I loved this quote from Irish-American novelist J. P. Donleavy:
Writing is a way of turning the unhappiest moments of one’s life into money.
Read other quotes from this article.
A productivity boost for all writers — deleting entire words in a keystroke:
Hot off the presses from Lifehacker headquarters LA (i.e., just discovered this morning in my dining room-cum-office) comes my favorite new keyboard shortcut, Control-Backspace (Windows)/Option-Delete (Mac).
Ctrl-Backspace/Option-Delete will delete the entire word to the left of your cursor in one keystroke, meaning no holding down and waiting to individually delete every letter from Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - the swift shortcut will take care of the whole word in one fell swoop. Source
If you’re like me, you find yourself working on multiple computers, and lugging a USB stick around can be a pain (what if you forget it?). Moreover, what if you lose your ISB stick?
Answer: use Box.net to store your writing documents and have them accessible from any PC or Mac.
This article shows how to connect to Box.net via the Mac Finder, giving you desktop access to a free, mountable 1 Gig online storage account. In a nutshell:
1) Get a box.net account.
2) In the Mac Finder select the GO menu then choose Connect to Server (Or Command-K).
3) Put in the address: www.box.net/dav
4) When it prompts, put in your Box.net username as your name and your Box.net password in the password field.That’s it, look on your desktop. There should be a new connection mounded on your hard drive called dav.
Here’s an article for connecting to Box.net under Windows XP.
The secret is a web protocol called WebDav, which both XP and Mac support, and Box.net now provides as one of their many ways to access your Box.net file storage.
Here are some helpful shortcuts for those of you using Writely to compose your works.
FROM THE EDITOR MENU:
- Ctrl S to Save
- Ctrl K to Insert Link
- Ctrl M to Insert Comment
FROM THE BROWSER:
- Ctrl B to Bold
- Ctrl I to Italicize
- Ctrl-Z to Undo
- Ctrl-Y to Redo
- Ctrl A to Select All
- Ctrl C to Copy
- Ctrl V to Paste
- Ctrl X to Cut
- Ctrl Home to go to the top of the document
- Ctrl End to go to the end of the document
- Ctrl Alt-? to select the next word
- Ctrl Alt-? to select the previous word
OTHER TIPS:
- To count the number of words in your Writely doc, just select “Edit” > “Count Words.”
- Another handy shortcut is Shift Enter. This keyboard combination adds a carriage return that stays only one-line high when you export the document from Writely.
Here is an interesting page-turner technique. James Patterson (www.jamespatterson.com), author of numerous best-selling books, has released the latest installment of the Young Adult series.
In this book (titled School’s Out Forever) there are 142 chapters (yes, 142!). There are only 406 pages. Some chapters are three or five pages; others are only a paragraph or two.
Each scene gets a chapter break. You end up with a lot of white space, but I think this is on purpose. My theory is that by having each scene be a mini-cliff-hanger, and requiring the reader to glance over at a new page or turn to a new page, you create suspense.
A glance at some of his Patterson’s books targeted to adults make me think he does this all the time.
Is this a new trend? A gimmick? Or a valuable tool for thriller writers to create suspense?
More importantly, what do you think publishers think of this technique? Should writers consider this technique when they are preparing their manuscripts?
Let me know your thoughts. Discussion is underway at the Faith*In*Fiction ‘For Writers’ forum where I have also made this post.
Need some help creating some character names? Check out these useful sites that have very interesting tools to generate names and do research on names:
Trying to recall a magical quote from your favorite book? Wondering who else has used the character name ‘John Hoggins’? Google’s new Book Search feature allows you to do this and more.
Try it out at Google Book Search
A great resource for any writer. Common English language mistakes or misconceptions are included in detail. Some examples:
- oversee/overlook
- palate/palette/pallet
- ran/run
- sail/sale/sell
- taken back/taken aback
Much of the content is online here: Common Errors in English
Lot’s of practical tips on becoming a writer, such as:
Stop talking about your novel or short story ideas and start writing. Get in the habit of writing for at least an hour every day, no matter what. One strategy is to get up an hour earlier than you have to, make yourself a cup of coffee and completely focus on your writing.
Read more at 52 Projects
Doing your writing on a Mac? Learn some of these shortcuts to boost your productivity:
Text
?A move to beginning of paragraph
?B move one character back
?D delete character to right
?E move to end of paragraph
?F move one character forward
?K delete text to end of paragraph
?N move to next line
?O insert newline
?P move to previous line
?T transpose characters
?? delete word to left
?? delete word to right
Text Field
?? move one word left
?? move one word right
?? move to beginning of line
?? move to end of line
Text View
?? move up one page
?? move down one page
?? move to beginning of line
?? move to end of line
?? move to beginning of view
?? move to end of view
Read other shortcuts Rixstep
