All posts by Mark

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.0.50 – Finally, another update

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My day job crisis is finally slowing down, and I’ve manage to squeeze out a few hours for StoryBox. Fixed a couple bugs, and added some additional export options, and spent a few hours trying to make the rtf export correctly merge documents so that the formatting (bold, italic, etc..) doesn’t get lost, but for some reason, it gets lost if I merge two documents together. Yay for bugs in components I didn’t write!

I’m really really sorry for the delay between the last update and this one, but there literally was no time. I couldn’t even finish my NaNo novel. I heard a couple grumblings that maybe I’d gone away, never to return, and that SB was “dead”. That is absolutely not the case. I’m completely committed to supporting StoryBox for the long haul. I’m approaching the point where the really easy fixes and changes are done, and only hard stuff remains. In software development, typically the first 90% of the features take up only about half the development time. And I think that’s where I’m at now. I’ve got the first 90% done. Now, it’s time for polish and refinement, and that’s probably going to take another three months or so. You won’t see any huge changes between now and then, I suspect, but there will be lots of difficult, minor looking changes (like the rtf export issue – I think I’m going to have to write my own rtf library… boo! hiss!).

Writing

NaNo Update and Other Ramblings About Writing Goals

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My NaNo novel is going better, so far, than any of the previous attempts. I’m over 12,000 words, and I know, sorta, where it’s going. I previously never made it much past 5000, and I never had an outline before, not that the one I have is much of one. But any outline seems to be better than none for trying to mash out 50,000 words in a month.

Of course, at 12,000 words, I’m not on target anymore. I’ve essentially only averaged about 1,000 a day, which is far short of what I need to win NaNo. I’ve got to hit 2111 words a day, now, to win, and I don’t know if I can manage it. It was hard just getting 2000 yesterday. I just have too many projects going, and suffering through a cold for the last week hasn’t helped at all. I’ll have to see if I can pop some extra words out this weekend, but we’ve got projects to get completed around the house, too, so I don’t know how much uninterrupted time I can squeeze out.

I’m satisfied, though, with my progress. Even if I don’t win NaNo, I’ll finish the draft of this novel, as it will still count toward my goal for the next year (yes, I worked out my 2010 goals early) of getting three novels drafted.

“Huh, what?” you say.

I’ve come to the obvious conclusion that, if I want to get better at writing, I need to write. And I think I need to write a great deal, so I’ve set a goal of drafting three novels by the end of 2010. They’re going to be written as practice, with no intention of trying to get them published through a traditional publisher. I may even make them available here, in some fashion, if they aren’t total trash. A friend of mine, back in 2006, did a project he called A Short Story A Day, and this will sort of be my novel version of that project. I’m not about to post as I go along like he did. I’m not that comfortable with my fiction yet, but I may post them as I edit them. We’ll see.

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.0.48

Drag and Drop index cards! Yes, now you can drag your index cards from one spot to another to reorder them. It’s not, perhaps, as smooth as it will be after years of refinement, but it works.

Also in this build, I removed Session word counts and replaced them with “Daily” word counts. I’m a little worried about this one, really, about if there are some of you that actually would prefer a session word count over a daily word count.  Personally, I got annoyed that the session word count would reset every time I closed StoryBox because sometimes, well, sometimes I closed it on accident, or I have to do multiple sessions in a day to get my target. If you want session word counts back, I can put them back in (in addition to the daily wc), just let me know. One other little tidbit about the daily word count. It does not reset until you close the project for those of you that start your writing at 11pm and write til 1am. Your daily wordcount won’t reset on you in the middle of your session.

Oh yeah, if you have documents open when you close a project, when you reopen the project, it will now reopen the set of documents you had open when you closed it.

There are a couple other additions, too – read the release notes on the download page for more information on them.

Software, StoryBox, Writing

NaNoWriMo – 6.5 Hours To Go and StoryBox 0.0.44

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I’ve tried to spend the day working up my plot and my characters for my NaNoWriMo attempt, but I kept finding things in StoryBox I wanted to change immediately. I really need to not try to write on the same computer where I develop StoryBox. I did manage, however, to come up with an idea, a half a dozen or more scene descriptions to start the novel, and a description of the final scene, as well as short descriptions of the essential characters. There’s still a lot of work to do, but what I’ve got should get me through the first couple of days. I’ll try to make sure I stay a step or two ahead on the scene descriptions as I go, and I may even get more done this evening as I watch Monster House with my kids.

My main worry, now, about NaNo, is that I’ll spend the time I’m supposed to be writing on tweaking StoryBox. For example, todays effort netted a Recent Projects list under the file menu, tweaks to the Black theme for checkboxes, a Dated Entry option (for doing things like keeping a journal inside of the Box of Notes folder), and the moving of relavent document types to the top of the File Drawer context menu (so if you right click on the character folder, “New Character” will be at the top of the context menu).

Enjoy your Halloween and good luck with NaNoWriMo, if you’re participating. I’ve set a goal this year to complete it, and I mean to. No more 5000 word attempts for me. Mark crosses his fingers, shuts his eyes and says this over and over until he thinks he believes it!

Software, StoryBox, Writing

StoryBox 0.0.43

I added two things for this build. A global line spacing setting that changes the line spacing across ALL documents. I will be adding other, more localized options at a later date. I’ve already started the work, but there are some weird issues I’m having to deal with. I also added basic bullets and numbering, accessible from the context menu (put the caret where you’d like to put the bullet, and right click on the text). Again, I will be adding more formatting options as time goes on.

I would have waited to put this build out to provide more options, but I thought, with NaNo coming up, I wanted to at least get these out for people to use on Nov. 1. Which reminds me.

I will probably not be working on StoryBox the next two days, as I’m going to try to take tomorrow (as much of it as I can) to prepare for NaNo, and then on Nov. 1, I’m going to try to get a really big head start. But if something comes up that’s really crazy, send the bug report and I’ll do my best to fix it right away.

Remember – back up your projects nightly, just to be on the safe side.

Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.0.42

0.0.42 is up, but it’s mostly some minor changes. A couple of bug fixes for some annoying things. Updates probably will start to slow down here soon, with NaNoWriMo starting in three days and the major features completed, if not yet polished. There are still minor things I’m going to add, and I’m going to leave the early adopter pricing up until at least the end of NaNo, even if I hit 1.0 before then. I don’t think StoryBox will be 1.0 before then, but stranger things have happened. In any case, I’m committing to $25 for another month, at least.

Here are some things that I’m going to be working on that I expect to be in v1.0.

  • Bullets
  • Line spacing
  • Export to manuscript format
  • Export of specific document trees (so you can export your entire project, notes included)