*****

HOW I WRITE by Gary Carson

I’m not really old school. I use computers all the time and I used to make my living as a programmer and systems administrator. I don’t write that much in longhand anymore and I still do a lot of my work on the computer, but I’m trying to make the transition into dictating all of my first drafts. I’m dictating this right now, for instance. (I still suck at it–had to do a lot of editing the old-fashioned way after I got finished).

Computers have their uses, but they’re over-rated when it comes to actual composition. Writers have been brainwashed into thinking they have to work on word processors to be productive, but that’s not true at all. Elmore Leonard, for instance, writes all his books in longhand on yellow legal pads and he’s a thousand times more productive than most writers using computers.

It’s just a matter of what works. Personally, though, I think it’s nuts to spend $500 on an Ipad so you can write on the move when it’s so much easier and cheaper to just use a notebook, voice recorder or something like the Alphasmart Neo. The Neo, for instance, is a fantastically robust dedicated writing device with no distractions that will run for a year on a couple of regular batteries and it only costs around $200. For $500, you could also buy the best professional-grade digital voice recorder available for voice recognition right now–the Olympus DS-5000.

I don’t know. I guess I just like minimalism and functionality. And look at how expensive these electronic gadgets are with their battery replacements and printing costs and external media and all the rest of it. And how long do they last? I’ve got an Olympia SM-9 manual typewriter that’s over fifty years old and still works perfectly, but the average computer has a lifetime of what? Two or three years?

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You can also see — and join! — our very own demonstration of the application.  What you are reading right here is my personal first draft.  But at our demonstration document, you can collaborate on this post yourself.  If people do add in some valuable content, I’ll post it back here as our first collaborative post.  This may be an effective way to gather together the collective wisdom of this blog’s readership.

The application is easy to use.  There is no need to officially register with the site, but you do need to insert a name in the box at the top right to help track your contributions to the document.  The list of names visible at the demo site are people who are currently live on the document draft.  Collaborators can also enter into live chat in the area provided.

Please collaborate with us, while seeing also how the application works.  Just click this link, which will be active for a limited time.  The document at this link hopefully will turn into a collaborative post for this blog about the utility of online collaboration, plus recommendations of other collaboration applications, if any of my readers care to chip in.  Please offer your additions and observations to my original post.  This is actually an experiment among us to see just how the application works.

For those who visit, I pose two questions.  Please enter your own thoughts into the document.  After you’ve written something, feel free to click the “Saved revisions” button.  If this little experiment is successful, I’ll post our collaborative post back here into my blog for the whole world to see.

QUESTION ONE:  CAN YOU THINK OF ANY USES  FOR THIS APPLICATION FOR WRITERS?

QUESTION TWO:  DO YOU KNOW OF OTHER  COLLABORATION APPLICATIONS THAT YOU LIKE BETTER?

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I JUST FINISHED watching the season premier of the new reality show on CBS following the Super Bowl [Yea, Saints!] — Undercover Boss, I think it’s called.  I was looking forward to it, after a sneak peek offered a few days ago on Oprah.  The show stirred thoughts about the responsibilitiy of writers in society — and TV-movie producers too — a responsibility that I think is often ignored in a society more devoted to escapist entertainment and profit rather than responsibility.

This show, in which a company’s CEO goes “under-cover” as a common laborer in his company for a week, illustrates how conscientious and hard-working many of a company’s front-line workers are — and how under-appreciated they are.  And one comes away wondering, is the huge disparity in pay scales between management and worker really justified?

I personally take writing as a very deep social responsibility.  We are the front-line guardians of society and culture.  If we ignore this responsibility, we may doom our country — wherever we live — to moral and social decline.

My viewing of this show follows my watching of Up In The Air last night at the local movie theater in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  There’s another creative production that puts us in touch with today’s realities.  Yes, it’s our connections to one another that matter most, even for those of us still “up in the air.”  We just can’t escape that.

In any case, I’d like to compliment the creative spirits behind this TV series and movie.  In our troubled times I hope we writers are beacons for a fundamental re-orientation of social thinking.  If that does happen, even to a small degree, some writers and creative people are fulfilling their responsibilities as custodians.

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iDaily Diary

This software comes in both FREE and PRO versions.  I reviewed the free version back in 2007, finding it a useful tool for writers.  What I wrote back then still applies to the current free version.  It’s a convenient place to capture one’s general thoughts and ideas about one’s writing career and objectives, and about potential projects that still have not taken full shape.  The strengths I pointed to before are the dated pages in a spiral-notebook format, plus the possibility of tabbed subject pages available along the top.  My previous review gives some illustrations.  In addition, one can maintain multiple diaries, perhaps one for business and one for personal matters.  Or different diaries for different major, long-term projects.

The PRO version of iDaily Diary will be offered at half price, $30 discounted to $15, on this Thursday, 21 January, by Bits du Jour.  It offers a number of useful additional features that may be worth the price for a working writer.  The feature that caught my eye first is the ability to maintain an undated notebook, a feature that would be useful for specific project development.  Also, one can view entries in a hierarchical tree format.  The Pro version also offers a lot more control over the diary’s content, including photos, audio and video, as well as tables — and there’s much more control over exporting and printing.  The software website provides feature lists for both versions, for easy comparison.  As always, the software can be downloaded from Bits du Jour in advance for evaluation — and in this case, if the Pro version does not appeal to you, you can simply install the free version over the Pro version.

NOTE:  I may be the best customer at Bits du Jour, as I can’t resist many of the deals it offers.  Curiously, it seems that Bits du Jour runs writing-related software in bunches, with several titles offered within a couple of weeks, followed by months of software discounts of little interest to writers.  This week, for example, it offers two excellent values for writers, including a powerful package for screenwriters — SEE PREVIOUS POST.

Debrief

Several months ago, I started using Debrief, a program that is a diary, but much, much more.  Debrief comes in three versions — Basic [free], Standard [$29.95] and Pro [$39.95].  The basic version operates like a daily diary and is somewhat comparable to the free version of iDaily Diary.  The Pro version is much more powerful, with features I considered so valuable that I purchased it.  The features of the different versions is best understood by looking at the version comparision chart.

The software website defines the basic concept of the program:

Notes are at the core of Debrief. Make a note one time, and view it in many different contexts. They can be viewed by date, like a journal. Or by subject folder, like files in a drawer. And they can be viewed within additional contexts of the features mentioned below – tasks, contacts, reading, etc. Of course, notes are searchable too.

Included in the Pro version are capabilities to develop a Reading List and Library, where one can compile notes regarding ongoing research.  This feature alone prompted me to purchase the program.  It also allows one to develop project to do lists, contact information and more.  To get a real sense of the program, take a look at the screenshots.

Normally, these days, when I’m working on projects, I keep Debrief open on my desktop so that I can easily dump ideas and notes into it.  I really like it.  On the other hand, it may offer power that many writers will not need, in which case the Pro version of iDaily Diary, or even the free versions of either software will be quite sufficient.  Of course, one can always upgrade later on.

The Journal

I cannot leave this discussion without mentioning The Journal.  Again, I reviewed this program some time ago.  There are aspects to it that make it particularly useful for writers, with some features designed just for us.

For a quick introduction to The Journal, take a look at How to Keep a Journal with The Journal.  Basically, The Journal allows one to enter text on dated Diary pages or on undated Notebook pages.  Moreover, entries can be categorized [even with as many sub-categories that you might need].  Then take a look at the screenshots, which are well-annotated.  A second page of screenshots is of even greater interest to writers.

The Journal’s website offers a host of useful resources which will be of special interest to writers, including writing exercises and articles about various aspects of the journaling process.  And, yes, The Journal offers a FREE newsletter as well — just sign up.  This newsletter mostly carries articles about how to harness The Journal to make it more productive.  I like the fact that available on the sign up page are links to newsletter archives — so one has a rich treasure trove about jounaling immediately available.

The Journal costs $49.95 for the downloadable version.  The software can be installed on TWO computers, a feature that I personally consider almost mandatory these days.

My General Thoughts about Journaling

I personally became a fan of journaling years ago when I turned to Ira Progoff’s At A Journal Workshop to help me through a period of difficult personal transition.  I have since then learned how journaling can be helpful to a writing career.  As you probably know, there are quite a number of books available about the process of journaling.  Amazon has a bunch of them.

But one can learn a lot just by looking into the three software programs above and working through their respective websites.  There are some commonalities among them.  The free versions are simple daily journals, not much different from a hand-written journal.  The Pro versions offer capabilities that no handwritten journal can offer:  spelling checking, thesaurus, extensive formatting, multi-meida capabilities, cross-referencing and hyperlinking, organizational tools such as categories, and so on.

Just reviewing the screenshots of the three programs can spark ideas in your mind about ways to go about working as a writer.  So, take some time, and use this post as a self-study project.  It may be valuable to you.

DO YOU ALREADY JOURNAL?

If you already have experience journaling, please share with us your observations, techniques, recommendations of specific books and other journal programs.  Just post your comments in the Comments Box.  Thanks

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In case you don’t know, ScribeFire is a free Mozilla Firefox extension that allows one to write blog posts from within the Firefox browser.  This is really convenient, especially if one is blogging about information gleaned from the internet.  Just check one’s sources in various browser tabs, then write the blog in another tab.  It’s that simple — at least, so I’m told.

By default, ScribeFire opens two screens, with the blog itself on top, and the post entry form on the bottom.  The bottom screen can be saved as a “note,” rather than a post published on the blog — very useful when building a post over several days of research.  While writing, one can easily insert links, photos and video.

ScribeFire works with a number of different blogging platforms.  I use WordPress — and ScribeFire did all the behind the scenes work to set itself up to post items there.  Also, one can add a number of different blogs to a list, so that you can easily post to multiple blogs from one place.

As someone who is a Doctorate student Idea Mason is very focused on academic writing and quite helpful for the scholar who needs to build their dissertation or manual. For example, I have been using this application for the past six months and it has given me a better appreciation of what post-graduate students experience when building these sort of documents. I was intimidated with it at first but once I started getting a better feel for how it worked I learned there were things I was able to do that I could not do with freeware or some of the commercial brands and that to me was priceless.

My time is very limited however this is an issue that I would like to keep open as I feel more persons need to be aware of it. I just discovered that Idea Mason is closing their doors due to economy which I think is sad to hear. No one wants to close a business they have worked so hard to build and maintain. I do have to wonder if there is a way the company can be kept open as they are bringing a great thing to education and the academic world. That’s just my thought. Thanks so much for discussing this issue as I feel it is important for everyone to know how great this application does work.”

WRIDEA

Wridea is a new online application to facilitate your own brain-storming — and it allows you to invite others to chip in their ideas too.  One must sign up for an account, but it’s FREE.

I’ve just tried it out and am intrigued.  I can enter my ideas, categorize them, add notes for each idea, set up separate pages for different projects and invite friends to take a look and add their own thoughts.  Pretty neat.

As it happens, I’m working on three projects right now that require collaboration across distances.  I’m therefore beginning to search for powerful, yet inexpensive collaboration tools.  DO YOU HAVE ANY COLLABORATION TOOLS TO RECOMMEND?  Please leave your comments.

The major difficulty I’m finding is that some of my collaborators just never log in to the collaboration site.  Have not yet figured out how to get these people actively involved.

TWELVE POINT — for scriptwriters

TwelvePoint is an online resource center for scriptwriters.  It is jam-packed with information and useful tools.  But it’s NOT FREE.

The site, however, has just issued an invitation for a one-week free trial.  This is an excellent opportunity to see if this site will be helpful to you.  Here’s what the site developer sent me as a teaser:

It’s easy to apply for your free trial. Just email jonquil@twelvepoint.com with ‘free trial’ as the subject and she will contact you with details of how to access the site. Please note, because TwelvePoint.com provides such a wealth of information, you may not apply for more than one free trial a year.”

NOTE:  I’ve accumulated quite a number of links about other collaboration applications below.  If this topic interests you, take a look.  To be honest, I’ve added them for my own reference, but you might have this list useful as well.

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All of our readers would like to know what you think of it.  Leave a comment.

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Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers – Now Online

Each year I look forward especially to the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list.  Always I find something new and helpful.  Routinely, the list comes out a month or two after appearing in the print edition.  Today I received an alert that this year’s list is finally online.  Check out the 101 Best Sites for Writers for 2009.

Once again, the list provides little coverage of the nuts-and-bolts and productivity side of things.  Still the editors have founda lot of gems.  Over 2000 websites were nominated this year.

Documents To Go — Now Available for iPhone

It seems like Documents To Go, the application that allows one to work with Office documents on one’s handheld device, has been around forever.  I remember using it years ago when I was still carrying around my early Palm Pilot.  Developer DataViz has done an extraordinary keeping the application up to date.  It has now just announced Documents to Go for the iPhone.  It’s available at the Apple iTunes store, along with 50,000 other applications.

ToodleDo:  A ToDo List Worth Doing

I’m a sucker for To Do List applications.  Toss one my way and I’ll certainly take a close look at it.  Few, however, stick around on my own computer.  ToodleDo may win me over — and I certainly recommend it to other writers for at least an evaluation.

ToodleDo is an online ToDo list manager.  What makes it different in my eyes is its underlying power.  Your ToDo List can be as simple as you wish — OR it can pull into one place multiple lists representing every aspect of your life, each tucked away in its own easy-to-access folder.  Moreover, tasks can have subtasks, an essential feature in my view.  Oh, yes, and of course it can be synced up with your – you guessed it – iPhone.

ToodleDo comes in three flavors.  The free version will satisfy most writers, although it lacks the subtasks feature.  The Pro Version [$14.95 a year] may well be worth it to some.  The Pro Plus Version, I think, will not appeal to writers, especially at $29.95 a year.

To help one understand the applications vast array of features, take a look at the product comparison chart.  Probably you will learn just how deficient other To Do List applications really are.

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*****

GENERAL:

TOM: Not being a poet, I do not have any understanding at all about how a poet approaches writing.  The romantic view is that poets just listen for the muse to speak to them.  Sudden inspiration drives the pen.  No thinking, organizing or even very conscious discipline during the writing process is necessary.  Is that romantic view of poetry accurate?

KAREN: It’s both romantic and accurate.  The initial impulse of the poem is much as you describe.  Suddenly, something hits.  Some metaphor suggests itself in an otherwise ordinary day.  Then the scribbling begins to see where it might lead.  Richard Hugo in “The Triggering Town” refers to the initiating subject.  So perhaps it’s the view of laundry hanging on a clothesline that begins to scroll backward in time and suggest a connection to some emotion or experience.  Of course, I’m speaking of my own process here.  Other poets may work in a completely different way. I just let the writing come—without censor or judgment—not even thinking about how anything is connected.  It always is.  That’s the integrity of mind.  Once I have everything I can think of to say—no matter how digressive, silly, or weird written down.  I give it a rest.  Later I come back and take this raw material and see how it makes itself into a poem.

THINKING:

TOM: Do you “think” about your poetry writing in any organized way?  Like mulling over objectives for yourself as a poet?  Tapping your inner resources for ideas for future poems — or even poetry book collections?  I guess what I’m asking is, do poets “think” about their work before actually sitting down to do it?

KAREN: I would hate to think of my thinking process as organized.  And I never have an a priori idea about what a poem is about in the sense of aboutness that, for instance, an essay has.  I find the aboutness somewhere about midway through the rewriting process when it announces itself and I say, “Oh, that’s what’s underneath this idea.  That’s the connection between these two things.  The unconscious is often much more literal than we imagine it is.  Much craftier too.  One thing I know for sure: I have to go slowly with this process or I may lose the point completely.  What do the images suggest?  How do they pile up toward a particular meaning?  A long time ago there was a poetry textbook I love the name of because it says so much about poetry:  How does a poem mean.  I like that because poetry is much more about how a poem means than what it means.

I do often get ideas from reading other people’s poems in much the same way musicians hear and understand what each other might be doing and then add their own spin to it.  When I teach poetry, I often have students read a book or two and find a line that speaks to them and then write toward or away from that line—agreeing or enhancing or arguing with or complaining about the line.  It’s a great exercise.

I don’t actually think about anything before I write.  But I definitely have a very specific feeling that makes me know I am about to engage in poetry.  It’s quite different than other types of writing I’ve done: fiction, essays, plays.

I save scraps of things that I think might eventually work their way into a poem.  I keep a “button box” with little provocative items, words, images, snatches of overheard conversation, metaphors.  When I feel stuck, I mine that box.  Often, the thing I select is just the thing I’ve been groping for.

TOM: Can you describe any thinking routines that you follow?

KAREN: I like to think about the way a poem suggests itself rather like a frayed bit of yarn that I can tug and follow as it unravels itself.  The most important piece for me is to separate writing—that spacious, non-judgmental, attentiveness–with rewriting and editing.  The second two should not take place simultaneous with the first.  Do them much later.  Let the raw materials of the poem breathe and coalesce for a while before rushing in to tidy it up.  And especially be careful with revising that you don’t eviscerate the poem.  I think it best to wait a week or two in stage one—going back to reread and add if anything new occurs, but do not get rid of anything or even put much effort into the order of things for a long while.  As you can tell, poetry is not fast food.  In fact, there are poems in my new book, Hard Bargain, that I have been writing for twenty-five years.

ORGANIZING:

TOM: Do poets organize things?  If so, how and why?

KAREN: When I do get down to editing, I depend very much on my ear to tell me the order of things.  Poetry, whether free verse or formal verse, is, above all, a kind of music.  You have to allow the order of the poem and the music of the poem to interact.  In the new book, there are a number of formal poems: pantoums and villanelles mostly.  These require a different kind of organizing because of the repetition and rhyme scheme. The editing process is fraught with pitfalls.  Go slowly with change.  Sit with it for a while.  Revisit and rewrite.

TOM: Do you have any organizational tricks that helped you create your poetry book?

KAREN: I find organizing a book of poems among the most challenging tasks a writer can undertake.  There are so many things to consider in the movement through a book.  It’s, I think, rather like writing a symphony—pushing toward a flow with has both variety and cohesiveness.  Some poems are difficult to place.  I’ve had poems for years that I have not been able to figure out how to use in any of my books.  They are good poems, but for one reason or another they don’t work in the sequence.

WRITING:

TOM: Do you as a poet simply use Microsoft Word as your word processor of choice?  Or do use some other program for your writing?

KAREN: I use Word.  I use a pen and tablet.  I use paper napkins.  For years, I used a fabulous old IBM Selectic.  Now I use my laptop.

TOM: If you could create a writing software to suit your own needs, what would you include?

KAREN: A simple way to keep track of and compare various versions.  It’s amazing that a fourteen-line poem can often go through fifty revisions.

TOM: What other resources did you keep at hand while you were writing your book?  Dictionaries?  Synonym dictionaries, or rhyming dictionaries?  If so, what specifically do you yourself turn to, either in print, online resources, or software?

KAREN: Occasionally, I consult a rhyming dictionary—as a last result and almost always with poor results.  Otherwise, I do consult dictionary.com to see if I am using a word correctly.  Mostly for poetry, I rely on my own vocabulary, as that sounds most natural to me as the language of my own thoughts.  I believe, as my guru poet William Stafford said, that poetry is the music of ordinary speech.  I try to avoid arcane words or tortured syntax.  Instead, I like a kind of democratic, energetic language.

PROMOTING:

TOM: Do you have a literary agent?  If so, how did you find one?  If not, how do you go about representing yourself to potential publishers?

KAREN: 99% of poets do not have an agent.  There is simply not enough money in poetry for agents to be interested.  I have had various agents for my fiction.  I am not particularly good at getting my work out. Every once in a while, I’ll notice that I have a bunch of new poems lying around and I’ll send then out to literary magazines.  I’m just terrible at the bookkeeping end of these things.  I wish this were not the case.  Maybe somebody could (or already has) invent a good software program for keeping track of submissions.  I would love to know about it.  I just do it rather haphazardly.

TOM: Was your poetry book published by an established publisher?  Or did you self-publish?  How did you choose between the two options, and why?

KAREN: My first two books were published by Nightshade Press which also published my second and third chapbook.  When the Nightshade owners retired, I didn’t have a press for a while. Then FootHills Publishing approached me.  I have admired their product.  A book of poetry is a little jewel and I like the production quality of the book to mirror the content.  I am extremely happy with my book and the work of Mike Czarnecki and FootHills Publishing.  Check out the website.  He publishes some of the best poets of our time.  And his handmade books are beautiful.

TOM: Do you do anything yourself to promote your book?  If so, what?  What promotional help does your publisher provide?

KAREN: FootHills Publishing has a great website and Mike provides some leads for readings.  I offer workshops and readings and network through those contacts.  Check out my website www.karenblomain.com to see where I am appearing in the next few months.  I also belong to two writers groups.  Occasionally, I do classroom visits in schools.  Both the publisher and I used the net to promote the book.

CONCLUSION:

TOM: What advice can you provide to aspiring poets regarding the productivity and business side of writing?  Any other parting advice?

KAREN: My advice to all writers is the same: don’t rush the process.  Don’t be in such a hurry to publish that you short-change the process of revision and editing.  Join a writers group.  Network with other writers.  Know your markets and your audience.  Don’t make it into such a business that you forget it is an art.  You are never going to make a million dollars writing poems, but the writer’s life is priceless.

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