Freelancer's Office: Blog

I have downloaded a new CareWare program called PlotCraft, that seems to have a slight stumbling block along the learning curve, but it seems to be working okay for me now that I have started learning it. I’ll be posting more about it later on, once I have more of a chance to investigate the program some more. Right now I am still learning how it works and getting used to it.

PlotCraft is a simple program for tracking ideas that crop up for various plots. The program has a grouping feature that lets you sort ideas based on whatever grouping methods you prefer - you get to create your own headers for the groupings. I have created one that has my novel’s title and one that is a basic “short stories” group. Things can be further sorted by idea type, genera and sub-genera.

As I said, I am still learning how to use the program, but it looks like it is one that will be very useful once I get the hang of it. And you can’t beat the cost.

PlotCraft website

To download, click the “download” link in the middle of the first billeted list. I’ll post more about the program as I use it more and get an idea for how it works.

I’ve dove back into working on my novel, <a href=”http://www.heirtomagic.com”>Heir to Magic</a>, getting it put into <a href=”http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter4.html”>yWriter</a> and starting back into recreating the outline - which I lost in one of the many office moves.  ::sigh::

I’m in the process of organizing each chapter on 5×8 index cards and writing down the basic descriptive for each of the scenes in the chapters, that way I can flip through them and remind myself at a glance what was covered in each of the chapters.  I have also printed out the whole thing as it is so far - 55,000 + words and still lots of plot thread to cover.

I want to multitask today on working on that and getting my website for the novel updated with a new program I found that I like - <a href=”http://www.icyphoenix.com”>Icy Phoenix</a>.   It will let me create everything I think I have been wanting to include on that website, including a forum for people to talk about my writing.

I added some links to a few magazines that have their writer’s guidelines online.  I don’t have very many, just ones I found doing a simple “writer’s guidelines” search, but I will be expanding the list as time permits and hope to soon have a decent sized database of writer’s guidelines built up.

Slowling.  I was highly tempted to go back and correct that when I just saw it in my previous post about my shoulder slowing me down, but then I decided I like ’slowling’.  It is one of those typos that writers make and then sit back and go “Oh… I like that!”  A word that is scribbled down to be remembered for future use.  Only those who love words seem to have this fetish.  An impulsive need to collect words to themselves and tuck even the malformed ones that came out as a typo away for potential use in a novel.

Maybe someone will be talking and accidentally say something is slowling, sparking a moment of humor.   Maybe it will be used as part of an accent I will create one day - I say Warshington after all, why can’t someone say slowling?