Just a bit more.

First let me state, I will not be posting everyday. Yeah I know, send me your hate mail now. Seriously, I’m just trying to play catch up. And if I’m brutally honest, I’m way behind on post. One of the problems with being a newbie writer, time management. If your aspiring to be a writer, I suggest you learn it.

So a little bit more about myself I guess, then we can move on to the first stages of figuring this writing shit out. Like I said in the las post, my name is Nicole and I am on the path to become a published author. Something I had no confidence in doing until I learned about e-books and self publishing. Currently I am thirty-five years young, a Leo who is oddly a introvert. Fate was cruel when they gave me that trait. Like most writers, I love to read. Reading and I go back to the Dick and Jane books, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes, and of course watered down Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales. As soon as I was able to understand words, my Grandma would just hand me the book saying “Here ya go kiddo, knock yourself out”.

 

As I got older and started to rebel against the goody goody stories, I found myself gorging on R.L. Stine’s Fear Street Series. Goosebumps wasn’t my thing, it still had the slight of innocence to it that gave you a toothache. My addiction became so bad that myself and a couple of classmates would swap books every few weeks. I was always begging to go to the bookstore for a new volume. Spending all my allowance on books. My younger sister, picked up on my addiction but she was more of the Goosebumps type (we are seven years apart so it was totally age appropriate).

As I was saying, I’m Thirty-Five, have two annoying but loving sisters ages twenty-eight and seventeen. I am currently engaged to… well lets just say my loving finance and I have been together for eight years now. We are set to get married in May of 2018, if I don’t die from writers block first. And with that I gain two wonderful bonus sons who are trying to eat everything but the kitchen sink at this point. If you’ve ever had to feed teen males, you know what I’m talking about.

So with all this going on, I decided to write my crazy little stories. Sometimes I question my sanity as to why. But then I remember that nothing is more satisfying than getting the story out of my head. I am currently writing a urban fantasy novel. I sort of finished the outline (we’ll circle back around to this on the next post!), and I have, as of now, the first four chapters of the rough draft done.

Now as I stated in the last post, I have two other stories that I have set aside as they require more research. Though when an idea for those stories pop up, I write them down so I don’t forget them. With all story ideas, I jot them down and save them for later while I am currently working on a certain project.

I am currently using the software Scrivener for Mac, though I did initially purchase it for Windows. But I hate Windows 10 so yeah, I’m not using it on that laptop. I did start off writing in Microsoft Word, most writers do use this instead of any of the other applications. And I will admit, Scrivener is an intimidating piece of software, it’s takes a few tutorials before you really get going. But I find having everything in one application helps with the flow of things. I get no incentives from any company to say which one I prefer, I’m a newbie writer, they don’t know I exist. I also use a application called iA Writer, which you can find in the App Store for iPhone/iPad. With this application, I do a lot of my scrap writing. Scrap writing meaning, stories that I don’t plan on publishing, but they help with writer’s block. It goes with that old tip of “Write every day even when you have nothing to write”, I also use it as kind of a”notepad” on the go type of thing. I get a story idea, I just jot down what it is so I can revisit it when I need something to write later.

Another application that I use is A Novel Idea also found in the App Store. Sorry, I’m currently an Apple person, forgive me. This app allows you to put together a lot of details before you start writing. Character break-downs, to location details, to relationships between the characters, any scenes you might have. It’s a good one to have on the go as well.

I am proud to say, that I did learn from my first two attempts to start my original manuscript. Todays technology is beyond awesome with saving your work. I use both iCloud, and OneDrive to store all my documents. But there is Dropbox and Google Drive, all are great for storing your work and being able to access it from multiple devices. I have used all four at some point for one thing or another, but I prefer OneDrive and iCloud, in that order. So I recommend that if you’re going to write, have a place to back up your work. Once a month, I store a copy of my latest Scrivener file to my thumb drive. I will eventually get a external hard drive again since my old one went to greener pastures years ago, along with all my Sims.

I guess that’s enough rambling for today. Any question on any of the applications I have listed, or have your own that I didn’t mention, drop a comment below. If you’re a writer, get to writing! Everyone else, find  a good book to read, I’m alway looking for good suggestions!