I've put a lot of thought into what kind of thing this site should morph into, and I haven't quite decided yet. I think I'll start doing book reviews, but we'll see. For now, I'll post the occasional thought and progress as I work toward publication.

I completed my first horror novel of 81,000 words during my program. At my final residency in June I gave my thesis defense which included  reading a section of my novel and fielding questions from the audience.

This is me reading.

Photo Copyright Coelynn McIninch

I was scared. I was fortunate to have a lot of familiar faces, and my mentors Scott A. Johnson and Tim Waggoner were extremely supportive. The whole experience was like my first roller coaster ride. I spent hours in anticipation, racked by nervousness, only to get on, pull the bar down, and find out that I LOVE roller coasters! I'm proud of what I've accomplished, eager to keep producing more (hopefully) quality fiction, and enticed by the possibility of sharing more of that work in person.

I have already started my next steps.

I've submitted my manuscript to two places already. I have a short list of more agents. Why haven't I sent it to all of them yet? I expect rejections. A lot of them. I just don't want them all to come in at once.

I have started my next novel-length project. It's turning out to lean more into fantasy, but there's still strong elements of horror in it. I'm having fun with it, and I hope when it's done that my readers will too.

And to fill the spaces between, I'm working on some short stories. I have a two long-overdue for revision based on critiques from my graduate program, and one that I'm drafting to submit to an upcoming (no ETA) anthology of Meatpunk stories. Yes. Meatpunk. It's all the rage. Want to know more? Check out the blog posts by Chris Shearer and John Dixon.

~Meat punk - it's what's for dinner. Now stop whining and eat.~

That's it for now. Watch this space for more words and stuff, sucka.

There are some interesting things going on at Literature & Latte. First, they've released a Windows Beta version of their unique and popular writing software Scrivener, which isn't really news. However, what doesn't seem well-known yet is that on their message boards, a group of folks are playing with an unofficial version for Linux.

If you're really interested in using Scrivener, I urge you to sign up for the Windows Beta and try it out. Use Wine if you're Linux only. Also, see the Linux user thread on L&L's forum. Sign up; help out. Finally, be aware that I do not give any files directly in this post. I only link to files on L&L's forums.

This'll get you started, then once you're up and running head back to L&L's message board for updates.

Installation

I'm going to preface everything here with a quote from L&L's Blog, 13 Sept. 2010:

10. Syncing for iPad, iPhone and Working Externally

There’s been a minor furore over my announcement that we currently don’t have any immediate plans for an iPad version, although an iPad version isn’t ruled out altogether in the long-term (other platforms that Scrivener won’t be coming to any time soon include Google Android, Linux and Commodore 64). But even without a dedicated app, Scrivener 2.0 provides some great ways for you to take your Scrivener documents with you for editing on an iPad or iPhone. (Emphasis mine).

This is all very unofficial. I use Ubuntu 10.10, i386 on my laptop and AMD64 on my desktop, but this information should apply to other distros as well.

Manual (i386 & AMD64)

See the Announcements on the Windows Bug Hunt forum for the latest Beta release. As of this writing, it's 1.3. Download the .zip file for Linux. I assume your download goes to ~/Download.

sudo unzip -d /tmp ~/Download/LinuxScrivenerBeta3.zip
sudo mv /tmp/LinuxScrivenerBeta3/LiteratureAndLatte /usr/local
sudo ldd /usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/bin/Scrivener
sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/bin/Scrivener
sudo rm -r /tmp/LinuxScrivenerBeta3

Packages

randywallace has provided packages on the forum. The latest are available here. He provides deb, rpm, and tgz.

Spell Checking

Spell checking worked for some but not others.

i386

Make sure you have the libaspell and libaspell-dev packages installed. That's it.

AMD64

Not so easy. It appears that Scrivener can't use the 64-bit aspell libraries. But, it also seems that Opera had a similar issue on Ubuntu. Based on the Ubuntu help for Opera, I did the following:

Install libaspell and libaspell-dev from the repositories. This'll put the AMD64 versions on your system.

Download the i386 versions of libaspell and libaspell-dev. If you're not using Maverick, search for your release @ http://packages.ubuntu.com. Again, I assume you downloaded to ~/Downloads.

cd ~/Downloads
dpkg -x libaspell15_0.60.6-4ubuntu1_i386.deb ./libaspell
dpkg -x libaspell-dev_0.60.6-4ubuntu1_i386.deb ./libaspell-dev

You have a choice now. You can install to Scrivener's lib directory:

sudo cp -d ./libaspell/usr/lib/libaspell* /usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/lib/
sudo cp -d ./libaspell-dev/usr/lib/libaspell* /usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/lib/

Or you can install to /usr/lib32 (which is what I did):

sudo cp -d ./libaspell/usr/lib/libaspell* /usr/lib32/
sudo cp -d ./libaspell-dev/usr/lib/libaspell* /usr/lib32/

In either /usr/lib32 or /usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/lib, you should wind up with:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    936 2010-11-24 16:19 /usr/lib32/libaspell.la
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     19 2010-11-24 16:19 /usr/lib32/libaspell.so -> libaspell.so.15.1.4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     19 2010-11-24 16:18 /usr/lib32/libaspell.so.15 -> libaspell.so.15.1.4
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 603852 2010-11-24 16:18 /usr/lib32/libaspell.so.15.1.4

My original forum post is here.

Install the Tutorial

The Linux zip file is provided without the Tutorial project. Here's how you can add it. This requires an install of the Windows Beta, either in Wine or on Windows box:

1. In the Windows install, go to: C:\Program Files\Scrivener
2. In that directory, you'll find a folder called: Tutorial.scriv
3. Copy that entire folder to the bin directory of your Linux Scrivener install. This might be/usr/local/LiteratureAndLatte/binor /opt/scrivener_beta/bin depending on if you installed from scratch or used one of the packages from @randywallace.
4. Make sure the Tutorial.scriv directory and all its files/subdirectories are owned by root:
   chown -R root:root Tutorial.scriv
5. Start Scrivener, go to Help -> Open Tutorial, and choose a place to save the Tutorial project.

Tutorial.scriv is not distributed in the Linux zip. I assume there's a good reason, so do the above at your own risk.

Well, that's it for now. Enjoy!

I decided to create my own templates based on his guidelines and offer them here for all to use. I emailed Mr. Shunn several times over the past year to ask permission to post these, and never received a response. I decided to go ahead and offer them anyhow, and if Mr. Shunn objects, I will remove them.

Shunn has three format guidelines: Short Story, Novel, and Poem. While I write poetry for my own amusement, I don't try to market it, so my templates only include Short Story and Novel. If there's enough interest in a Poem template, I'll add it.

Instructions

1. Download the zip: Shunn OpenOffice Templates
2. Extract to any directory. You should see two files: "Shunn Novel Format.ott" and "Shunn Short Story Format.ott"
3. In OpenOffice Writer, select File >> Templates >> Organize from the menu.
4. In the left-hand pane, double-click "My Templates" from the list.
5. On the right-hand side, select Commands >> Import Templates....
6. Browse to the extracted files and select one. It should now appear in the left-hand pane under "My Templates".
7. Repeat steps 5 and 6, selecting the other file.

That's it! You should now be able create a new document by selecting File >> New >> Templates and Documents. You should now have two new templates listed!

I am also working on a set of templates for Microsoft Word since I sometimes use it as well.

Leave comments if you have questions or suggestions for improvement!

None of that is particularly interesting, but they're facts that lay the groundwork for what's been on my mind lately. Every professional writer develops their own flavor of discipline, without which they would be unable to sustain professional standing.  It's actually pretty common among most successful people regardless of profession to develop a habit around their chosen work.  What I've been interested in is how writers measure their progress?

Last term I measured my progress in terms of word count.  It seems reasonable since the publishing industry is largely word count driven.  Every submission guideline includes a word-count limit.  The industry has accepted word-counts attached to novels in each genre.  For instance, horror novels range around 300-400 pages, but an epic fantasy comes closer to 700 pages.

What I found, when I measured word count, was that I spent too much time generating words to reach that count.  It became too easy to wander on the pages, adding words here and there to meet a necessary but arbitrary goal of 500 words per day.  I did pretty well--although Stephen King recommends shooting for at least 1000 per day.  But I had to ditch a lot of it due to the bad behavior that specific goal encouraged.

For this term, I've opted to measure my progress in terms of pages, a page being roughly equal to 250 words.  My goal is to write 4 pages per day, or 1000 words per day to align with King's recommendation.  If you're familiar with On Writing, you'll know that King actually counts a page as 200 words, but for my purpose 4 is as good a stepping stone as 5.  I'll ratchet my goal up another notch next term.

Does it really matter?  I put some thought into this over my break, and these past few weeks have shown my hunch correct.  Yes, I write better when my goal is page count over word count.  I focus better on the story and don't worry at all about producing dense copy.  Before, I would work in extra words.  But now, I can write whole pages of dialog, which tends to be pretty sparse in terms of words per page, and still make my goals.  I just don't care, because a page is a page.

In addition, it helps to remember that word count for a publisher is really a means of estimating number of printable pages.  They take the word count, divide by around 250 (I think this varies), and arrive at page count.  Novelists don't get paid by the word, and I wouldn't want paid that way anyhow.  My goal is to write well-told stories with efficient, emotionally charged language, not drudge on for miles, taxing both the reader and myself by counting every step along the way.