I will still be building on the skills learned (and relearned) in lesson two as I work my way through lesson three and learn how to generate ideas while on a deadline. I remember doing this lesson, it was very fun and taught me a lot, so I can’t wait to dive back into it and work on getting some good ideas moving about that I will be able to work from.

That is the case with lessons one and two. I know the material already, so I just need to skim lesson one and dive into lesson two.

I really need lesson two right now, too. It helps to define what I will actually enjoy writing and how to find the right genera for me. That is something I need, because in the last year my preferences for what I like to read took a bit of a shift away from the fantasy novels I had grown up on. My friend defined it best I think in that we are more urban fantasy types now, but I need to consider if that is really what I enjoy writing and that is what lesson two is all about.

So, I will leave you to your writing now, and I will dive into lesson two of the How to Think Sideways writing course.

My mom never faltered in her belief that I would be a published author. She believed strongly in my writing, encouraged me to follow my dreams. There were more than a few months over the past six years when the only way that we got from month to month was by the margin I added to the month’s income from my writing work. And this came to be enough for me. My mom felt that I had made it as a writer when my writing earned enough money to pay the bills.

Still, I wanted to be a published novelist and she encouraged me to reach for that star.

After she passed away, in late 2008, I let my dreams slowly get snuffed out under the pressure of others and other needs. I worked at writing, kept working to pay the bills, but the dream to be a published novelist was a lost dream for well over a year now.

I am no longer going to be afraid to pursue my dream, my mother’s dream. I am going back to the How to Think Sideways course that I was a part of when my mom passed away. The course that she encouraged me to take, and take it over from the beginning. As I work my way through that course I will use this website to track my progress and share my thoughts on writing.

I would like to offer the most heartfelt of thank yous to Holly Lisle, the course creator, for creating the course and for giving me a chance to return to it all these months later to work my way back through it and move toward my and my mother’s dream of me being a published writer.

Last night she tells me to be online on Saturday and ready to work on the novel. So, I promise I will wrap up my work and be ready to dedicate my brain to the task of the novel on Saturday.

Problem. I go to read over the notes we have and brain suddenly don’t wanna wait til she is here tomorrow, it has all kinds of thoughts on the subject *NOW* and I don’t has her here. :::pounds head on desk::: So, here I sit, writing away frantically with these ideas that sound GREAT to me, and at the same time wailing because I can’t get ahold of this gal I have nearly hourly contact with on any other day.

Co-writing can be sooooo stressful. :::sigh:::

So, I will just get all the muses out there, wrote down, and ready for her to look at when she is around to look at them. I just am so excited about the possibility a few might solve major plot issues we had going and I wanna know if she agrees. Arrrrgh!!!

That is what the current Giveaway of the Day program lets you do.

I was hesitant to download History Explorer at first, mainly because I am currently using my laptop and I did not want a lot of backup files cluttering my computer, however, I took a chance because I can see where the program could be very useful in my writing.

I was very happy to discover that the program lets me pick what I have it backup.  When I first started it the program gave me the option to add my “My Documents” folder and I told it to “Skip” that step.  I spent a few minutes familiarizing myself with the program after that, and it took a bit to figure out how to add folders (you click the Yellow Star with the green plus sign on it – you’ll see this between the yellow folder with the up arrow and the address of the folders when you do not have a folder you are viewing in your backups).

I also found where I can add what type of files I want the program to save:

Tools > Settings
Tab = Include File Types

Select “Other file types” and enter the one you want to add in the small box to the right. I entered .yw5 and clicked “add”, now my backup will backup all of my yWriter5 files as well.

You can see if the program already makes backups for your program by clicking “Show Me” beside the file types. This opens a small popup window that lets you scroll and see what file extensions are backed up.

Taking a brief tour of what I have discovered so far…

You can also set the maximum size of your database, the maximum size of files (files larger than you set will not be backed up), and calculate your current database size. You can clean it up, in which case History Explorer says it will automatically determine which files to delete and you can run cleanup multiple times to clean up more and more space.

Under the View tab you can choose to see only files that your backing up, or all of the files on your computer (great for locating the folders you want to backup when you are not having it auto backup them), you can also view deleted files and deleted version information.

Double clicking on the version or file name will open the project for you.  And you can view your backed up files by the hour, 6 hours, day, week, month, 3 months, year, 4 years and even 10 years.

One complaint is that the program opens back up in MyDocuments rather than in the folder of your choice, I wish I could set it to open where I need it most, but that’s not too bad of a flaw.A guy at Giveaway of the Day had said that the program would not run in the background, that you had to have it open when using it, however, I tried closing it and opening my novel – I then closed the novel and reopened History Explorer. I did this a few times and each time it had saved another backup of my novel.

If you are a writer and might need to refer back to older versions of your articles or novels then this is a program you really should take a look at History Explorer, particularly since for about the next 12 hours from publication of this post the program is free to visitors of Giveaway of the Day.

Right at the end of the year I got a virus on my laptop, the first time I have ever had a truly nasty virus on one of my computers, which did a nasty number on the poor computer.  The damn thing took over the poor little laptop to the point that the computer could no longer do anything.  It would boot up, then just sit there and do some process over and over apparently, trying to figure out what it was up to, but never seeming to figure it out exactly.  I tried leaving it for a long time in that state, but it never seemed to catch up, so I started in safe mode and tried to work things out there.  No luck.  I could not get the computer to do anything.

I tried to get it to backup to last known good configuration, but it could not because one of the first things the virus did apparently was to erase all of my backup points!  I could not access the Internet, CD drive, thumb drives, printer… everything was locked up tight so there was no way I could save my information and no way I could get help from the Spybot forums in correcting the error.

Finally, with nothing left to do, I reset my poor little computer to the factory specifications and have been reloading my programs and everything since then.

I have about half the programs reloaded, but am hitting the annoying block of the new version of AIM won’t work with the comptuer.  I got an older version to work on it, so I will try agian to get the new one to work and if that fails I am just going to load the older version up and forget their new one.  They usually mess up their new versions anyway.  Last time they updated it I lost the ability to directly connect with my writing buddies, removing the ability to pass our novel-length writing back and fort, which made AIM all but useless to us.

Other than AIM I have my writing program back on the computer, still need to move the novel from the laptop back to the desktop though, and I have to get my image program (GIMP) back up and working on here.  I know there are more programs I need to get up and going, but I’ll be happy with them between now and the weekend – oh, and iTunes and Audacity, I need to catch up on the writing podcasts I have missed.

AirSet lets you create a group work area that includes a calendar that can be customized with features such as event reminders and a task list.  A blog administrator could set up a calendar that allows them to designate the theme for the blog for the upcoming week or month, then assign post topics which each of the members of the group can assume the responsibility of writing.

I’m just starting to explore the site, but from what I have seen so far, this is a great tool for anyone that has a multi-blogger blog.

And, just a quick reminder for my readers, the How to Think Sideways enrollment  is only open for a couple of more days, if you might be interested you really should get in by Sunday evening (the evening of the 7th), because enrollment closes early on the morning of the 8th and you will regret it if you don’t at least give this course a try.

BusinessCards MX is a card design program for small business owners, I have already discovered that they have a wide selection of card designs at their website for apparently free download. I’m going to see if I can create a good business card for my Family Caregiver Information site (www.familycaregiver.info) as a test for the program, then I will let everyone know what I think of it.

The standard price for the BusinessCard MX program is $29.95, so if this is something that you might be interested in I encourage you to check out the Giveaway of the Day website and pick up a copy while it is still free. (It has about 10 more hours to go as of when I am writing this.)

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.