
I was in grade 5 when I wrote this so was clearly aiming the story at my peers.
Dodged a bullet on the adverbs and passive voice tasked me even then. Some things never change. If there was an assessment to determine “sentences are painful to read” I imagine the website would have crashed.
Today was gray and not especially mild, so it was a good time to be cooped up inside and writing.
I arrived at Waves Coffee early, to find the private room empty. I seized the opportunity to get in early and was already writing away when the next person arrived. In all we ended up with seven once again, though Dave, suffering the ill effects of being ill, came in around 1:15 p.m. Sans laptop, he cracked open a package of new pens, cracked open a new notebook, then proceeded to write faster than I’ve ever seen someone write before. I have no idea what he was writing but it seemed he had pages within seconds. He was handwriting faster than I can type. It was kind of weird.
For today my loose plan was to write the second house party scene of Road Closed, which was only covered in a few brief paragraphs in the original draft. I tweaked it to be the same house as before, with the plan being the party would be a bust (as originally written) but that Christian would seek out and explore the “spooky-ass” basement, which he neglected to do on his first visit, due to his impressive drunkenness.
And indeed I wrote most of the scene, culminating in Kevin and Christian going into the basement. Then nothing much happened. I hinted vaguely at a few things–an old hammer covered with rust–or was it blood? But in the end, it all felt perfunctory and now I question the need for the expanded scene. This isn’t a bad thing, as it provides some clarity to the story, even if I end up chucking thousands of words as a result.
I had time to re-read most of the first house party scene I’d written a few weeks back and I’m pleased with how it holds up. I think there is something definitely in that house, I just haven’t quite figured it out yet.
I skipped the last writing group because it was held in the amenities room of an apartment building and I wasn’t really sure how it would turn out.
I returned for #11 this week, though, on an unusually pleasant Easter Sunday. Surprisingly, attendance was quite good, perhaps because we’re all too old to go on Easter egg hunts.
I didn’t have a specific goal coming in and was concerned I might end up faffing about for three hours but instead I quickly decided to focus on the opening chapter of Road Closed and tidied it up, removing a big chunk of exposition and smoothing out the introduction to Christian’s new life in a college town. I also began some tentative work on lining up the other earlier parts of the story but that’s still early enough along that I’m not sure where exactly that will go.
I’m basically deciding between a spooky house or spooky woods. Or maybe both.
Overall I was pleased with the work done and Road Closed is now officially my longest piece of fiction at nearly 63,000 words. I have no idea where it will end up by the time I’m done but around 100,000 seems reasonable. It’s like two NaNoWriMo novels smushed together!
