1st ROW80 Check-In

A Round of Words in 80 Days

I declared my intent to do this in Friday's post and tomorrow is already the first check-in

Since I've identified the mess in my fiction files created by the 8 NaNos and 2 or three 70 Days of Sweat challenges as the worst stumbling block keeping me from working my fiction WIP and also since I'm jumping in at nearly the mid point of round 2 for 2012, I'm going to set my goals for between now and the end of June accordingly:

Choose 1 of the finished short stories to be the first epub to publish on Smashwords or Amazon and prep it for take off by the end of June: any revision, line edit, format, convert.  [Blow Me a Candy Kiss] -  Yes on choosing the title.


Spend 30 minutes or more per day reading a book on Writing from the ever growing TBR of books on writing.  Will compile list for future updates.
---Saturday - Y  Read several chapters in Let's Get Digital: How to Self-Publish and Why You Should by David Gaughran.  I picked up the Kindle edition free on Amazon earlier this week.


Spend 30 minutes or more per day daydreaming in the story world with pencil and pad at hand.
---Saturday - Y


Spend 30 minutes or more per day on one or more of the following tasks:
--Saturday - Y

• Input any material from the daydreaming session into it's appropriate file or task list.
• Clean up the Fruit of the Spirit storyworld worksheet.
• Clean up the 8 NaNo novel files: quarantine the mess, create work space for new writing, and create a system for  storing the material salvaged from the mess in such a way as it can be found when needed. i.e. linking it to appropriate topic pages in the FOS story world worksheet.
  ____Storyteller's Spouse 2006
  ____The Substance of Things Hoped For 2009
  ____Mobile Hopes 2008
  ____Spring Fever 2007
  ____A Trick of Light 2011
  ____Brooding Instinct 2005
  ____Everything That Rises Must Submerge 2010
  ____Majoring in Marine Biology 2004
• Read and notate the scene text of the 8 NaNo novel files
  ____Storyteller's Spouse 2006
  ____The Substance of Things Hoped For 2009
  ____Mobile Hopes 2008
  ____Spring Fever 2007
  ____A Trick of Light 2011
  ____Brooding Instinct 2005
  ____Everything That Rises Must Submerge 2010
  ____Majoring in Marine Biology 2004

• Create a master task list in FOS story world worksheet file and add any actionable task that comes to mind while working with the files: research and fact check, character development, scenes needed etc.  Future goals can be taken from this list.
• Create topic pages in the FOS story world worksheet file for every character from every existing story and novel finished or in progress that is set in this story world.  Add any of the characters known life events to the master timeline.
• Choose 10 POV level characters from FOS and write a first person rambling monologue for them.
• Do a line edit of all of the completed short stories
  
  Blow Me a Candy Kiss
  How Does Your Garden Grow
  Running In Circles
  Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities
  Making Rag Doll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes
  
• During the line edits consider whether any significant revision is still needed--scenes to add or delete, rearrange or rewrite; timeline issues, facts to confirm or to change--and create an actionable task topic in the file.
• Write fresh scenes whenever a spark is lit by the above work.

I copy/pasted the goal list I created in Friday's post of intent and then added and adjusted and noted what got done.  I will do this for each check-in.  Watch the strike-throughs accumulate.

If I can create enough order by the end of May that I'm no longer feeling this strong aversion to opening my old NaNo files because I will have a system for dealing with the mess I make then I aim to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo in both June and August. Concurrently with the ROW80 challenges.

When I talk about my fiction files and worksheets I am talking about my WhizFolder Deluxe files.   As shown in one configuration in the screenshot below.

On the right is the tabbed browser with multiple files open.  Showing is the FOS worksheet file.  FOS is my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld in which every story I've begun except the fantasy trilogy ended up in.  I set up this worksheet file so I could coordinate timelines, character bios, research and anything else the individual stories might have in common.

A WhizFolder file is a hierarchical list of topics [left in the right window] that can be edited in place or opened in an advanced editor [window on the left].  A topic can be a chapter, a character bio, a piece of research, a task reminder--anything you can do in a RTF file you can do in a topic.  You can print them individually or in selected groups.  You can move them around inside the file, copy or move them to another file.  You can count words in selected topics or selected text.  You can hyperlink any topic to any other in any other WhizFolder file.  You can link web sites and applications and other file types. You can create keywords for ease of searching for topics in a file that contains too many to see at a glance.  You can embed objects like spread sheets, mind maps, images and documents.

But the primary things I use it for with writing projects is to keep the research and planning, timeline and rosters separate from the story text and to break the project down into manageable chunks that can be written in whatever order and then moved around if needed.  I prefer to break my stories down into scenes rather than chapters so I'll create a topic for each scene I know will be needed and if I discover another scene needs to be added between existing scenes it is a snap to create the topic for it and move it into place.  Sometime I might want to break a scene down into descriptive and dialog segments and then I might create separate topics for them as child topics for the scene and then once I'm ready to combine them I move the text into the scene topic.

If I was using it at its full potential as a file organizer it would serve just about every purpose Scrivener and Liquid Story Binder serve for writing projects.

When I talk about the messes I made of my Nano files it is because I didn't maintain the order.  Instead of stopping to create a new topic in its proper place in the list I would just hit enter a couple of times and start working on a different scene that may or may not have belonged after the scene I was just working on that may or may not have been finished.  I would switch from writing narrative or dialog to writing about a character or letting the character ramble.  As the NaNos went by I created fewer and fewer topics until this last one I did the whole thing in a single topic.  All 60K.  Everything I wanted to say about the story as well as the story itself is all jumbled together.  I might as well have been using Wordpad.

Another way of stating my main goal for this ROW80 is to create an environment in the files that entices me to open and work on them and a system that I can maintain even for NaNos.

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Chandler: The Note-to-Self Organizer

Chandlerproject.org

I'm always trying out aps to help me organize my time, my to do lists and my mind.  Most are complete busts but Chandler is closest among those that provide calendar functions, assigning date and time, alarms, separating urgent from it-can-wait, and one of my must haves--allowing links to web and computer folders and aps to be associated with tasks.

Chandler is an open source project and has just recently provided 1.0 rendition which indicates it is out of its infancy.  I had high hopes on seeing the screenshots on their site and reading the testimonies of users.  So I downloaded it last night and spent upwards of six hours inputting tasks.  Though it has the ability to import from some other aps like Google calendar and outlook that was of no help to me as my to do lists are in my head, in my WhizFolderDeluxe note taking ap and in my email inbox.

The problems I encountered were not so much the fault of the application's ability to do the tasks I need of it but rather the fault of my eyes and the fact the program has compatibility issues with Windows platforms newer than XP.  Maybe if I wasn't working on a netbook  with a screen whose default font is the size of a mustard seed the vision issue would be moot and I hope in the future they develop an RTF for the notes so I can enlarge fonts, though that wouldn't help with the font in the menus and sidebar.  I assume the compatibility issue with Windows 7 will also be addressed in future builds of Chandler but until it is I don't think I can trust my data to it.  FYI if you are using Linux or Mac Os X you might be in better luck.  As is often the case these open source programs have fewer compatibility issues with those platforms than with Windows.

There was another irritating issue I hope they resolve in the future.  The alarm pop up dialog box causes the cursor to freeze and move like molasses over ice so your work is interrupted while you wait until you can click it away.  Maybe that is one of those Windows compatibility issues.

I also would prefer not to have to type in the date and time especially with those teeny fonts and I've worked with aps and online forms that provide the little calendar for selecting the date and  little popup lists of times to select.  I imagine Chandler will provide that eventually.

And a minor irritant tho minor as a mosquito bite is compared to a wasp sting is the presence of a demo file aka Cllection called US Holidays which they made read only and disallow delete and it is cluttering up my dashboard with two years worth of past holidays in the Done section.  Tho it is may be nice to have the reminders show up in the Now and Later sections as the holidays approach and pass, it is irritating I can't write notes in their note section regarding personal plans for that holiday and it is irritating I have to create a separate Collection called Events to collect Bdays, Anniversaries and other occasions which I would just as soon have grouped in with Holidays and also be able to add non US Holidays.

But since the calendar function--assigning date and time to a task so they are automatically prioritized by the program, moving into place at the appointed time--is the only function my WhizFolder does not provide while also having a smaller footprint, faster opening and closing, font size control and no Windows compatibility issues, I guess I will be sticking with it.

Screenshot of my Whiz Master Task List Outline Collapsed

That task list with all it's nested hierarchy opened is approaching a mile long.  I exaggerate.  Slightly.  Maybe.

I've been fiddling around trying to implement David Allen's Getting Things Done method since last February.  Chandler was the first ap that came close to automating the prioritizing task that I now do manually with Whiz--moving task topics out of the To Do Queue and the Daily/Weekly/Monthly sections into the Today/This Month/This Week sections.

Before you go away thinking that I'm totally dissing Chandler, rest assured I'm not. I wouldn't have bothered writing a review if I'd no admiration for it at all.  If not for the compatibility issues I'd be using Chandler in conjunction with Whiz for prioritizing the upcoming two or three months.  And if I were working on a project with a team or even trying to coordinate schedules and tasks with a family Chandler can do things no other small p project manager can do: It can share data with others and synch data between platforms.  I can imagine how helpful that could be for a couple raising a family, for partners in a small company, or for a community organized event.

Chandler is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

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Library Loot: September 29 – October 5

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Claire has Mr Linky this week.

My husband picked up the items waiting for us yesterday. I'm pressed for time having just started Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna Sunday night which is due Monday so I'm going to skip image collection and just paste the info I just pasted into my note ap where I keep track of items out.

Once I have a little spare time I will be moving the info for each book onto its own separate note aka bib slip in that same note ap, WhizFolders, unless like The Help it already has one albeit for the large print edition. Can you believe I used to make all these bib slips by hand? I still have hundreds of them covering three library systems and my personal library going back a decade. I lost the previous decade's worth in our 2001 move--a couple thousand at least.

I was reading The Help while in Longview WA in August and didn't finish and when I got home the queue for the LP edition was in double digits (30+) with 2 copies whereas that for the audio was at 8 with 2 copies . Don't even want to talk about the queue for the regular print edition which was approaching 100 with around 10 copies. When I checked today they now have 5 copies of the LP, 6 of the audio and 43 of the regular print.

I haven't listened to an audio book for years. I used to dislike it because I could read so much faster than that. Due to the RP I can't read as fast as I can talk anymore so I'm going to give audio books another try. I'm hoping I have a positive experience. Also hope I will be able to listen while crocheting or stepping on the mini-tramp. Or when I'm too sick to read like I was this past week.

Title: The help [sound recording (CD)] : a novel / Kathryn Stockett.
Publisher, Date: [New York, N.Y.] : Penguin Audio, p2009.
Description: 15 sound discs (ca. 18 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

Saw Mosse's Labyrinth on someones Currently Reading list a bit over a week ago and ordered it. While I was looking at other books by Mosse, I went ahead and ordered Sepulchre. It arrived first. Labyrinth has been shipped.

Title: Sepulchre / Kate Mosse.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher, Date: New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008.
Description: 572 p. : map ; 24 cm.
Summary: The stories of two women separated by more than a century are brought together by a series of visions that are related to the tarot and a small church, known as a Sepulchre in the grounds of the Domaine de la Cade.
Subject: Tarot cards -- Fiction.
Time travel -- Fiction.
France -- Fiction.
Occult fiction.
Fantasy fiction.

I saw Ecology of a Cracker Childhood listed on someone's Library Loot or It's Monday What Are You Reading? posts. Possibly both.

Title: Ecology of a Cracker childhood / Janisse Ray.
Edition: 1st pbk. ed.
Publisher, Date: Minneapolis : Milkweed Editions, 1999.
Description: 285 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Subject: Ray, Janisse, 1962- -- Childhood and youth.
Baxley (Ga.) -- Biography.
Longleaf pine.
Deforestation -- Georgia.
Forest ecology -- Georgia.
Consumption (Economics) -- Social aspects.

I've had Anatomy of the Spirit checked out of several different libraries since it came out in 1996 and was featured on Oprah. I've never quite finished it as there was always a queue. My sister, Jamie, has been reading it recently and wanted me to be able to discuss it with her so I'm trying again. It's been a few years so I'll probably have to start it over. Again.

Title: Anatomy of the spirit : the seven stages of power and healing / Caroline Myss.
Edition: 1st pbk ed.
Publisher, Date: New York : Three Rivers Press, 1996.
Description: xiv, 302 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Subject: Medicine and psychology.
Mind and body.
Medicine, Psychosomatic
Personality -- Health aspects.
Alternative medicine.
Self-care, Health

DVD:

Have been in queue for both of these for most of this year if not before the New Year. It's been a long wait. I had the book Food Inc checked out awhile back but haven't finished it.

Funny story: when Ed went to pick up our requests he found a copy of Food Inc in both of our reserve stacks. He only checked out one of course, handing the second over to the librarian saying I don't know what she was thinking. Well I don't either. There are several possibilities. I got in line on one of our cards weeks before and forgot. I thought I was reordering the book. Or I could have thought if we didn't manage to watch it in the week allotted that would insure a speedier second change. That last is very, very unlikely though. Can barely imagine it being my thought process so one of the first two is most likely. But what were the chances we'd both end up with our turn the same week? Especially since at the time the library system had only one copy.

The queue was above 70 when I first jumped on. It is still above 30 but then now have 9 copies.

Another irony: While browsing Netflix this month I discovered Food Inc is available to watch online. But at the time I still thought Ed wanted to watch it with me so stayed in queue for the DVD. He says he won't have time this week and probably not til after the holiday season.

Title: Food, Inc. [videorecording (DVD)] / Magnolia Pictures ; Participant Media ; River Road Entertainment present ; Developed with American Documentary, Inc. ; Perfect Meal, LLC. ; a film by Robert Kenner ; executive producers, William Pohlad, Jeff Skoll, Robin Schorr, Diane Weyermann ; producers, Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein ; co-producers, Eric Schlosser, Richard Pearce, Melissa Robledo ; writers, Robert Kenner, Elise Pearlstein, Kim Roberts ; directed by Robert Kenner.
Edition: Widescreen.
Publisher, Date: [Los Angeles, CA] : Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2009.
Description: 1 videodisc (ca. 94 min.) : sd., col. w/ b&w seq. ; 4 3/4 in.
Summary: Lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing how our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profits ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. Reveals surprising - and often shocking truths - about what we eat, how it's produced and who we have become as a nation.
Target Audience Note: MPAA rating: PG; for some thematic material and disturbing images.
Subject: Food industry and trade -- United States.

Old Dogs is one Ed asked to get in line for and he is going to try to watch it with me this weekend. I would have sent for it anyway. I mean Robin Williams, John Travolta and kids! Irresistible.

Title: Old dogs [videorecording (DVD)] / a Tapestry Films production, a Walt Becker film ; produced by Andrew Panay, Robert Levy, Peter Abrams ; written by David Diamond & David Weissman ; directed by Walt Becker.
Publisher, Date: Burbank, CA : Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, [2010]
Description: 1 videodisc (88 min.) : sd., col. ; 4 3/4 in.
Summary: Dan and Charlie are two best friends who, together, have built a successful marketing empire, but have somehow managed to avoid ever really grown up. Their lives have been turned upside down when they are charged with the care of seven-year-old twins while on the verge of a big business deal. The clueless bachelors stumble in their efforts, leading to one debacle after another, with a gorilla and some pecking penguins. Dan and Charlie learn as much from the kids as vice versa.
Target Audience Note: MPAA rating: PG; for some mild rude humor.
Series: Disney DVD
Disney DVD.
Subject: Male friendship -- United States -- Drama.
Marketing executives -- United States -- Drama.
Twins -- United States -- Drama.
Father and child -- United States -- Drama.
Bachelors -- United States -- Drama.

Travolta, John, 1954-
Williams, Robin, 1952 July 21-
Preston, Kelly.

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Reading Challenge Spread Sheet

I was planning to join two or three more of the reading challenges that I targeted and for which I registered my intent in the Reading Challenge Portal during Bloggiesta. But as I set about choosing among them I decided that before I took on any more I needed a better way of keeping the info organized--something I could see at a glance. Like a spreadsheet.

So I spent the last three or more hours setting it up and inputting as much info as possible to bring it up to date. I did it in my WhizFolders Organizer Deluxe ap so that I could have it embedded right with the info I'd collected on all the challenges and my progress.

The challenges are listed across the top and the books (titles / authors) are listed in the far left column. Then in each of the cells I indicate if a book qualifies for a challenge with # / # where the first # indicates the number read so far and the second # indicates the goal.

Am already noticing a problem though. It is hard to keep track of which cell you are in once you have scrolled the title list and/or the challenge titles off the screen. I know that more sophisticated spreadsheet aps have ways of temporarily hiding rows or columns to get around that issue. So now I've got to decide whether the problem is severe enough to warrant recreating it in MS Office or Open Office. I could still embed it in the Whiz document but to work on it I'd have to call up the other program which would have a larger RAM footprint and be more complex and less familiar to me.

Would the advantage be worth the time and effort? For that matter is having the spreadsheet at all worth the time and effort? Just think, I could have spent the last three hours reading!

Hmm just had a thought as I was typing the last paragraph. What if I moved the title list into the middle? Who says it has to be on the far left? And then I could copy the column headings row and duplicate it about every ten or fifteen rows which would always keep it on the screen. Just might try it. But not tonight. I want to read.

I spent most of the week watching library DVD as fast as I could and thus haven't read much since last Friday. Even we brought more DVD home from the library today, including season 4 of The West Wing, I've decided to dedicate the weekend to reading. Which means of course that next weekend I'll be frantically watching DVD.

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Exuse Me While I Go Play With My New Toy

A screenshot of WhizFolders Pro as I typically used it. Note all the different sized windows stacked and scattered across the screen.

I got a surprise in my inbox this evening.

I've blogged about my use of WhizFolders Pro for all note-taking and draft work many time over the last 2.5 years since I bought it and before that I blogged a number of times about the free version, WhizNotes, in which I did my NaNoWriMo draft several years running. The two latest posts about Whiz are here where I created and ebook and here showing how I used it during Bloggiesta.

Well recently Whiz generated an error report automatically which I agreed to send and a few hours ago I got a reply from AviTech, the creator of the ap, informing me that the bug had been addressed in the latest updates but that he noticed that my two years of free updates had expired last February but he was also aware that I had blogged about Whiz and because of that he was extending me a complimentary upgrade. Not only to the latest edition but to the Deluxe Edition which is a step up from Pro!

I was just sitting down to prepare Thursday's post and planning to work on a book review of The Girl with Glass Feet for Friday's post when this e-mail arrived. Ed was sitting beside me about to prepare for bed but when he saw that he was as excited as I was and he, (who is my tech go to guy) agreed to stay up long enough to walk me through download and installation of WhizFolders Deluxe.

Below are a few screenshots I took after the installation. With most of the same files open my desktop now has only two Whiz windows because Whiz now has tabbed view for the file windows as well as for the topics in the editor window. This is going to eliminate one of the minor hassles of loosing the smaller windows under the bigger ones and having to call up the master list of open windows to find it. Minor but annoying, so this is going to be nice.



Here the editor window is under the files window and the file selected is my Web Map which is my Web bookmarking file. The topic open is the one for reading & writing related blogs which I added dozens of links to during the Bloggiesta this past weekend. The reason I prefer to bookmark web pages this way is that I can drop comments with the URL that remind me of the relevance of the link to whichever interest or project.


Here I've selected the tab for my Reading Journal Whiz file. Note the colored topic titles in the list at the left. This feature was part of Pro and allows me to color code items. In this case these are the bibliography slips for library books and the colors indicate:

• green = currently checked out
• red = previously checked and begun but currently at the library
• teal = never checked out but confirmed the library possesses. You could call this a wishlist. I create these as I read reviews online that intrigue me.
• lavender = previously checked out and finished reading but not finished with book review
• white = read and review posted

Not visible above:

• purple = short story collections
• yellow = finished reading, still in my possession and available for review
• navy = books about writing
• maroon = books relevant to an ongoing research project related to my fiction WIP

Here the tabbed editor window (looking pretty much the same as before) is on top of the new tabbed file window showing the book review topic for The Girl with Glass feet. Note the ability to drop a thumb of the book cover. into the file. This is helpful to me as my memories are stored with associated images so being able to gaze at the cover helps me remember the experience of reading the book--the story, characters and plot as well as my thoughts and feelings at the time. This enables me to write a review after the book has gone back to the library.

Well, as you can imagine, I'm anxious to continue exploring the new features. Some would be new to Pro but many are for the Deluxe edition only and I'm eager to play with them.

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