I've been using this software off and on since version 1.6 (which was about two years ago, I think). At the time, I was new to the concept of Writing Software, and was using a standard word processor to write my stories.
What appealed to me about WW, was that it was similiar to Power Writer, but simplfied. On the left was the outlining interface, which was composed of Acts/Chapters/Scenes. I believe this is the way that most writers (of fiction) prefer to think, to work with a story.
I also liked the character templates, which you could set up with any type of detail that you wanted. If you wanted to add a picture to the character's bio, you could.
I must say that I was so impressed with the software at the time, that I plopped down $70+ to purchase the professional version.
One of the things that did irk me about the software at the time, was the strange lack of what I thought were standard keyboard shortcuts. To be precise, I use italics frequently within my writing, to notate what a character is thinking. As such, I've become used to the CTRL+I shortcut. This was missing from 1.6. I even went so far as to email their support department. I got a response, but I don't remember the exact message verbatim. The gist of it was that they were going to fix this minor oversight in a future release...
This led to my second issue with the program. It took something like 12 or 13 months before version 1.7 was released. And the shortcut was still missing.
I have version 1.7.4, and so far as I can tell, there haven't been that many changes from 1.6. The program looks and operates the same as it did upon my initial purchase a couple of years ago. The CTRL-I shortuct is still missing, but I've gotten used to it by now.
Write Way is for the writing purist. YOu can make a detailed outline, detailed character profiles, notecards, all that stuff. It's a small program, and it starts and runs fairly quick. I've tested it on Vista, and haven't had any issues.
One of the things that I'm frustrated with in this software, is that I can't rename the Acts. I can rename the Chapter headings, but they still print as "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", and so forth.
So, if you want to do something a bit more fancy with your headings, you'll still need to open up that word processor, and do so editing.
All in all, it's a decent program. But to be honest, if I were to spend that money today, I'd probably just fork out the extra $20, and get Power Writer.
I agree with the fact that the more you write and rework things the better writer you become. Time is a precious commodity, though. It's nice to have an editor that will sit and edit with you instead of just returning manuscripts unedited.
I admit that I haven't done a survey to see how widespread the features are in the database with which I am the most familiar and licensing would keep one from using it in a package sold for $29.95 ... I guess that is one of the points that I was trying to make is that there are a lot of differences between the $29.95 software and the $2,995 software, one of which is likely to be the quality of the infrastructure relative to issues like this.
I am very sympathetic about the problem of unsophisticated users. There is an inherent problem in someone wanting to spend $29.95 who actually needs hundreds of dollars worth of training. People don't expect that and often don't accept it. That is why my own focus is more on people who understand the importance of the tool and are willing to pay to do things right. That leaves out a lot of people, but it also leaves out a lot of headaches.
But, for the record, the software I work with can not only be relied on to survive a power failure, used properly in combination with backups can even recover from physical destruction of the disk containing the database. It is licensable for single users, but that isn't its normal millieu.
Naive was a bad word choice. Perhaps yours was a better one: "spoiled." Using the best software on the best systems, maintained regularly by IT personnel, will make a person spoiled. I've been there and experienced it. So, I agree with you on some of this. There are always better tools available, but often the user's personal preferences override the choice of such a better tool--or perhaps the user's budget.
I'm curious if the PCs to which you refer are PCs in a professional environment (which receive regular "care and feeding") or are PCs used by authors who are often self-admittedly technically un-advanced. I know authors who struggle with learning how to use the Twitter interface (one of the simplest in the entire world) or who still type in their word processing program as though it were an Olivetti or IBM Selectric: they hit the Return/Enter key at the end of each line, put in footers/headers and page numbers manually, and use the space bar to center titles. I have held classes to familiarize users with software many times, and it's amazing how many of the simplest tasks seem to be totally foreign to people who have been using computers for some time, simply because they were so focused on one particular program that they never learned the basics. It's like being able to drive a car but having no idea how to check the oil level.
People with backgrounds like that probably are not going to have machines that are professionally maintained, nor will they probably invest the money in a package that has the sophistication of which you speak. MS Word, WordPerfect, MS Works, and older word processing programs like AmiPro or WordStar, all have/had weaknesses... yet there are people who stick with those platforms because they are what they know or what they can afford. (I do know one budding author who does all her work in WordPad... I shudder to think of that!)
Understand: I was not saying, nor do I now say, that a power glitch is an automatic death knell for any software program or any file. It doesn't always happen, and it may only happen one time in a hundred. But as you have worked with computers, you know that power glitches or failures are notorious for causing problems if they occur at the optimally WRONG time, such as during the time the computer is writing to the file. Had the lady's power failure happened ten seconds earlier or ten seconds later, there may have been no problem whatsoever. Who knows?
(Then again, that is why I have a UPS on every computer in my house except for the laptops, and they are for the most part unaffected by power failures.)
After 43 years of professional software development, it would be surprising if I was still naive. I do know that I work every day with database software which will survive pulling the plug and it has been able to do that since 1984 and yes it runs on PCs among other things. Perhaps I'm spoiled, but I know it is possible.
Clearly, backups, versioning, etc. are important skills for users to learn and good software will encourage these patterns and make it easy. Also clearly, nothing is ever perfect and that is the reason we need backups and versions. Sometimes the software helps to protect us, but the user doesn't get told what to do about it so it doesn't do any good.
All I was trying to suggest was that both the tools one uses to build an application and the skills of the developer come in a range of capability and that there are better tools out there.
You obviously didn't catch the gist of my analogy. I was talking about how files are stored on a disk in a typical Windows computer and what happens when a power glitch occurs in the middle of a disk-write process, not about how a writer uses a software program. Re-read it--maybe you will understand it then.
But even with that, you seem to have unreasonable expectations for home computer systems. I was a Senior Consultant for one of the larger software companies, BusinessObjects, and later for Knightsbridge Consulting. We consulted for major companies (AOL, HSBC, the U.S. Govt, et al.) and they were using some of the most expensive and comprehensive database systems around. Their IT personnel and database managers were highly-trained professionals. They had very, very good and expensive equipment. But no matter how complex or powerful your system is, it is always subject to the whims of "what if." I've seen multimillion-dollar systems go down because of "simple problems" like corrupted files. Data redundancy is paramount.
Yet, you are saying that you expect a home computer system, which probably gets minimal attention and maintenance (because that's how most people treat their home computers) to be bulletproof against a power glitch? That is naive and sets up some very unreasonable expectations for the average home user. You can do your best to have backups, both of files and of power, but sometimes no matter how carefully engineered the software or the system is, sometimes a simple thing can take it down.
WriteItNow software saves a backup of every file, when you save the original. The instructions for retrieving the backup file are in the help files for WriteItNow. But even that, or an autosave function like the one in MS Word or WordPerfect, can always protect you. You do the best you can, but no system is perfect.
(By the way, Theresa, I tried to sign in with my registered ID for this post and my last one, but for some reason it's not recognizing my OpenID.)
Part of professional development is using professional tools. Your seed sorting is the equivalent of writing out everything in a text file. If that is what one does, then there is certainly a risk of losing work from a power failure or other unexpected event, but even then quality word processing packages have autosave features which limit the degree of loss and provide one with an uncorrupted, self-consistent starting point. Yes, if the autosave is every 10 minutes one might have to recreate the last 10 minutes worth of work, but much of the time that won't be too painful.
If one goes beyond mere text into data structures, where the potential for corruption is much more severe, then the importance of the tool becomes that much greater. We've had database systems for years and years which were proof against corruption from "mere" power outages and the like.
Backups, versioning, etc. are certainly sound practices ... but better tools can also make quite a difference.
I think the idea that you must save each file with a different name is a large and unintuitive leap.
Any time you unexpectedly lose power to a PC you risk corrupting files, whether the power loss is from a power failure, someone tripping over a power cord or from ungracefully powering down before shutting down the operating system. (By the way, I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, so I've dealt with this a lot.) This is especially so if your computer is an older one. The longer you have had the computer, the greater the chance that the files are 'fragmented,' which means they are not all stored in contiguous areas of the hard drive. If you lose power or shut down your PC while the computer is performing a write operation to the hard drive (while it is storing some amount of data), the chances of it messing something up are manifold.
Liken it to this scenario: you are carefully sorting various colors of small beads from your hand into numerous containers on a shelf. Someone sneaks up behind you and makes a sudden, loud, startling noise. You jump, and perhaps knock over a seed container or two, mixing the seeds and/or spilling some on the floor.
That's analogous to what can happen when your hard drive experiences a sudden unexpected power shut down or a power surge when it is in the middle of writing data to the hard drive. I've never had a problem with saving and re-opening the same file in WriteItNow. However, I have had problems opening files from a variety of programs when power would drop out in the middle of doing some task. That's why I always have a UPS now. It acts both as a backup power source and a sort of "filter" to smooth out those bumps in the electrical road.
Unfortunately, it's a heck of a lot easier to pick up and sort those beads than it is to try to sort out a corrupted file. A better solution is to back up your files regularly, probably daily if you write daily, so you can simply restore the corrupted file if/when it happens.
While I don't know anything about what caused your crash or the appropriateness of my following remarks to WriteItNow software, it is nevertheless true that the prevalence of corrupted files could be a good spot to distinguish between "amateur" and "professional" software.
Modern easy development tools allow people with limited software background to create packages which may have some attractive features, but are often missing some (boring) basics (which a more professional designer would include) such as autosave, safeguards to avoid corruption, and data recovery programs.
One may or may not ever step into one of these "holes" in a software product, but if one does it can be very painful.
I like using the writeitnow software package, however, recently I saved a file and went to bed only to find I lost power to the PC and when I restarted it the file was corrupted. I was lucky that I had made another hard copy in a different location which protected my file. This is a flaw in their software. You will need to re-save a different file in a different location every time you work on your craft, or else you may end up losing all of it.
Theresa asked for a link to my comments in my blog about what makes me quit reading a novel. Here's the entry that deals with the bad guy going off on the "I need to rape this woman" tangent. http://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blogs/evil-guy-speaks
A couple of things will prompt me to drop out of a story before the end:
- a mystery plot loses the plot, e.g. where the attempts on the hero/ine's life become too numerous, too frequent, and he/she/they somehow keep managing to just barely escape, so that the story becomes all about the attempts and escapes rather than the mystery. If I wanted an action movie, I'd watch an action movie.
- a really good story idea gets bogged down in bad writing - bad grammar, bad word and phrase choices, repetitive action words, etc. A good editor should have picked up on these and made suggestions for changes before publishing.
I love books and read a wide variety of genres and authors, but I will recycle a book and cross the author off my reading list quickly if I'm frustrated rather than intrigued.....
Oooo--I listen to books lying in bed, but never thought of the "might do something 'entertaining'" aspect. Now--that will be ALL I can think of...
For me, though, I think it comes down to the women trying too hard to be actressy somehow.
Female reader voices often annoy me too. I wonder if that is sex-related, i.e. I can put up with male voices because the man might do something entertaining later? ;) Seems awfully sexist, if so, and definitely sad to say.
Interesting to find out that you can't suppress the "he said", "she said" aurally as well as you can visually. I haven't read enough audible books to know.
I am vision-impaired and listen to produced audios. I hate to say this (I am a feminist), but female readers often annoy the heck out of me--being too plummy, trilly, purring, chuckly, or over-animated and reading the male parts in sort of a Shirley-Templish nasal monotone.
Male readers that read too animatedly also annoy me. Too fakey. I also don't like over production--such as some sound effects or swirly music.
I know a lot of crime readers love Spenser, but Parker has "he said" or "she said" after almost every utterance--this becomes very irritating over time in audio, though easily overlooked on the page.
Elmore Leonard, on the other hand, for me, is much better when someone reads him to me.
I have put down an audio after a disk or two because of these drawbacks, which can lean into my last nerve until I almost scream.
Interesting, Lev. I cried all the way through "The Lovely Bones" which I positively devoured and, though the voice was much too adult, never had any issue with believability.
I guess that means what knocks you out of story is different from what knocks me out, yes? Interesting. So what's a poor author to do?
I blogged about this on CrimeSpace the other day: I've quit finishing stories where the bad guy, who has painstakingly planned to steal the treasure or take over the nation or whatever, gets sidetracked by the protag's lovely girlfriend/wife/sister to the point where he drops everything else and just thinks about how good it's going to feel when he rapes her and then kills her.
Any mystery that's badly or indifferently or flatly written pushes me out after a certain point even if I've given it my best shot as a reader. It's not enough that the story is good, the writing has to be equal to the story or the book feels crippled to me.
More technically, if the POVi seems off, especially in a first person narrative, I give up. "The Lovely Bones" never worked for me because the voice was much too sophisticated, and thus unbelievable. Friends would come up with great explanations like "Well, she got smarter in Heaven." I didn't buy it.
There are advantages to writing software if you have a complex novel or simply have issues staying organized within your novel. I know some people who compile masses of notes, charts, etc., either in hardcopy form or in documents like spreadsheets or separate word processing documents. Some writing software helps to eliminate all that messiness.
For example, Write It Now (published by Ravenshead Software):
- has a tab for your novel synopsis
- has a tab for your chapters (i.e., the main body of your novel)
- has a tab that allows you to keep up with your characters and all their characteristics, within the program instead of on little post-it notes or file cards stuck on the wall (as some people do)
- has a tab where you list the major events in your novel, and allows you to directly annotate which characters are involved in those events
- has a tab for listing all the locations in your novel, again allowing you to link to the characters and events occurring at each location
- has two tabs just for notes and ideas
- has a tab with very, very cool charts: one for a timeline showing when events happen and for how long (I can click on the event in the chart and it takes me to the detailed description in the Events tab), and another chart for characters and their relationships. These charts are automatically constructed as you enter the Events and Relationships data.
- finally, a tab that allows you to track submissions very easily
Now, you could do much of this in Word, OpenOffice, or some other word processor true, but you would need separate documents, or have to scroll up and down to different parts of your document to get to the information. Here, it's all in one place--you just click on the tab and boom, it's there.
I also know you may or may not use every feature for everything you write, but it's nice to have them there if/when you do need them.
I understand the desire some authors have to stay with a "standard" but even Word isn't "standard." For example, I also am an editor, and I sometimes receive Word documents that are in DOCX format. My version of Word wouldn't open them unless I went and downloaded a special patch from MS that allowed me to do so. Documents written in older versions of Word sometimes give me problems, too.
Write It Now exports your novel as an RTF, text file or even as HTML. I don't know any editor or agent who won't accept RTF, although such people may exist. I can open an RTF file in a heartbeat and never have any problems with them the way I have with some MS Word documents.
Write It Now has spell-check, if you want that, as well as other standard functions like search and replace, word count, insert accented characters and so forth.
It also comes in a full-function, downloadable trial version.
Personally, I hate MS Word, too, even after working with it for umpteen years as a writer, journalist and tech writer, but I keep it installed on my machine for when I do need it. (And no, I don't own stock in Ravenshead Software, but I wish I did.)
I do everything in Word. Separate documents for the synopsis and research documents. I open all the documents at the same time and keep them tabbed (a little add-on called WinTabs will tab Word for you. Wintabs has been successful with all my Word versions, 97, 2003 and 2007, and the product can be found http://17slon.com/gp/wintabs/index.htm.
Ah, Kaye, now there I beg to differ. Do you organize your spices? Do you organize your cutlery in the kitchen drawer? Many of these things are done to make life simpler. But, it's also true that to organize things alphabetically, one has to learn the alphabet first!
Somewhere in the early 80s, my company installed a word processing program at the office of a bunch of shrinks, and my job was to teach them how to use a word processor. I said "It's just like a typewriter but it's got two special keys, 'escape' and 'control'." So all these shrinks started making woo woo noises, like something out of Wizard of Oz: "Oooh ooh, 'escape' and 'control', 'escape' and 'control'" — I could hear the monsters coming out of the walls! It's just so hilarious to remember.
The world has come a long way since then, and the next generation will be dragged forward kicking and screaming as they embrace yet another technology. Everyone gets to do it!
In the prototype version of author software which I'm working on, I select things by keying in a record number, not something most humanoids would like to do. But I'm an old accounting person from way, way back, so data entry is not complex for me.
Do you know how to cut and paste with a mouse? Do you know how to "tag" things by positioning a mouse on something and right-click? This is how I envision good software working.
Anyway, we're still a long way from having a smart venture capitalist to invest in the idea, so you won't have to face this decision for a while yet!!
Best,
Theresa
P.S. And thanks so much Kaye for coming to visit. Hope you'll be back often!
Deleting text unintentionally is something that can be guarded against — somewhat. Did you know that you can set your Microsoft Word to automatically backup every few minutes? Did you know that there is a "Undo" or "Backup" key right there on the main screen?
I've been using this software off and on since version 1.6 (which was about two years ago, I think). At the time, I was new to the concept of Writing Software, and was using a standard word processor to write my stories.
What appealed to me about WW, was that it was similiar to Power Writer, but simplfied. On the left was the outlining interface, which was composed of Acts/Chapters/Scenes. I believe this is the way that most writers (of fiction) prefer to think, to work with a story.
I also liked the character templates, which you could set up with any type of detail that you wanted. If you wanted to add a picture to the character's bio, you could.
I must say that I was so impressed with the software at the time, that I plopped down $70+ to purchase the professional version.
One of the things that did irk me about the software at the time, was the strange lack of what I thought were standard keyboard shortcuts. To be precise, I use italics frequently within my writing, to notate what a character is thinking. As such, I've become used to the CTRL+I shortcut. This was missing from 1.6. I even went so far as to email their support department. I got a response, but I don't remember the exact message verbatim. The gist of it was that they were going to fix this minor oversight in a future release...
This led to my second issue with the program. It took something like 12 or 13 months before version 1.7 was released. And the shortcut was still missing.
I have version 1.7.4, and so far as I can tell, there haven't been that many changes from 1.6. The program looks and operates the same as it did upon my initial purchase a couple of years ago. The CTRL-I shortuct is still missing, but I've gotten used to it by now.
Write Way is for the writing purist. YOu can make a detailed outline, detailed character profiles, notecards, all that stuff. It's a small program, and it starts and runs fairly quick. I've tested it on Vista, and haven't had any issues.
One of the things that I'm frustrated with in this software, is that I can't rename the Acts. I can rename the Chapter headings, but they still print as "Chapter 1", "Chapter 2", and so forth.
So, if you want to do something a bit more fancy with your headings, you'll still need to open up that word processor, and do so editing.
All in all, it's a decent program. But to be honest, if I were to spend that money today, I'd probably just fork out the extra $20, and get Power Writer.
I agree with the fact that the more you write and rework things the better writer you become. Time is a precious commodity, though. It's nice to have an editor that will sit and edit with you instead of just returning manuscripts unedited.
I admit that I haven't done a survey to see how widespread the features are in the database with which I am the most familiar and licensing would keep one from using it in a package sold for $29.95 ... I guess that is one of the points that I was trying to make is that there are a lot of differences between the $29.95 software and the $2,995 software, one of which is likely to be the quality of the infrastructure relative to issues like this.
I am very sympathetic about the problem of unsophisticated users. There is an inherent problem in someone wanting to spend $29.95 who actually needs hundreds of dollars worth of training. People don't expect that and often don't accept it. That is why my own focus is more on people who understand the importance of the tool and are willing to pay to do things right. That leaves out a lot of people, but it also leaves out a lot of headaches.
But, for the record, the software I work with can not only be relied on to survive a power failure, used properly in combination with backups can even recover from physical destruction of the disk containing the database. It is licensable for single users, but that isn't its normal millieu.
Naive was a bad word choice. Perhaps yours was a better one: "spoiled." Using the best software on the best systems, maintained regularly by IT personnel, will make a person spoiled. I've been there and experienced it. So, I agree with you on some of this. There are always better tools available, but often the user's personal preferences override the choice of such a better tool--or perhaps the user's budget.
I'm curious if the PCs to which you refer are PCs in a professional environment (which receive regular "care and feeding") or are PCs used by authors who are often self-admittedly technically un-advanced. I know authors who struggle with learning how to use the Twitter interface (one of the simplest in the entire world) or who still type in their word processing program as though it were an Olivetti or IBM Selectric: they hit the Return/Enter key at the end of each line, put in footers/headers and page numbers manually, and use the space bar to center titles. I have held classes to familiarize users with software many times, and it's amazing how many of the simplest tasks seem to be totally foreign to people who have been using computers for some time, simply because they were so focused on one particular program that they never learned the basics. It's like being able to drive a car but having no idea how to check the oil level.
People with backgrounds like that probably are not going to have machines that are professionally maintained, nor will they probably invest the money in a package that has the sophistication of which you speak. MS Word, WordPerfect, MS Works, and older word processing programs like AmiPro or WordStar, all have/had weaknesses... yet there are people who stick with those platforms because they are what they know or what they can afford. (I do know one budding author who does all her work in WordPad... I shudder to think of that!)
Understand: I was not saying, nor do I now say, that a power glitch is an automatic death knell for any software program or any file. It doesn't always happen, and it may only happen one time in a hundred. But as you have worked with computers, you know that power glitches or failures are notorious for causing problems if they occur at the optimally WRONG time, such as during the time the computer is writing to the file. Had the lady's power failure happened ten seconds earlier or ten seconds later, there may have been no problem whatsoever. Who knows?
(Then again, that is why I have a UPS on every computer in my house except for the laptops, and they are for the most part unaffected by power failures.)
After 43 years of professional software development, it would be surprising if I was still naive. I do know that I work every day with database software which will survive pulling the plug and it has been able to do that since 1984 and yes it runs on PCs among other things. Perhaps I'm spoiled, but I know it is possible.
Clearly, backups, versioning, etc. are important skills for users to learn and good software will encourage these patterns and make it easy. Also clearly, nothing is ever perfect and that is the reason we need backups and versions. Sometimes the software helps to protect us, but the user doesn't get told what to do about it so it doesn't do any good.
All I was trying to suggest was that both the tools one uses to build an application and the skills of the developer come in a range of capability and that there are better tools out there.
You obviously didn't catch the gist of my analogy. I was talking about how files are stored on a disk in a typical Windows computer and what happens when a power glitch occurs in the middle of a disk-write process, not about how a writer uses a software program. Re-read it--maybe you will understand it then.
But even with that, you seem to have unreasonable expectations for home computer systems. I was a Senior Consultant for one of the larger software companies, BusinessObjects, and later for Knightsbridge Consulting. We consulted for major companies (AOL, HSBC, the U.S. Govt, et al.) and they were using some of the most expensive and comprehensive database systems around. Their IT personnel and database managers were highly-trained professionals. They had very, very good and expensive equipment. But no matter how complex or powerful your system is, it is always subject to the whims of "what if." I've seen multimillion-dollar systems go down because of "simple problems" like corrupted files. Data redundancy is paramount.
Yet, you are saying that you expect a home computer system, which probably gets minimal attention and maintenance (because that's how most people treat their home computers) to be bulletproof against a power glitch? That is naive and sets up some very unreasonable expectations for the average home user. You can do your best to have backups, both of files and of power, but sometimes no matter how carefully engineered the software or the system is, sometimes a simple thing can take it down.
WriteItNow software saves a backup of every file, when you save the original. The instructions for retrieving the backup file are in the help files for WriteItNow. But even that, or an autosave function like the one in MS Word or WordPerfect, can always protect you. You do the best you can, but no system is perfect.
(By the way, Theresa, I tried to sign in with my registered ID for this post and my last one, but for some reason it's not recognizing my OpenID.)
Part of professional development is using professional tools. Your seed sorting is the equivalent of writing out everything in a text file. If that is what one does, then there is certainly a risk of losing work from a power failure or other unexpected event, but even then quality word processing packages have autosave features which limit the degree of loss and provide one with an uncorrupted, self-consistent starting point. Yes, if the autosave is every 10 minutes one might have to recreate the last 10 minutes worth of work, but much of the time that won't be too painful.
If one goes beyond mere text into data structures, where the potential for corruption is much more severe, then the importance of the tool becomes that much greater. We've had database systems for years and years which were proof against corruption from "mere" power outages and the like.
Backups, versioning, etc. are certainly sound practices ... but better tools can also make quite a difference.
I think the idea that you must save each file with a different name is a large and unintuitive leap.
Any time you unexpectedly lose power to a PC you risk corrupting files, whether the power loss is from a power failure, someone tripping over a power cord or from ungracefully powering down before shutting down the operating system. (By the way, I'm a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator, so I've dealt with this a lot.) This is especially so if your computer is an older one. The longer you have had the computer, the greater the chance that the files are 'fragmented,' which means they are not all stored in contiguous areas of the hard drive. If you lose power or shut down your PC while the computer is performing a write operation to the hard drive (while it is storing some amount of data), the chances of it messing something up are manifold.
Liken it to this scenario: you are carefully sorting various colors of small beads from your hand into numerous containers on a shelf. Someone sneaks up behind you and makes a sudden, loud, startling noise. You jump, and perhaps knock over a seed container or two, mixing the seeds and/or spilling some on the floor.
That's analogous to what can happen when your hard drive experiences a sudden unexpected power shut down or a power surge when it is in the middle of writing data to the hard drive. I've never had a problem with saving and re-opening the same file in WriteItNow. However, I have had problems opening files from a variety of programs when power would drop out in the middle of doing some task. That's why I always have a UPS now. It acts both as a backup power source and a sort of "filter" to smooth out those bumps in the electrical road.
Unfortunately, it's a heck of a lot easier to pick up and sort those beads than it is to try to sort out a corrupted file. A better solution is to back up your files regularly, probably daily if you write daily, so you can simply restore the corrupted file if/when it happens.
Faithfully submitted,
Tony Burton
MCSA/MCP
Thanks for visiting, Dennis.
While I don't know anything about what caused your crash or the appropriateness of my following remarks to WriteItNow software, it is nevertheless true that the prevalence of corrupted files could be a good spot to distinguish between "amateur" and "professional" software.
Modern easy development tools allow people with limited software background to create packages which may have some attractive features, but are often missing some (boring) basics (which a more professional designer would include) such as autosave, safeguards to avoid corruption, and data recovery programs.
One may or may not ever step into one of these "holes" in a software product, but if one does it can be very painful.
Guys,
I like using the writeitnow software package, however, recently I saved a file and went to bed only to find I lost power to the PC and when I restarted it the file was corrupted. I was lucky that I had made another hard copy in a different location which protected my file. This is a flaw in their software. You will need to re-save a different file in a different location every time you work on your craft, or else you may end up losing all of it.
Theresa asked for a link to my comments in my blog about what makes me quit reading a novel. Here's the entry that deals with the bad guy going off on the "I need to rape this woman" tangent.
http://crimespace.ning.com/profiles/blogs/evil-guy-speaks
A couple of things will prompt me to drop out of a story before the end:
- a mystery plot loses the plot, e.g. where the attempts on the hero/ine's life become too numerous, too frequent, and he/she/they somehow keep managing to just barely escape, so that the story becomes all about the attempts and escapes rather than the mystery. If I wanted an action movie, I'd watch an action movie.
- a really good story idea gets bogged down in bad writing - bad grammar, bad word and phrase choices, repetitive action words, etc. A good editor should have picked up on these and made suggestions for changes before publishing.
I love books and read a wide variety of genres and authors, but I will recycle a book and cross the author off my reading list quickly if I'm frustrated rather than intrigued.....
Oooo--I listen to books lying in bed, but never thought of the "might do something 'entertaining'" aspect. Now--that will be ALL I can think of...
For me, though, I think it comes down to the women trying too hard to be actressy somehow.
Female reader voices often annoy me too. I wonder if that is sex-related, i.e. I can put up with male voices because the man might do something entertaining later? ;) Seems awfully sexist, if so, and definitely sad to say.
Interesting to find out that you can't suppress the "he said", "she said" aurally as well as you can visually. I haven't read enough audible books to know.
Star, thanks very much for coming by.
Theresa
I am vision-impaired and listen to produced audios. I hate to say this (I am a feminist), but female readers often annoy the heck out of me--being too plummy, trilly, purring, chuckly, or over-animated and reading the male parts in sort of a Shirley-Templish nasal monotone.
Male readers that read too animatedly also annoy me. Too fakey. I also don't like over production--such as some sound effects or swirly music.
I know a lot of crime readers love Spenser, but Parker has "he said" or "she said" after almost every utterance--this becomes very irritating over time in audio, though easily overlooked on the page.
Elmore Leonard, on the other hand, for me, is much better when someone reads him to me.
I have put down an audio after a disk or two because of these drawbacks, which can lean into my last nerve until I almost scream.
Star Lawrence
http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com
Audio reviews
Peg, thanks for visiting. Do you have a link for that blog post?
--Theresa
Interesting, Lev. I cried all the way through "The Lovely Bones" which I positively devoured and, though the voice was much too adult, never had any issue with believability.
I guess that means what knocks you out of story is different from what knocks me out, yes? Interesting. So what's a poor author to do?
Seems like a nearly impossible problem.
Hmmm,
Theresa
I blogged about this on CrimeSpace the other day: I've quit finishing stories where the bad guy, who has painstakingly planned to steal the treasure or take over the nation or whatever, gets sidetracked by the protag's lovely girlfriend/wife/sister to the point where he drops everything else and just thinks about how good it's going to feel when he rapes her and then kills her.
Any mystery that's badly or indifferently or flatly written pushes me out after a certain point even if I've given it my best shot as a reader. It's not enough that the story is good, the writing has to be equal to the story or the book feels crippled to me.
More technically, if the POVi seems off, especially in a first person narrative, I give up. "The Lovely Bones" never worked for me because the voice was much too sophisticated, and thus unbelievable. Friends would come up with great explanations like "Well, she got smarter in Heaven." I didn't buy it.
There are advantages to writing software if you have a complex novel or simply have issues staying organized within your novel. I know some people who compile masses of notes, charts, etc., either in hardcopy form or in documents like spreadsheets or separate word processing documents. Some writing software helps to eliminate all that messiness.
For example, Write It Now (published by Ravenshead Software):
- has a tab for your novel synopsis
- has a tab for your chapters (i.e., the main body of your novel)
- has a tab that allows you to keep up with your characters and all their characteristics, within the program instead of on little post-it notes or file cards stuck on the wall (as some people do)
- has a tab where you list the major events in your novel, and allows you to directly annotate which characters are involved in those events
- has a tab for listing all the locations in your novel, again allowing you to link to the characters and events occurring at each location
- has two tabs just for notes and ideas
- has a tab with very, very cool charts: one for a timeline showing when events happen and for how long (I can click on the event in the chart and it takes me to the detailed description in the Events tab), and another chart for characters and their relationships. These charts are automatically constructed as you enter the Events and Relationships data.
- finally, a tab that allows you to track submissions very easily
Now, you could do much of this in Word, OpenOffice, or some other word processor true, but you would need separate documents, or have to scroll up and down to different parts of your document to get to the information. Here, it's all in one place--you just click on the tab and boom, it's there.
I also know you may or may not use every feature for everything you write, but it's nice to have them there if/when you do need them.
I understand the desire some authors have to stay with a "standard" but even Word isn't "standard." For example, I also am an editor, and I sometimes receive Word documents that are in DOCX format. My version of Word wouldn't open them unless I went and downloaded a special patch from MS that allowed me to do so. Documents written in older versions of Word sometimes give me problems, too.
Write It Now exports your novel as an RTF, text file or even as HTML. I don't know any editor or agent who won't accept RTF, although such people may exist. I can open an RTF file in a heartbeat and never have any problems with them the way I have with some MS Word documents.
Write It Now has spell-check, if you want that, as well as other standard functions like search and replace, word count, insert accented characters and so forth.
It also comes in a full-function, downloadable trial version.
Personally, I hate MS Word, too, even after working with it for umpteen years as a writer, journalist and tech writer, but I keep it installed on my machine for when I do need it. (And no, I don't own stock in Ravenshead Software, but I wish I did.)
I do everything in Word. Separate documents for the synopsis and research documents. I open all the documents at the same time and keep them tabbed (a little add-on called WinTabs will tab Word for you. Wintabs has been successful with all my Word versions, 97, 2003 and 2007, and the product can be found http://17slon.com/gp/wintabs/index.htm.
Peter, very shortly we'll have a post from a new Guest Blogger about some simple tricks in Microsoft Word. Stay tuned.
No, no, and no. There's quite a bit I don't know about this PC and Microsoft Word.
Ah, Kaye, now there I beg to differ. Do you organize your spices? Do you organize your cutlery in the kitchen drawer? Many of these things are done to make life simpler. But, it's also true that to organize things alphabetically, one has to learn the alphabet first!
Somewhere in the early 80s, my company installed a word processing program at the office of a bunch of shrinks, and my job was to teach them how to use a word processor. I said "It's just like a typewriter but it's got two special keys, 'escape' and 'control'." So all these shrinks started making woo woo noises, like something out of Wizard of Oz: "Oooh ooh, 'escape' and 'control', 'escape' and 'control'" — I could hear the monsters coming out of the walls! It's just so hilarious to remember.
The world has come a long way since then, and the next generation will be dragged forward kicking and screaming as they embrace yet another technology. Everyone gets to do it!
In the prototype version of author software which I'm working on, I select things by keying in a record number, not something most humanoids would like to do. But I'm an old accounting person from way, way back, so data entry is not complex for me.
Do you know how to cut and paste with a mouse? Do you know how to "tag" things by positioning a mouse on something and right-click? This is how I envision good software working.
Anyway, we're still a long way from having a smart venture capitalist to invest in the idea, so you won't have to face this decision for a while yet!!
Best,
Theresa
P.S. And thanks so much Kaye for coming to visit. Hope you'll be back often!
Deleting text unintentionally is something that can be guarded against — somewhat. Did you know that you can set your Microsoft Word to automatically backup every few minutes? Did you know that there is a "Undo" or "Backup" key right there on the main screen?