The technical delights of being on holiday

The Windmill - Wimbledon Common

A couple of years ago, just before we were about to go on holiday the Frog joked about how I would cope for a whole month without the internet. At the time I felt very justified reminding him of  this comment every time I caught him on his Blackberry. But that was before (cue dramatic ta da da dah music). This summer I went to London fully aware that I would continue to work on my WIP even though I left without a USB key or huge wad of papers.  

The Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

If somehow you have not heard of the wonders of the simple program Dropbox, it's a little box, somewhere in a technical cloud where you can drop all your files. There was a bit of a hooha this summer as they changed their terms and conditions, but I for one am far too enamoured to be jumping ship just yet. If it means that anywhere I go I can have access to my WIP, then I for one am happy.

Just before I left for London I had a bit of a light bulb moment about my WIP, which resulted in me changing my MC. In the past this would have been bloody horrendous, but I have to say that Scrivener has revolutionised my life. OK to begin with I thought it was a huge problem and had a bit of a panic all over Twitter, Litopia and FB, but after a deep breath, I read all the index cards and saw the light. What happened was that I wrote some new chapters to establish the new MC, popped them into the right place (just like that) and then all I had to (all I had to do) was revise the old chapters to change the POV from old MC to new MC. Sweet huh?

Siena Cathdral

So with this in mind I took my laptop to Italy. I know, I took my laptop to Italy, but, I was pretty good. I only worked when the bubba was having (a two hour) nap, and we went to Assisi, very briefly to Perugia, Siena and Arezzo and I revised all those chapters I was telling you about and ended up right back where I was before I changed the MC. You see there can be balance. The FIL did keep commenting though that next time we went on holiday it would be good if everybody left the computers behind as between fifteen of us there were six laptops and four iPhones!

Which brings me onto the last of my techie delights: the iPhone. It's a phone, I can read the news, find the nearest boulangerie and (we checked today) even measure how loudly I snore, but more importantly I have the Dropbox app on it which means I can read my WIP on twelve hour car drives, send chapters off for critting, receive e mails with chapters and even tap out whole notes with story ideas I have while on those twelve hour car rides.

Piazza del Campo - Siena

Another thing I did on the iPhone was read an article about Lucy Kellaway's new idea called: 'worliday'. The idea is that people go on holiday and spend a part of each day working.To be honest when I read it, the whole idea just seemed ridiculous and reading some of the comments I realised I'm not the only one, but then I reread the last line:

In my suitcase will be my sunglasses and Wellington boots - as you never know with the weather up there - as well as my Blackberry and computer.

I didn't exactly go on a 'worliday' as a 'wriliday' with my family and pals: Dropbox, Scrivener and iPhone. Personally, I kind of recommend it.

Miranda's new name

Since Tuesday night I have been wandering around like a mad person muttering under my breath. Morgane and ... Morgane and ... Morgane and ... No, that sounds like a bag. Mmm, no that reminds me of something else. No, no, no, no that won't do!

So I'll backtrack a little and explain. In my wip, I have a character called Miranda. I'm quite attached to the name, but Miranda shares a lot of her scenes (well, all but two) with Morgane. Can you see the problem there? The thing is, I realised this when writing the scenes. Even I mixed up the names, I even changed her name to Rosemary briefly, but she wasn't a Rosemary, she was a Miranda. But my reader's are having difficulty with Morgane and Miranda, so I think Miranda has to go (and yes, it has to be Miranda, there is no question of changing Morgane).

If you are wondering where I got the names from, well... While I was messing about with Scrivener the other day, I noticed that version 1.6 has a new function: name generator. It can either make up some random names, or you can put in a meaning and it comes up with a list. My word! This program just gets better and better.

So, here's the deal: you guys click on one of the choices below and I can't promise that I will choose the most voted for answer, but it will damn well help me make up my mind and I'll tell you on Wednesday... maybe, if I've made up my mind. Meanwhile, I'm going to stop muttering. 

NaNoWriMo Day 13

What's going on? 
Well, I haven't actually done any writing as such today, what with it being 8 o'clock in the morning. The thing is I did do some writing last night. In case I haven't mentioned this (enough times) I am on my own this weekend. So for the first time in just over two years I can totally have a lie in, I have absolutely no reason to get up and at 7 o'clock I realise that I'm actually awake and planning a scene in my head that I haven't written and will actually need to be shoved in quite early on. At that point, I realised that even if my arms and legs were not conscious, my head was, so I moved my body grabbed my laptop a couple of cables and came back to bed. Well, if I can't sleep in, at least I'm not going to get out of bed!

So two things and I really will try to keep it to two things today. Firstly, after I finished writing last night it suddenly dawned on me that I was basically over the midway hump and therefore careering towards the end of my wip. A bit of quick math and I realised there was a great possibility that with the way I was going I wasn't going to hit 50,000 words with this wip. There was a moment of disappointment when I realised I wasn't going to be a NaNo winner, but like I say that was short, because then I realised that I'm going to get this wip out. It's not complicated, no, what I mean is convoluted. It's got a manageable number of characters, and unless I do nothing but sit on my laurels in December and January, I do have a chance of achieving goal number two. All I will say about goal number two is I need fifteen well written pages.

But then I started to panic. What if the book is too short? Because let's face it, I don't know about you guys, but when I edit, I slash and there are already some scenes that need to be GONE. Which doesn't mean that they won't get put elsewhere, but what I've taken a chapter to TELL, will be SHOWN elsewhere.

A bit of internet research and I realised that my word count is going to be good as a first time author, but in December I really need to decide who I'm aiming for. I know that my wip is not YA, but then I don't think it's traditionally Middle Grade (8-12) either. It seems that there is a new 'Tween' audience of 10-14 year olds and I guess I'm there.  Either way, the word count is OK, so no worries there.

So to the second point. The other day I mentioned Scrivener quickly. It has been developed for a Mac (grr...) but they are running a BETA test for Windows with the Windows version coming out in 2011. If you are signed up for NaNo you can get a free trial of the Mac version until December 1st and if you are a winner than you will get a discount coupon for it. If you are a Windows user you can use it until December 12th, when you can then download another BETA version.

But what is it? Well the link explains a lot better than I will, but I'll try. So, I've used the analogy of a writer's shed, but I've never had a writer's shed, so I'll try and explain it the best way I can.

• First there was the outline written on green post its and stuck on the corkboard in order.
• Next came some sketches of locations and pictures that would help with those locations, plans of a yacht. Stuff like that. 
• Then there was the notebook. It's almost full with notes, timelines, ideas, back stories, motivation letters and little 'ooh aah' moments that I get on the bus. I then come home and write dates all over the green post its, so that when I'm writing that bit I know where to look in the notebook. 
• Then there is a word document called notes. This contains links to that wonderful, if slightly unreliable, resource wikipedia, where most of my research is done. OK there is other stuff as well, a lot of street view and a pdf file for a German submarine makers site. 
• Then there are the chapters written on Word. 
• Then there is the Word Master Document where I put all the individual files together (sometimes adding the same chapter twice and making my word count jump significantly, so that first I get excited and then I realise, who am I kidding, you know you didn't write that much).

OK, well Scrivener puts all that stuff together in one place, and formats your work into a manuscript automatically at the end. In addition, it has this funky little keywords function, so that you can then search through your wip so that you can call up the chapters with a certain character or location in it. Like I said, I can't use it on the bus (unless you have an i pad Father Christmas), but it's full of possibilities, especially on the mac where it has all the features.

So now to whip that wip into shape.

Today Ella is making connections, connections. She's just realised who has Morgane. Now the problem is how are they going to get her.  

Leo is on a pretty low ebb. For a little guy who is usually pretty chirpy, even in the face of dire adversity, he's realised that if Ella is right than the Mearh are in big, big trouble. But Ella could be wrong? Right?

And Will is totally off track and wondering what's going on between Leo and Ella. He's little, she's tall. He's weird, she's pretty cool, even if he is a bit biased. And what about his cephalopod? Travis has gone off on a tangent instead of trying to find the ROV.

My word count is at 23,537 words.

Check me out here.