How many people want to write a book?

[yvanleterrible]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Sigh... vacations... I remember them fondly....

I don't get "vacations" anymore, I get "family vacations" which are not at all the same thing, and not conducive to writing.

I commiserate with you as to your longings Neko. My 21 and 24 year old kids have finally left the house, (although not my wallet) there is finally peace in the house. Now if I could just get my cats to leave the computer's mouse alone.

[bowerbird]

when your story decides it needs to be told,
it will keep you up in the middle of the night,
grab you by the throat, and force you to write.

until then, you don't really need to worry about it.
just maintain a nice white lie you'll do it "some day".

-bowerbird

p.s. it also does no good to "decide" it'll be a novel.
when it comes, it will tell you what kind of story it is.
truth be told, a straightforward recounting of your life
might be more interesting and meaningful to you, and
almost certainly those (children?) who follow you in time.
we are on the brink of a future that will be very different;
communiques that accurately relate our days will fascinate.

[Kosst Amojan]

I've written about a dozen short stories, the longest about 50 page. It's hard and I would love to write a novel but I barely have enough time to get 8 hours of sleep much less do any writing.

[Bob Russell]

Here's a very interesting short article about writing a book from Smallpress Blog...
http://smallpress.typepad.com/index/..._i_write_.html

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by Bob Russell

Here's a very interesting short article about writing a book from Smallpress Blog...
http://smallpress.typepad.com/index/..._i_write_.html

Yes, that covers the bases pretty well. If writing was easy, everyone would be doing it. To do it, you have to understand how involved it is, and want to do it anyway.

[Anchoku]

Please excuse the thread necromancy but I thought I'd chime in and say the book I'm working very slowly on is 89K words with another 38K words of future chapters ready to integrate. I'm doing this to improve my english grammar rather than get published so you can rest easy knowing I won't inflict anything that tedious on this forum.

[mogui]

Originally Posted by emkay

Have you tried tiddlywiki? http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
It's a really nice wiki app which runs in a single webpage, using javascript. No web server required! I haven't checked compatibility with the iLiad browser.

I am quoting from this https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ght=tiddlywiki thread where firekat wanted to find a way to create flashcards in a Rex Iliad. I got turned on to the tiddlywiki idea and have since created several special-purpose web pages.

Why am I writing about it in this thread? The tiddlywiki idea is a writer's dream. First of all, it is a single web page that runs within a browser that supports javascript. Firefox works well, and any reader that supports Firefox will run a tiddlywiki.

I prefer to use the monkeypirate variant of the tiddlywiki. It gives a nicer appearance which can be easily customized, and it provides very powerful tagging features for better organization. You can have one hosted here: http://tiddlyspot.com/ where you can have your own tiddlywiki site for free!

After you have gotten your page on tiddlyspot, you can download it to your computer with one simple click. That is where the fun begins. You can copy the wiki page to anywhere on your computer you like. Then you can use the different copies for different purposes. I use one as a general organizer for ideas, website links, photos, and more.

You must try it to understand how effortlessly you can enter new information and organize it. A novelist might start with a page (they are called tiddlers) that contains a plot outline. Each entry would be clickable and would bring up another page. You can envision the wiki as a kind of cluster diagram where ideas develop by radiating out from the center. See attached image.

The result of the development of this organization of your novel is that you create an outline that is organized much like an idea cluster, or idea map. You can have auxiliary pages in which you develop characters, others where you clip notes and links from the web that support your ideas.

Copying the content of a tiddler is trivial, and can be done with a click and a keystroke. Thus text can be copied to a word processor for draft production. Ideas and segments of your story appear as links on the page. It is easy to move them around to re-arrange your story.

With this sort of organization mechanism, ideas grow quickly and easily. if you are stuck in one area, you can easily work on another. The interface is intuitive and actually quite attractive. You can change the visual theme of your tiddlywiki to reflect the nature of the story, idea, or collection you are working on.

I use one tiddlywiki just to organize all of the web development ideas I am working on. I have another all set up to present family photos. Yet another organizes my wife's business presentation. A tiddlywiki starts off at about 300K in size. It is easy to carry on a USB flash stick, so you can have your "organizer" wherever you go.

I have one set up to present business information including photos and descriptions and links. I have installed it to autorun off a USB stick using Portable Firefox. Now I can plug it into someone's computer and the tiddlywiki page just pops up and is immediately usable.

Here http://tiddlywiki.com/ is the original tiddlywiki site where you can download a copy for yourself. Alternatively, if you get a wiki from tiddlyspot http://tiddlyspot.com/ you have a choice of five different variants. You can mouseover the question marks to see a tooltip, or click the question mark to see a demo of the variant. There is help here http://tiddlywikiguides.org/index.ph...dlyWiki_Guides and much more available if you search around a bit.

One of the great features of the tiddlywikis is that you can import tiddlers (pages) from another tiddlywiki through a simple one-step operation. This means you can move data between your tiddlywikis at will, and make them avaiulable to other people too. You can also import many plugins that will enhance your tiddlywiki.

If you get your tiddlywiki from tiddlyspot, you can always save it back to the web anytime you wish. This is great for sharing information around the world. I have used tiddlyspot to make a genealogy site for my extended family. I host my photos on ImageShack, so all I put in my tiddlers is links to the photos. It is all very easy to do.

You don't need to be a webmaster to create your site with a tiddlywiki. There are no website creation skills needed at all. The tiddlywiki is simply a user tool for organization and presentation. It is easier to use and more powerful than other mechanisms for organization and presentation. In my opinion it is a big step forward in personal technology.

With a tiddlywiki at your fingertips it is easy to follow the advice of a writers' writer I read years ago. A search on Amazon failed to turn up his book. Maybe someone else knows the author and book title. He advocated writing only ten minutes a day to develop the writing habit and banish writer's block. It really works. If you can't think of anything to write about, you can start by writing about how it feels to not be able to think of anything to write about. Soon the words are flowing and you have a story.

Using the ten minutes a day method, I wrote and published several stories. I confess, I frequently got carried away and wrote for a longer period of time! Certainly, with the tiddlywiki to enhance your organization and technify your approach to writing, you can have a pleasurable writing experience. I know I do.

Oh! And what do you have when you are finished? An ebook?

[mogui]

I am finding a lot of pleasure and inspiration from Holly Lisle's website on writing. Doesn't she look like Madam President on Battlestar Galactica? Anyway, she has poured her soul into this website, so if you aspire to write, check it out.

[DMcCunney]

I always liked the late Robert A. Heinlein's 5 rules for writers:

1. You must write

2. You must finish what you write

3. You must submit what you finished to an editor who might buy it.

4. You must continue submitting until it either sells or has been bounced by every possible market.

5. If asked to make changes, you must not do so unless making the changes will result in a sale.

Most folks seem to get hung up on 1 or 2...
______
Dennis

[mogui]

Heinlein was awesome. He only wrote one draft and that was the final copy. Not many can do that. Somehow he created a very comfortable ambiance in his books. I wish he could have lived forever.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by mogui

Heinlein was awesome. He only wrote one draft and that was the final copy. Not many can do that. Somehow he created a very comfortable ambiance in his books. I wish he could have lived forever.

Oh, it wasn't quite that simple. Heinlein got edited like anyone else, and had to submit revised drafts. There was a batch of "unabridged" reissues of his work a few years back, publishing his original manuscripts instead of the edited versions that had previously been printed. For the most part, the changes were a word here or a line there, in the sort of line editing any capable editor does to tighten a book and streamline the prose. There were only a couple of significant changes, such as the original manuscript of Podkayne of Mars having Poddy dying at the end. The editor insisted on her living, feeling Poddy's death would be too downbeat for the Juvenile/YA audience the book was intended for. Heinlein complied, but under protest, as he felt that undercut the point he was trying to make.

And Stranger in a Strange Land was written over a period of years, with various false starts and revisions as RAH struggled to clarify the story he wished to tell and the proper form for telling it.

The author I think of as "First draft is submission draft" was the late Isaac Asimov, who was a human prose machine with an uncanny ability to research a complex subject and spit it out again as a clear explanation for the layman.

I met Heinlein, and was privileged to know Isaac. I miss both of them.
______
Dennis

[europas_ice]

I've always wanted to write a work of fiction. I did write a couple stories in college, when I had time, but I was really discouraged because they really didn't turn out very well.

To anyone who is thinking of writing a novel I suggest "How to write a damn good novel" by James N. Frey. It is a really enjoyable read regardless, which suggests to me his advice has merit.

[nekokami]

I've gotten as far as Heinlein's #3, at least with fiction. (I have published non-fiction.) It's excellent advice, but the first few rejection slips sure are discouraging!

I understand Heinlein's point of view about Podkayne, but I think he was a bit confused himself about who his audience was. As I understand it, he took the challenge to write a book "for girls," but then wanted a moral that was really aimed at parents who don't take time to raise their children. I've always felt that both endings left doubt as to who the main character really was-- Heinlein seems to have focused an awful lot on Clark at the end, in a way that re-interprets much of the rest of the story. I can't recall any of his other YA books ending with the main character dying/comatose and someone else taking over the narrative. For that matter, Friday has a ridiculously "happy" ending compared to Podkayne-- almost exactly the ending Heinlein refused to write for Podkayne. All this makes me wonder what was going on in the Grand Master's life at the time to make him so bitter about the prospects of young women growing up to manage both careers and families.

[slayda]

I don't want to write a book - just collect the royalties for several.

[europas_ice]

Originally Posted by slayda

I don't want to write a book - just collect the royalties for several.

Wouldn't that be nice! Usually the royalties don't add up to all that much though. I think you'd have to be a massive, bestselling hit before they really start adding up.