The Thumb Always Strikes Twice

January 22, 2011 in Writing Misadventures | 2 comments

I touch type.

I’m not a speed demon but I’m not bad, either. My fingers dance around the keyboard with a gentle and loving familiarity. Being that I literally type for a living, I’m as proficient as you’d think I need to be.

That being so, I’m having a really hard time retraining myself to only put one space after a period. I knew it was going to be an ordeal, but I thought I’d lick it in just a few days. Alas, it appears I will be battling this for quite some time. I now have to think about the typing instead of thinking about the words, and having my fingers deftly translate the thoughts to keystrokes.

I know this is a rather mundane thing to share, but I felt compelled to do so anyway.

Here’s sending you all my gratitude for reading this. Without you, dear reader, I’m a mute. I’m beginning to wonder if I rely to much on this form of expression.

IN A RELATED NOTE: I was just interviewed this week for my employer’s global magazine. This publication — even though it’s internal — has a circulation surpassing many external magazines, and they’re all my peers. I was so nervous during the interview that my voice quavered and I did a lot of babbling and stammering. You see, I’m perfectly comfortable turning the spotlight on anyone around me, but having it turned on me? Yikes. I  haven’t been interviewed since the NY Times did a piece on my former Time-Warner publisher back in 2001 — and that didn’t turn out so well.

So, yes, I’m a bit nervous.

Killing the Second Space after a Period

January 18, 2011 in Writing Misadventures, Writing Tips | 2 comments

Setting in Microsoft Word 2010About an hour ago I finished reading an article on Slate called “Space Invaders” that calls for the death of the second space after a period.

It pissed me off and I wanted to write a scathing rebuttal, but thought – no, someone in the comments must have beaten me to it.  Everyone in publishing knows that there are two spaces after a period.  It’s standard form.  Strunk and White said so.  Right?

Wrong.  I’m glad I checked.  No one brought up an example from The Elements of Style in the comments that showed proper spacing after a period, and so I had to go and look myself.  I went through the book front to back and came up empty handed.  So I consulted my other handy writing guidebook, the Yahoo Style Guide for online writing.

Nothing.  I have nothing to back me up, but Farhad Manjoo – the author of the Slate article – has plenty to back him up.  And so I am wrong.

This sucks.  First my astrological sign changed (apparently I’m no longer a Scorpio) and now I find that everything I’ve ever typed is wrong? 

Including this article?

Apparently. 

So I thought, and thought, and thunk and thunk, kind of like Winnie the Pooh wandering back and forth trying to remember where his secret stash of honey is, and finally came up with where I learned the golden rule of “two spaces after a period.”

1974.  Webster Junior High School.  Typing class.

Oddly enough this came to my attention a few weeks ago, because I’d noticed that on one of my websites if a line breaks at the end of a sentence, the next line has an errant indent from the second space.  I’d assumed a problem in the formatting, but now I have to come to accept that the problem is not with the website template.  The problem is that I’m using typewriter rules in a world where typewriters all sit unused behind glass museum displays.

This is going to be hard.  Over 35 years of touch-typing reflex tells my thumb to bounce twice on the space bar after touching the period button.  Like just now.  And here too.

The funny thing is that if I type a period in Microsoft Word and follow it with only one space, Microsoft helpfully puts a squiggly underline below it to remind me to add the second one.  I found the setting in Word – it defaults to two spaces.

With some sadness I set it to one.

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Where the magic happens…

December 26, 2010 in Check it out! | 2 comments

…writing magic, that is.

- Posted on the go using BlogPress from my iPhone

Scrivener 2

October 30, 2010 in Writing Resources | No comments

I’ve wanted a Mac for years. Just a week or so ago everything came together, the planets aligned, and a MacBook I really wanted came out in my price range while I actually had the money to buy it. But that’s not what this is about. I’m writing this to sing the praises of Scrivener 2 for the Mac.

Scrivener is the perfect writing system for novelists.

I’ve been eyeing it for years but of course couldn’t use it because my computers were all Microsoft Windows based. Ironic that just when I finally get a Mac, and now can finally get and use Scrivener, they came out with a version for Windows as well.

Had I not already tried the Mac version, I would have loved the Windows version — even if it is still a bit buggy (it’s a Beta, so that’s to be expected). But the Mac version is more advanced and has more features, and at this point at least, blows the Windows version away.

What Scrivener does, the value it adds, is that it keep track of all the little details you need to gather, create, and remember from your first sentence all the way through typing THE END at the bottom. In that respect its much like using Microsoft OneNote alongside Word, but after a lot of customization. You could in fact duplicate this functionality to some extent using those two Microsoft products.

But you see, Scrivener doesn’t end there. All these features are already integrated and ready for you to tweak to your own working style (it never locks you into any pre-defined writing method — you do it your way, the way with which you’re comfortable). But that’s just the tip of the iceberg! Scrivener can also help you create an outline and synopsis while you’re writing, bit by bit, rearranging itself as you rearrange your text. Or visa-versa, you can rearrange your outline and it will rearrange your text.

But that’s not all! (I feel like I’m pitching a Ronco product on late night TV.) While you’re actually writing, when you don’t want to be distracted by all these otherwise awesome features, you click a button and BOOM it’s just you and your page.

At this point it’s pure word processor, with only the features you need to put those words onto paper. Or, um, screen.

(In a Ronco voice) But wait! There’s more!

AFTER you’ve completed your manuscript, after it’s helped you all the way through the struggle of first, second, third drafts, the fun is not over. With a few simple clicks it will format your entire manuscript in whatever way you want — it includes (but you’re not locked into) pre-defined industry standard formatting. So click, click, BOOM, and you have a suddenly formatted professional-looking manuscript ready to be printed, or saved to one of many formats — including RTF, PDF, or Word.

But wait! THERE’S MORE! If you’re into the new wave of publishing and have no interest in going the traditional route, this will also format and save your manuscript as an eBook completely ready and formatted for the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and many other eBook readers. Click, click, BOOM, you’re e-published!

Even after all this, I’ve just scratched the surface. Scrivener 2 also has features to help you write plays, screenplays, articles, and other types of manuscripts. Oh, and it has a character name generator too. How cools is that?

So how much is all this, then? $400?

No. $45. That’s right, all this for only $45.

Find out all the latest about Scrivener for both Mac and Windows over at LiteratureAndLatte.com.

For you technophiles out there, you can read more about my new MacBook Air over on GroovyGizmo.com.

Millea Kenin, where did you go?

October 20, 2010 in Fellow Writers | 4 comments

Originally Posted March 30, 2007 – Brought back to top because I was just thinking about her.  Millea, you are not forgotten…

Dear Millea,

This is a letter I should have written years ago, but alas, it would have already been too late.

I have you to thank for the novel I have published. It was you, back in the days of Owlflight Magazine, who sent that initial story back to me and said, “Jerry, this really should be a novel!”

You were the only editor in my fledgling days who I would simply write letters to, not even to send a story. You always wrote back. You were always so nice. I have always remembered you fondly.

I turned that story into a novel and it did sell, and was published, but you never got to see it. I lost touch with you long ago. Then today I decide I really have to thank you for this. So I went to that global extension of the human mind, Google, and looked you up.

Too late. Way too late. You passed away over ten years ago.

My heart sank. Suddenly, too late, I wanted to know more about you, and so I Googled for more. All I found was page after page of nothing. Your name is everywhere on lists, publication credits, and the mention of an obituary in Locust. I saw that you have a daughter in New York, and that she graduated and is married.

But the one bio page I found for you is blank.

That is not acceptable.

There is a void in the group mind that must be filled. We know you were an editor, an author, and a poet. We have lists of your works. But that’s not enough.

Here, right now, with this missive, I want to release into the group mind that you were also a wonderful person. Kind, artistic, caring, and nurturing … even to a strange kid who kept sending you crappy stories.

Ironic. Now that I know that you’re gone, I miss you. Because it’s too late to thank you.

Please someone out there fill in that blank biography page.

Please.

A Zen Relationship with Writing

October 14, 2010 in Eleven Days On Earth, What's New? | 1 comment

41543_570687872_7762314_nWell, the novel I’d spend the last three years writing, Eleven Days on Earth, is done.  I’ve decided to go the traditional publishing route with it and am in the process of seeking an agent.  I’ve already struck out with one, and am trying the next.

I have a list of about 30 or so possible candidates.

Meanwhile I’ve had a couple false starts on two other novels, but then I started on one that I hope I’ll be enthusiastic enough about to finish.  So here I am in mid-October, hot and heavy in the beginning of a new manuscript, and it kind of feels like I’m participating in NaNoWriMo.  So it feels like November has come early.

I won’t be participating in National Novel Writing Month, though – well, maybe in spirit – because I’m sure all the NaNoWriMo writers will make their 50,000 words in the space of a month, and I – even with a good head start – will maybe crack 20,000 words by December 1st.

I’ve actually, finally, come around to a kind of Zen relationship with my writing.  When I first began I did it because I loved reading so much that I caught the literary bug, so to speak.  Then I got hooked on those silly, false hopes of fortune and glory, followed later by a desperate phase where I tried to write to a market simply because I wanted to sell.  Now I write merely for the pleasure of it, and I write things that I would really love to read.  That, and I’ve discovered some secrets about storytelling that make the process fun, exciting, and mysterious to even me.

So do I really care if I get an agent?  No.

Do I really care if a big publisher picks up my manuscripts?

No.

I don’t really care anymore.  I just enjoy the process.  The journey.  The thought experiments, the research, and the inner discovery of the absurd and strange things my twisted mind comes up with.  Holy Beer.  Old ladies who throw chainsaws.  Trolls who repair reality.  Goddesses of science and technology.  Evil magicians banned from politics.

That kind of stuff.  I just love it.

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A Tree for my Story

October 3, 2010 in Procrastination Techniques | No comments

So this video is a perfect example of how I’ll procrastinate and not actually write anything.

The Top 5 Best Writing Apps for 2010…

September 28, 2010 in Recently Observed, Writing Resources, Writing Tips | No comments

…as presented by Michael L. Martin Jr.

Manuscript for iPad

September 11, 2010 in Check it out! | No comments

I had such high hopes for this app. It seemed promising. The feature set came across so impressive and useful that I bought it immediately.

Silly me.

The reality is, this is a toy for would-be writers so that they can pretend they’re writing something. Two clues that it’s not actually for professional use:

  1. It gives you a choice of parchment background styles for you to write on.
  2. It presents your manuscript to you as if it’s already published in a hardbound book.

Ergo, this is a wish-fulfillment app, not an actual writing tool.

It could be saved, though. Add the ability to format your text, and improve the export feature so that it gives you a professionally formatted manuscript, and it would actually be useful. I mean, I don’t really have anything against it being on a parchment background, or looking like it’s already hardbound. What does piss me off is that I spent money on it without realizing it won’t do simple — and I mean basic — things like indent your paragraphs and underline words.

For you aspiring writers out there, here’s an important tip: professional publishers like to see their manuscript submissions in a specific format. This app claims to enable you to produce a submittable manuscript within the confines of the app itself, and that is not true.

Until Black Mana Studios fixes at least this basic flaw, there’s no way I can recommend this to anyone who is serious about creating a manuscript on the iPad. Take your money and instead buy Apple’s Pages. It may not come with all the plotting tools, but at least it gives you all the standard, necessary formatting features you’ll need to produce a professional manuscript.

Revisiting Holden Caulfield: Blogger in the Rye

June 25, 2010 in Check it out! | No comments

IMG_0018“Boy, when you’re dead, they really fix you up.  I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river or something.  Anything except sticking me in a goddamn cemetery. People coming and putting a bunch of flowers on your stomach on Sunday, and all that crap. Who wants flowers when you’re dead?  Nobody.”

- The Catcher in the Rye

Through a weird series of events, having to do with some silly quiz a friend and I took online that put its results in our various Twitter streams, both of us were compared to J.D. Salinger.  My friend wasn’t familiar with Salinger, and I was, but only through:

  • Vague memories
  • The fact that Salinger died this year

…so I had to look him up to make sure I was getting the details right.  Which made me revisit him, the author, as a person.  Someone who, when he made it big, totally shunned his fame and turned his back on it.  Here I am pushing fifty, having written most of my life and never making it big, and then there’s this guy who made it big and I learn that was the last thing he wanted.

So suddenly I’m interested in the guy.

I can only barely remember reading his one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, and like most I only read it because of a high school English teacher assigning it in class.  Jeeze, what was I?  Fourteen?  There were no aliens, rocket ships, or time travel involved so reading it was a chore and I’m pretty sure I opted to go the Cliff’s Notes route.

IMG_0019So here it is 2010 and I decide, you know, maybe I should read this novel.  Of course, me being who I am, I hopped on my Kindle and searched.  Nope.  Nothing.  Nada.  Salinger had never authorized it to be interpreted as a Hollywood movie, and it appears he didn’t feel it appropriate to be turned into an ebook, either.  So I had to obtain it the old fashioned way, and order it on Amazon.com.

It cost 10¢ plus $3.99 shipping, and when it arrived I found it full of some high school girl’s handwriting.

(I’m actually having just as much fun reading this anonymous girl’s notes as I am reading the manuscript itself.)

One thing that struck me right away in revisiting this only dimly remembered novel is that it reads exactly like some well-educated kid’s blog.  Not somewhat.  Exactly.  Holden Caulfield, if written today, would be a blogger.  Totally and completely, and my apologies to J.D. Salinger who I know is spinning in his grave at this thought.  But it’s true.

Go back and read this book.  If you’re an avid blog reader or writer, especially if you’ve perused the wit and wisdom of places like LiveJoural, Blogger, or Xanga, you will recognize this writing style immediately.

It makes me wonder which is the chicken, and which is the egg.  Do blogs read like this because most of us were forced to read Catcher in the Rye during our formative teen years?  Or does it read like this because Salinger caught the tone of teen angst perfectly and completely?

Probably the latter, I expect.  Still, it’s distracting, even as it makes the read enjoyable.  And to my utter surprise, this book is worth revisiting, especially looking at it with a more mature eye.

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