Resources for NaNoWriMo

Thank you Ray for starting this thread.

There are so many posts on the main forums regarding resources, technology and tips that it is easy to get bogged down and many of us just don't have the time to wade through them. I wanted to bring attention to two offers from Scrivener and Storyist.

Scrivener is offering a 20% discount for all NaNoWriMo participants OR an extended trial license good through December 7th. For all participants who reach 50K they are offering a 50% discount of the regular price of $39.95. The software requires Mac OSX Tiger or above.

Storyist is offering a 25% discount off the regular price of $59.00. If you want to try the software through November just send them a quick email asking for an extended trial version that will be good through the first week of December. Their email is info@storyist.com. Again, this is a Mac product.

Of course yWriter for Windows 98 and above is always free and comes highly recommended.

If anyone knows of any other free or discounted software that you can provide links to, please add them here!

Best,

Susan

2006: The Scrapbook
2007: Leaving Lucy
2008: Monarch
2009: Unnamed

Me again.

I just wanted to mention two more programs that might benefit those of us who suffer from fibromyalgia, arthritis, MS or some other illness or condition that might prevent or hinder our typing success during NaNoWriMo. These are Dragon Naturally Speaking (PC) and MacSpeech Dictate (Mac). Both are designed to convert the spoken word to text through the use of a USB headset or USB wireless headset which is included with the software. The price tags run between $200 and $350 depending on your choice of headset and as far as I know they do not offer a trial version.

I have not yet tried either product but have read great reviews. I am seriously considering making the wireless purchase over the next couple of days and if I do I will definitely let you know what I think. I know quite a few of you suffer through the month of November pushing yourselves through the pain as well as the novel. This just might be the relief you are looking for.

Please let me know if you have worked Dragon or MacSpeech. I'd like to know what you think!

Best,

Susan

2006: The Scrapbook
2007: Leaving Lucy
2008: Monarch
2009: Unnamed

A friend of mine pointed me at this resource http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html which is a free, yeah FREE, editor for writers which seems to nicely separate things into categories ... so you can keep track of all sorts of things as you write. I don't know how well it works but it certainly looks cool.

http://spitzenpopper.blogspot.com/2009/10/tools-of-writing-craft.html is my blog entry at Spitzenpopper about it. So you can check it out, at least what the operating screen looks like. I've downloaded and installed it but I have not really used it yet. Looks promising.

"How do I know what I think until I see what I type."

I've used ywriter before, but I really prefer this new program I found: pagefour. It's pitched as the best PC alternative by the Scrivener folks, and Kate (arrowsforpens), who has Scrivener, took a look at it and confirmed that it's fairly similar. The basic download is free, but upgrades cost money.

Peace,
Maggie

NaNo 07: If You Give a Nerd a Superpower... (unfinished, 10k)
NaNo 08: Mayve & the Mirrorworld (unfinished, 26k)
NaNo 09: Hover Through the Fog & Filthy Air

I just learned that Liquid Story Binder will be going on sale November 1st @ 50% off for all users. It's like Scrivener & Storyist except it's for the PC.
have no clue how to do the linky things, so I'll just post this link :) :
http://www.blackobelisksoftware.com/

Thanks Maggie ... I'll check pagefour out. I'm likely to end up just using Word since I'm so used to writing in that. I do like the idea of having an integrated writing tool that has places for character development notes, scene notes, plot notes all integrated. That's seem intuitively helpful. But since I've mostly done non-fiction before I've not had a call for it, so this will be interesting.

Cheers, Ray

"How do I know what I think until I see what I type."

I personally just use Open Office. It is a lot like MS Word but with the distinct advantage of being free. It can read and save to most commonly used document formats, including pdf.

I use Open Office on my net book because I didn't want to spring for another copy of Word. I also use notepad and wordpad when I don't want to be bothered with formatted text or when I want to cut the text into a program editor later.

FREE is a major advantage wherever it occurs and frankly I feel jerked around by Microsoft as often as not. The latest embodiment of Word (2007) annoys the hell out of me because they've moved so much stuff around that they destroyed a good deal of the proficiency I'd built up using it for the past decade. That isn't taking care of your customers.

But I really don't care what tool I use for saving the text as long as it connects to the keyboard and has a reasonable user interface. The ability to shift easily to fiction writing note taking seems like it may be a significant advantage when you're really working hard on something like a novel.

Cheers, Ray

"How do I know what I think until I see what I type."

I use OpenOffice as well and love it! I ended up finding it after I lost my 5th or 6th story while using Word and having it crash and not able to recover what I'd saved. OpenOffice rarely crashes and there are times when I'll have 6 or more stories open at once! Free is fantastic!

I downloaded YWriter and YEdit *which are both spacejock software* but find myself having difficulty understanding it. I don't know if it is me or what the actual problem is but I am planning on checking it out more in depth in January when there's less pressure! LOL I'm also going to download and try the two other programs mentioned in here to see if they might be helpful for me!

Now, my helpful resource for NaNoWriMo that I must share! There is this website that I found saves me on those days when I really don't have any sort of motivation at all whatsoever to write. http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html If you stop typing it flashes a pink and then a darker pink and then if you sit still without typing it flashes a dark red. You can choose how many words you need to write and a time limit. If you meet your word count goal you hear a really cool trumpet Ta Da sound! Once you meet your goal, you can keep writing of course but you can also stop, click the 'done' button at the top of the page and come back later. It takes you to another page where you have a cool icon/avatar/picture that has your goal and time it took you to reach it. There is an auto copy and save button but they say it isn't always reliable so I do a copy and paste at the bottom where it shows what you wrote.

I just did it and wrote 304 words in 7 minutes. I paused and saw the flashing pink/redness and it scared me. I wanted to see what happened if I stopped but then I wanted to see if I could reach my goal! LOL I wanna say it will flash and buzz if you sit too long without typing. You can set different times, different word counts, and they give you different settings to use that can go easy on your or be super strict on you if you have a serious deadline...like say 1667 words on November 30th at 10:00 PM to reach 50,000. It will not let you stop typing!! Oh and I just noticed it gives you the option to 'tweet' your results! Okay, just to let you know, I did it again in the Evil Kamikaze mode where it takes a word at a time away if you stop typing for I think 10 seconds. The pink/red gets darker and darker and poof, if you wait too long your words just disappear! No buzzing sound though but I think they might want to add that because it would add to the scariness of the flashing red and disappearing words!

I've got to run now. Stomach is growling, I'm in need of caffeine, working on notes, figuring out music, and picking out quotes for inspiration so I can win NaNoWriMo again this year!! Not to mention the laundry, dishes and various other things I have to finish daily! lol I hope my rambling helped.

Peace, Love, and Giggles,
Deanna

"In a weak moment, I have written a book..." ~~ Margaret Mitchell

http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html I went and tried out the writeordie thingie and it was great fun. I may use it when I'm doing my NaNoWriMo writing since it is so much fun. It's just fun as a recreational thing. Thanks a lot Deanna -- that made my day.
Cheers, Ray

"How do I know what I think until I see what I type."

I just looked it up. Interesting. Do you use it and do you like it? Wondering if it works for you and if it is easy to set up and go. What do you think? cat
This posting is for schneirj regarding Write or Die (dr. wicked) and for devilzsangel regarding Liguid Story Binder.
Thank you. cat

I was planing on using OpenOffice for NaNoWriMo, but it isn't counting words correctly. For some reason the version I am using is counting some of the quotation marks as whole words by themselves, and therefore falsely boosting my word count. So I started looking for other programs and came across abiword, which I am liking so far. It is a free program. It will be interesting to see how much I like it at the end of the month.

I wrote my first novel in Abiword (it was about 100K words). The one thing I remember was that it didn't handle single file novels very well. I ended up breaking that novel into multiple chunks of about 7K words each.

Right now I'm using yWriter 5, which I really like. I've used it before (I wrote my last novel in yWriter 4) and I really like how it handles things.

When was the last time you used it? My novel is over 7 thousand words and I haven't noticed any problems. In addition I have opened novel length files into and not really noticed any problem. I did actually turn off the grammar check because it was taking way too long to analyse the file.