Reality Game: Day 1

I've been slow to get started back on this book. Will take some doing to finish it by the end of the month. We'll see how it goes. Lots of stuff going on in my life right now. But figured I'd document the progress both for accountability and encouragement.

Didn't get to writing until around 3:15 am. Woke at noon, then started a vegetable and shrimp stew in the crock pot. Then it was off to clean a house and a business with my wife. Arrived back home around 9:30 pm. Ate dinner while watching an episode of Star Trek, TNG. Season 3, Episode 1. After a some task and getting my wife to sleep, I did the cleaning business bookkeeping. That brought me up to 3:15 when I opened up my manuscript and the database.

Spent a little time reacquainting myself with the story. Had written 1771 words on the first chapter last November before shifting gears to something else. In my outline, I don't have anything written for the climax. I recall the general direction I was taking this, but obviously there is much left to discover.

By way of reminder, I generally create an outline of the major plot points for a novel. It helps me to have a clue where I'm going, but I like to fill in the details as I write. So I don't do a scene by scene outline. That evolves as the story progresses. But I find having the major plot points and any sub-plots tying into it helpful so I'm not wandering in the novel wilderness much. But rarely has one of my outlined climaxes happened exactly as I had envisioned it.

The only exception to that are my episodic novels like Reality's Dawn. I had a general progression in my head, but didn't know what each story was going to be about until I sat down to write it, or how it would resolve. My science fiction novel, Revolution, is such a novel as well. I've written five chapters/episodes on that one. Hope to do more on it by next year.

For normal novels, I've only written one by the seat of my pants fully. My first novel which remains unpublished. I'm about 2/3rd of the way done on a rewrite of it. All the rest I had the major plot points mapped out before I dug in to writing it.

This time I decided to forgo finishing the outline and see where the story takes me. I know some of the direction I had intended to go and the main conflicts and plot twist I was going to throw into the mix. No idea how they'll get out of the hot water I'm going to put them into, though.

So around 3:30, after getting my bearings, I started writing. Getting back into the characters came easy enough. Spent one hour and ten minutes, until 4:40, to write 444 words. For my Parkinson's slowed hands, not too bad actually. As you can tell, this isn't going to be Mr. Speedy. I need to find more time to work on it if I'm going to finish it this month.

But it is past my bedtime, so I'm calling it a night, writing this blog, and heading to bed by 5:30. Ha. The funny thing is I've written more words on this blog post than I did on the story. But I finished chapter 1, got back into writing it, and it is great to be back at it. We'll see if I can make more progress in the days to come.

---------------

Day 1: 444 word

----

Novel total: 2215 words

10 Day Novel Challenge: Day 1

On starting day of this challenge, awoke at 1 pm. Would have been a solid seven hours of sleep save a nurse call I was expecting woke me around 10 am. Had trouble getting back to sleep, so closer to six hours of sleep. Anyway, went through my morning routine. Grits for breakfast, went through email, started a pot of beans cooking in the slow cooker for dinner. Finished most of the emails but none of the blogs when 3 pm arrived. The time my wife was supposed to be picking me up to go clean a vacation house. But she was running behind which gave me an extra 30 minutes to finish up a reply to an email.

Wife picked me up around 3:40 in the rain. We had to stop at another house first to take care of a couple of items before taking the 20 minute drive to the house we were to clean. At least it was supposed to take 20 minutes, save for the two wrecks we had to snake our way around at 10 mph. But we got there around 4:45, and finished the job a little before 8. Returned home around 8:30.

We promptly partook of pinto beans and a salad while I recaught up on emails and scanned the blogs. Jumped on Facebook to respond to a couple of people and quickly scanned the feeds. Called my son after doing some phone research to find out what he wanted for a phone. We're on a family plan and he's not happy with his android phone. Oh well.

After some time with my wife, she fell asleep early, but she'd have to wake up to get ready for bed. I let her nap while I finally turned my attention to the novel at hand around 10:45 pm. First order of business was to review the outline to orient myself to the proposed plot and the characters. I spent about 30 minutes doing that, changing the names of my two MCs (used them in the novel I did instead of this one some years ago) that gave me opportunity to make them more interesting. Named the two counties where the story takes place, along with three cities I knew I'd need. More will come, but I'll come up with those as I go.

By 11:15, I started writing. I wrote most of the first 1022 words in 1.75 hours, stopping at 1 am. I actually at one point had started the book, and wrote the first two chapters some years ago. I recall most of what I did, but didn't go back and read them. I wanted what I wrote now to be as unencumbered with what I did before as possible. After all, I've hopefully learned a thing or two since then.

Took a break, woke my wife up. We got some ice cream and I made some hot blueberry tea. Returned to writing at 1:26 am. Wife went on Facebook in the meantime. Worked another half hour until 2:06, putting in another 479 words. Took another break to officially put my wife to bed, then grabbed a bowl of prunes and cashews and went back at it at 2:57. I wrote until 4:18, at which point I called it quits. That added another 780 words to the count.

Totals are 2281 words in 3.5 hours of writing, averaging out to 652 words an hour. Better than I did last night. Good NaNo day, but not going to make it in ten days at this pace.

I've mentioned my bad left hand. I suppose I should explain. Last October, and all through NaNo November, I noticed my left hand didn't want to work smoothly. My mind would tell a finger to press a key, and it would do one of three things: press the key once, twice, or not at all. Since then about half the words I'm either pausing to type, or backspacing to erase letters that aren't supposed to be there. It has cut my typing speed in about half of what it used to be, and takes a bit more work to do. I'm thinking I may need to try a voice recognition program. Anyway, finally went to the doctor this past June, and he believes it may be Parkinson's Disease. I've been referred to a neurologist that I'll see in December for a fuller diagnosis. Meanwhile, I am on meds to help control the tremors that developed earlier this year, but my speed has only marginally increased.

I don't say this to gain your pity, just to let you know why my word count per hour is so low to what most people's is. That said, as I've proved last November, have proved the last two days, and will undoubtedly prove again this coming Nov, I can still crank out a novel in a month. If I could put enough hours into it now, I could write one in ten days. But my wife has me on a heavy schedule next week with few, if any, days off. So this will really be a test if I can pull this off. So far, I'm behind. Will take some good writing days to make it. If not, I'll keep going until it is done, and take everyone here with me. Time to get to bed so I can tackle it tomorrow.

10 Day Novel Challenge Totals:

Day 1: 2281

----------------

Total: 2281

Setting up OO Writer to Write a Novel

I had another post on this topic, but forgot that in that post, I linked to the article of mine on another site. Not knowing when that site will go down and this article is my most popular post, I figured I had better post that article here.

This information is based upon Open Office version 2.3.

Open Office is a suite of software applications, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and database. It is an "open source" application which for the end user means it is free to download and use on your computer. It rivals MS Office for ability, and on the whole does a good job of it, actually improving in some areas. You can download and read more about it at: http://www.openoffice.org/.

One of the cool things for authors is the ability to set up Open Office's Writer (the word processor) to accomplish many of the task novel writing software claims to make easier. Task like easily navigating in your document, quickly moving scenes or chapters, automatic renumbering of scenes and chapters, as well as document wide task like saving to a Word doc file, printing, formatting, find/replace, etc.

However, it takes a little setting up to accomplish these task. But it is time well spent before beginning a big project like a novel.

Setting up styles

The first thing to do will be to set up some styles. There are three paragraph styles you will need. Novel Body, Chapter, and Scene.

Novel Body:

This should be the style the body of your text will be in. Naturally, you would want this to be in "Standard Submission" format. Open the "Style and Formatting" box by hitting the F11 button, or in the menu, "Format," "Styles and Formatting." A window box will pop open listing various styles.

1. Right-click on a default style, like "Text body" and select "New".


2. Give your new style a name, replacing the "Untitled" name it gives, such as "Novel Body" or whatever you prefer.


3. Select a font from the "Font" tab like "Courier New" and make it 12 point.


4. Select the "Indents and Spacing" tab, set the first line indent to "0.5" and the line spacing to "double."


5. Click "OK" and your new style has been created.

Chapter:

Do the same as above, right-clicking on "Heading 2". Modify this to select the font of your choice, you can left set it or center it. But in the "Organizer" tab, give it the name, "Chapter" and set "Novel Body" (or whatever name you gave it above) to be the next style used after pressing enter. In the "Indents and Spacing" tab make sure all indents are 0.0. Click "OK".

Scene:

How you set up the scene style depends on how you intend to use it. The most common way would be to set it up as a heading, which will work for most functions.

In the "Styles and Formatting" box, right-click the heading style you would like to show scene headings as (recommend Heading 3), and select "New." Give it the name in the "Organizer" tab as "Scene" and select "Novel Body" in the "Next style" field. Make any other adjustments necessary and then click "OK" to save this style. If scene headings are going to be printed out, you will probably want to set this as italics and centered.

You will be able to show either scene headers you type like, "The beast rips him apart," or you can simply show numbered scenes that will change automatically if you move them. Once you are ready to print, but don't want to print those as headings, you right-click the style in the "Style and Formatting" box, and select "Modify." Then "Font Effects" and click the "hidden" box in the lower-right corner. Once you click "OK" those headers will not print out. Remove that check to once again show them.

If you are going to use the first paragraph of each scene as it's "marker," then right-click the "Novel Body" style we created at the top and select "New." Simply give it the name "Scene" and select "Novel Body" as the "Next" text to pop up. The first paragraph of each scene will have this style.

Setting up Header Hierarchy

Now that the styles are set up, it is time to make them part of the heading outline. Click "Tools" in the menu, and then, "Outline numbering." In the "Level" window on the left, select "1". In the center drop down box, select the "Chapter" paragraph style we created earlier. In the "Number" drop down box, select "1, 2, 3..." from the list. In the "Before" field, enter "Chapter " with the space on the end. Leave it blank if you only want the chapter number to show up, but no additional text.

Now in the "Level" window, click "2". Select "Scene" from the paragraph style drop down list. If you want them automatically numbered, select "1, 2, 3..." in the "Number" drop down box. If you want "Scene" for a title, in the "Before" field enter "Scene " with the space on the end. In the "After" field, enter a ":" or whatever you might want.

You have set up your outline headers so that Chapter and Scene paragraph styles point to a level in the outline and will show up in the Navigator as well as automatically reflect numbering based on what order they are in the document.

Saving for future use:

Naturally, you'll want to save this so you can use it anytime. If you have these styles set up as you want them, and there is no text in the Writer document at the time, save this as a template.

Click in the menu "File," "Templates," and "Save." Click on "My Templates" to save there, and give the new template a name, like "Novels".

When you want to start a new novel file, click on the drop down arrow to the right of the new button and select "Templates and Documents". Select "Novels" from the "My Templates" folder and click "OK" to open a file. Your novel styles will be available for use, without affecting Writer's standard defaults.

Using the styles for writing a novel

To make use of the new setup, open the Navigator window in your document if not already open. This shows up as a compass looking graphic in the tool bar, or you can click "Edit" and "Navigator," or hit F5. If the window is floating, you can dock it by dragging it to a side. If you can't see it, make sure the right side of the Navigator box isn't slid all the way to the left by clicking on a handle and dragging the window open. You should see a list of several items, the first one being "Headings" which we are interested in. Open it up far enough so you can see the four boxes on the far right of the window's toolbar that allow for movement of the pieces. They look like "text" with arrows beside them going up or down, right or left.

Now, you can either begin writing a novel, outlining, or you can take a novel you have already started and prep it.

Outlining:

To outline, start with a synopsis. Type that out first. You can start with a small one, and build to a larger one. You can even detail out characters here if you wish, for easy future reference.

On the first chapter, click F11 and double-click the "Chapter" style. You will see the "Chapter 1" appear, centered and formatted as you set up. You can either leave it at that, or hit enter, then give the chapter a title by using a standard header style, like Header 2. Center if need be.

Below that, summarize the plot point(s) this chapter should fill. Once done, hit enter, and then do this over for the next chapter.

Once done, you can go back to the top to detail out each scene if you so desire. Click under the chapter summary/plot point. Hit F11 and double-click the "Scene" style. Type out any heading desired, or just a summary of that scene's plot point.

Just write it!

If you're the type that just starts writing, when you are ready to begin the first chapter, hit F11, and double-click the "Chapter" style. The Chapter and # will appear automatically. Hit enter.

Then click F11, and double-click "Scene". If set, it will automatically pop in the scene number and text in. You can then enter a header, or if set for it, the first paragraph of your scene. Then type away.

Next scene comes up, do the same thing. Next chapter, double-click on the "Chapter" style. Once used in your document, you can also see them in the style drop down box in the toolbar that is opened by default in Open Office Writer.

As an added tip, you can also set in the "Text Flow" tab of the style, to automatically start a new page at each chapter. Hit F11, right-click "Chapter" style and select "Modify." Select the "Text Flow" tab, and check the "Insert" box in the "Break" section. Make sure "Page" is in the next drop down box, and "Before" in the far right one. Now when you double-click the Chapter style, it will add in a new page as well as the text with automatic number formatting.

Import it:

This is a more tedious process. Open your novel in OO Writer. Hit Ctrl-A to mark all text in the document. Double-click the "Novel Body" style in the style window, and all the text will be changed to the standard submission format.

Now, go through your novel and apply the Chapter and Scene styles to the appropriate spots. You may need to delete chapter number info if you have manually entered it before.

Navigating and Moving Text

Now that you have done this work, you should see in the Navigator, under "Headings" a list of the chapters and scenes in an outline format. If you do not, make sure you have the "Display" set to show at least 2 levels, but safest to set it for all ten.

To go to a scene in the Navigator, double-click on that scene. You are now there.

To move a scene or chapter, select that scene or chapter. Unfortunately, within a document, you cannot use the "drag and drop" method to move things around (even though the help file says you can, you can't, maybe someday). Instead, you must use the buttons at the top of the Navigator window. They are square text boxes with arrows pointing up and down. If you have the tips turned on, it will call them "Promote a chapter" and "Demote a chapter." By clicking on the button with the arrow going down, it moves your scene or chapter one section down. Likewise, the up arrow moves it up. Click on it enough times till it is where you want it.

You will notice that automatic scene or chapter numbers will adjust as you move it around. This effectively allows you to shuffle pieces any way you want within your document.

And since this is all one document (not chapters in individual files), you can easily get a word count for the whole project, or do a find/replace if you need to change something over the whole project, set formatting for printing, etc. Anything you can do in a regular OO Writer document, you can do here because that is what this is.

The down side is if you want a word count of a section in the middle of your novel. Or if your publisher/agent wants one chapter of your novel sent to them. It means first marking the section in question, and then running a word count, or doing a copy/paste into a new document to save separately.

You can get a word count of a chapter fairly easily if it is the last chapter in your document. When ready, double-click on the chapter in the Navigator. Hold down the "Ctrl-Shift" keys and hit "End". It will mark the chapter to the end of the document. Then run the word count.

You can use the master document feature in OO Writer, which has its benefits. You can drag and drop the chapters to move them around, but creating scenes in it becomes cumbersome because you will either have a separate file for each scene or keep the scenes in each chapter file, which means to move scenes between chapters requires a mark, cut and paste operation. If scenes are in each chapter file, it also means you lose the detailed "overview" of your whole project, chapters and scenes, that you get with it all in one document.

However, the automatic numbering will still work for chapters in the master document. Within a chapter file, it will always say "Chapter 1" but in the master document, they will be numbered according to their position.

In the master document, you can also easily edit the chapter file (each chapter is its own separate file) and get a word count of just that chapter, or send the file to someone who wants that one chapter without any fuss. The downside to it, is it is harder to move scenes from one chapter to another, and there are restrictions on what you can do in a master document. (You can't save it to one large file, for instance without the master document "features," but have to copy/paste the whole document into a regular Writer file.)

Some of the duplication here is a bit crude, like story plotting and character notes. You may find it easier to keep track of those either in another Writer file, or other application like Excel or a database. But this can give you a free, novel-writing application with the flexibility of the big boys, but with a full featured word processor (unlike many of them). Just a little time investment to set it up.