All posts by Mark

Writing

50,000 Words in 30 Days!

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I was too tired last night to write a post after finishing my daily 2k, but I thought yesterday was a pretty cool milestone for me. I finally won NaNo – sort of. I hit the 50k mark, and if I were to place the 18 days of writing I did in August immediately after the 12 days of writing I did back in November, I won!
 
Of course, I can’t really do that, so I didn’t win, but that 50k does mean something else important to me. I’m half way done with the first draft of WiW. 37.5k words in 18 days. At this rate, I’ll be done right around the 10th or 11th of September.
 
What have I learned the past 18 days? I’ve learned that I can sit my butt in the chair and write my 2000 words, even if I don’t know exactly what I’m going to write that day. And if I can do it while working an 8 hour a day job plus updating StoryBox once a week and getting hours in with my kids and WoW, as well as some reading every day – why can’t you?
 
Software, StoryBox

Unofficial StoryBox Test Build

There is a test build of StoryBox that I hope solves a crash issue for users of non-US keyboards. The crash happens when typing certain characters into some fields, like the synopsis and the notes. I don’t have one of these keyboards, so I can’t actually test my fix. If you are having this issue, could you please download this test build and let me know if it solves your problem?
 
 
And if you’re not experiencing that crash, could you please try it out anyway? The fix required updating the libraries I’m using for some of the UI, and I’d like to know of any bugs  that could have been introduced during the update before I call it “official”.
 
 
Website, Writing

Updates

Perhaps you can see that I’ve made a couple changes. The reading list got long enough, I decided to move it down the page a bit and move categories and links up so you can see them. I also added progress information for my current projects. They will mostly be writing projects since I’m bound not to talk about most of my game projects until after they’re released.
 
Anyway, for a quick update on my writing progress, last week was a good week with nearly 15,000 words written on Wizard in Waiting. I made my 2000 a day target every day. I’m sure it’ll require a rewrite when I’m done. When I started this WiW in November, I pretty much just threw ideas onto the paper, and was figuring out who the characters were as I wrote, and I’m still doing that, which leads me to believe that there will be many ‘out of character’ behaviors from each of them.
 
Software, StoryBox

StoryBox 0.5.67

This version contains some of the changes to the Outline Builder that I mentioned in my blog entry regarding the topic. A delete button, default double click insert options. The context menu is still on the list of things to add.

I also added the daily word count to the status bar in full screen mode. Since I’ve been using it every day to actually produce writing, this became a big issue for me as I move through two or three or more scenes in one session. I’ve given myself a target word count to hit, but when I was in full screen mode, I couldn’t see it without switching back to the normal mode.

You can see the other changes that were made on the download page: http://www.storyboxsoftware.com/download.htm

Software, StoryBox

Upcoming StoryBox Changes

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Having used the Outline Builder for a week or so now (writing again, Yay!), I’ve decided it needs some changes. First, it needs a delete button. Don’t know how I missed that one. I’m thinking also the option to hide completed items. A context menu would be helpful, too, as well as the ability to set a default target for double clicking an entry. This last would mean that you could have a double click send the entry to whichever of the four options (new chapter, new scene, synopsis or body) you liked.

Is there anything about the Outline Builder that you feel is missing, or that you would like to work differently? No guarantees, of course, that I’ll be able to accommodate everyone’s wishes, but I don’t want to miss something obvious again, like the ability to delete an entry.