…as presented by Michael L. Martin Jr.
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:
- It gives you a choice of parchment background styles for you to write on.
- 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.
“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:
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Vague memories
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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.
So 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.
Here’s an interesting bit from Dan Brown’s novel, The Lost Symbol: “Since the days of Michelangelo, sculptors had been hiding the flaws in their work by smearing hot wax into the cracks and then dabbing the wax with stone dust. The method was considered cheating, and therefore, any sculpture “without wax”—literally sine cera—was considered a “sincere” piece of art. The phrase stuck. To this day we still sign our letters “sincerely” as a promise that we have written “without wax” and that our words are true.”
This has been highlighted by 670 Kindle users (and counting), so I can only assume these people are taking Brown’s little literary flight of fancy seriously, as fact.
This is an example of Dan Brown’s wonderful imagination and inventiveness. But that’s not 
where the word “sincerely” came from. I mean, really, how do you go from carving sculptures to writing letters? While the word “sincere” most likely did come from “without wax,” it’s much more likely that the phrase originated from the idea that the writer, having written, is being so honest that s/he is not sealing the envelope.
Remember, they used to close envelopes with a wax seal. So a letter written and not sealed with wax is an “open letter,” for anyone to read. This implies no fear of someone refuting the honesty of what is contained within, thus it is “without wax” or sincere.
I’ve been using Microsoft Word since “Word for Windows 2.0″ and now here I am using version 2010. It’s not the beta version, either, it’s the real thing – because of a deal my company has with Microsoft, I was able to get Office Professional Plus 2010 for a whole $9.95. Can’t beat that. And I have to say I like it.
I like it especially because they’ve come full circle. They’ve eliminated all distractions. It’s practically a blank white window.
I also do a lot of writing using “Pages” on my iPad, and that’s what I like about it, too. A blank white screen. Just start typing.
So, what have I typed on it? Well, pages from manuscripts. Meeting notes. A list or two.
I’m afraid I’m entering into a bit of writer’s block. Haven’t had that for a while. It’s different this time, though – I know what it is. My day job has been satisfying my creative urge quite well, and when I get home, I’m just … done. Yesterday I got a good 1000 words in or so, and I was happy with it. Tonight was a different story. I just wasn’t interested, and when I tried to push myself I started getting that burnt out feeling.
So to heck with it, I thought. I watched some Dr. Who and the first half of the original Torchwood episode.
But anyway, this is supposed to be about Word 2010. I like it. I’m writing this on it – like earlier versions, you can post straight to your blog, just like with Windows Live Writer.
I highly recommend it, especially if you can somehow get it for $9.95.
For every major fiction writing project I complete, I must have another nine that never get done. Some are novels abandoned about 1/3 the way in, some are short stories without endings, and many are nothing more than a blank page with a title on it.
Since I finished the 2nd draft of Eleven Days on Earth, I’ve started and abandoned two more novels, and am now trying to work on a third, and beginning to get bored with that one as well.
It used to be that I would refuse to give up and plow through them anyway. Those ones I forced myself to finish even though I’d lost interest in them, those are the flops that litter my writer’s trunk.
I had to ask myself, finally, why the hell am I writing these manuscripts? The answer inevitably came back to me that I spend all this time and energy on them because I enjoy it.
And if I don’t enjoy it, I shouldn’t spend time on it.
I enjoyed Eleven Days all the way through. It was fun to write, and I’m getting word back that it’s fun to read, too. That’s exactly what I want to hear.
I guess my point is, false starts are okay – take them in stride. Learn from them. And steal bits and pieces that you like and put them in other things you’re working on.
None of that effort is really wasted. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself.
I’m happy to announce that I have an anthology of my stories out and available for the Amazon Kindle.
“God, Time, Perception & Sexy Androids” features 27 of my short stories, written over the last 30 years or so – all completely revised and updated for this book.
Trying to come up with a title for this thing, we batted several ideas around, considered using the name of one of the short stories, but then finally I kind of summed up a thread I found among the majority of the tales.
There’s a lot of what-if stories dealing with religion and/or the occult, several time travel fantasies, and a good dose of sexy androids. And the one major thing I seem to explore among just about every story is the mystery of perception – what’s the difference between what we perceive, and actual reality? Is there a difference? Does our perception of something actually affect reality? Can we change reality? Are there other realities?
Or, basically, “What is reality?”
That’s been my favorite question to explore since I was a teenager. That and all the facets of reality – free will, destiny, synchronicity, and ultimately existence itself.
And, also, what is perception? Do we alone perceive things? If we program a machine to observe and recognize, is it truly perceiving?
This pretty much marks the end of my short story writing career. I know you should never say never, but unless this anthology actually takes off, I’m going to concentrate on both longer, and conversely much shorter, works of fiction: novels and flash.
I’ve rediscovered my fountain pens. Smoother than even gel pens, they feel better in the hands because they’re heavy and of substance. Plus they’re just darn retro-cool.
Macmillan strong-armed Amazon into raising prices on big press versions of e-books. I disagree with Amazon’s optimism that other major publishers won’t follow Macmillan — I think they will.
Amazon’s Kindle Team says, “We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.”
That is exactly what I’ve been thinking. Let the major publishers raise e-book prices. It’s already established that lower priced e-books sell far, far better, and there’s more to be made from the volume sales. Big publishing’s big prices will drive price-conscious e-book readers to try reading lesser known small press titles.
Being that I’m starting to venture myself into small press e-book publishing, this is all good news to me.
UPDATE: Funny how this kind of looks like some weird parody of the new Apple iPad.
Call me crazy, but I’ve been looking forward to this exact gizmo since I first replaced my last PDA with my first iPhone.
Now all we need is a word processor on the iPhone that has true spell checking, and I’d be able to work on my novels on the go again without having to lug a laptop around.
Rumor has it that Microsoft’s Office for iPhone (if it really exists) is due to make an appearance about the same time this goes to market.
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Just in case you’re curious… |
