down the writer's path

Living a Google-enhanced writing life

Google's impact on writers is growing. The dawn of the Internet search engine forever changed the way writers conduct their daily lives. Today Google's influence and assistance is expanding at a phenomenal rate. I confess: I have become Googlized.

It began innocently enough. Tuesday I began the day firing up my computer while sipping my first cup of coffee and indulging in my latest writerly fantasy. My inbox bulged with its usual conglomeration of junk mail, group posts, friend's emails, business matters, writing-related messages, and Google Alerts. Nevertheless, I intended to write.

I'm still not sure how it happened — my brain in its usual morning slumber — but somehow my fingers tripped me onto a site that asked if I wanted to try Google's Desktop. It was innocuous enough. I obeyed and initiated the download. That was 48 hours ago. Today I am a fully Googlized writer.

Google Desktop and its seductive mate, iGoogle, kept me enchanted for hours. Think cyber-office on steroids. My desktop now hosts the best 4-tabbed To-Do list gadget ever and it sits on top so I can sporadically — 'cause that's how my mind works nowadays --add to my lists. This phantom cubicle contains the to-dos for my computer guy, daily writing goals, reminders, and calls. All I do is click and the next list appears. The sidebar? It's an explosion of tools divinely inspired to feed my inner office junkie and lure my muse out to play.

But wait, I'm not done.

There is this thing called iGoogle. It's like a ramped up, totally personalized Google Desktop. Now an array of gadgets inhabits my iGoogle home page and tabs (additional pages, what a great feature). My homepage reflects my general needs. (Yes, they're all that necessary.) One tab is dedicated to my main writing project (the novel) and another to general writing. A fourth is for pure reading pleasure (it’s research, okay?). I have stop watches, countdowns, alarms, project trackers, activity trackers, progress bars, and stickies — let me tell you about stickies. I never knew there were so many types of note-taking gadgets available. Writers embrace note-taking but its management? That’s another issue. With no end to styles, any writer should be able to find the perfect cyber-sticky. (Have I told you before how much I adore Post-its?)

Of course there are ways to have quick access to Outlook, documents, links, and RSS feeds. But more playful spirits will laugh in delight at the gadgets that feed your inner child and tickle your muse. You can get lost for hours in a Google Gadget jungle. I know. iGoogle. It’s a writer's wonderland.

The result? A vortex of organizational energy swirled pulling my Outlook into view. I've been ill for several weeks; before that, out of town for three; and the two months prior spent dealing with a critically ill dog that required daily visits to the vet. My unread messages had burgeoned to a whopping 18,000. It was time. I attacked the keyboard and waged war. I downloaded and downloaded and downloaded. I set up folders, created rules, and redistributed the lot. Emails flew. Junk mail exploded. In 10 hours I dealt with 25,000 emails.

I wanted more. I searched the web eager for tools, tips and strategies until I finally stumbled onto Gmail. Wow. Let me sing its song. It's perfect for a writer and why not? Gmail is set up to operate intuitively; writers are intuitive creatures. With the labeling and filtering system, their end-of-time archiving, and email subject conversation flow feature, it's a writer's perfect marriage of technology, inspiration, research, and organization. Imagination is the writer’s only limitation. I opened an account.

Now let's get real. Why spend days downloading, researching, and setting up systems when all that’s needed is the discipline to put your butt on the chair, start up the computer (or pick up a pen, pencil, and paper), and write?

Overkill? (Shrug.) Maybe. (You should see me skate the aisles at Office Depot — this was free.) But thanks to my obvious addiction, I now have tools that will make my writing life infinitely more manageable and my writing happily more productive. The mountain of ignored emails simply vanished. Incoming is now a snap. My desktop helps me develop my goals and intentions. My ability to focus is sharpened. When I marry my Gmail account to my Outlook, life will be complete.

What about you? Are you a fully-Googlized writer?
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This article originally appeared on Blogcritics 10/20/2007.

Tonight Blog Radio's Wayne Hurlbert interviews Blogcritics publisher Eric Colsen

Two of my favorite online friends get together for a chat on Blog Radio TV tonight.

Entrepreneur and internet publisher Eric Olsen, CEO of Blogcritics, describes how to manage large staff organization, including huge numbers of volunteers, to boost your business or non-profit organization success. Eric Olsen is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on Blog Talk Radio.

I've received many great tips reading Wayne's blogs and Eric has provided me with an online publishing venue for several years now. They're great guys and both have a lot to share.

The show airs live tuesday, tonight, October 23, at 8:00 pm Eastern.

Ramping up for NaNoWriMo 2007

Two weeks until the NaNoWriMo computers start but don't think you have to wait until then. Why not go into training? One useful tool is the simple concept of writing 100 words a day for 100 days. Do you have to stop when you reach the 100-word mark? No. But the minimum you agree to do is 100 words. If you start now you'll have two weeks of finger-tappin' training followed by a month of committed NaNoWriMo that begins with a daily start of 100 words.

No strain, no heavy effort, no massive amounts of time are involved. Pressure is reduced and tension eased. Who can't come up with a few hundred words? Easy peasy, as a friend of mine would say. Writer Avis Hester came up with the concept, but it's writer Beth Patillo who organized the yahoo group: Club 100 for Writers. Does it work? Apparently so. I know several local writers who have joined and found continued success. Of course you can do this on your own but you may find the group helpful. Unless you're extremely self-disciplined, going it alone can lead to a huge rush in the beginning and an even quicker demise. So join the group, find a buddy, and hit the keyboard today. I have.

And when you finish the first 100 days, return here and mark that you are now a "daily" writer in the poll on the right side. (I'm assuming you've already ticked off your current writing habit.)

For more by me on NaNoWrimo click here.
Links: Club 100 for Writers; Yahoo Group Club100Writers; National Novel Writing Mo (NaNoWriMo)

NaNoWriMo 2007 Writers: Sharpen your pencils and plug-in your keyboards!

Once again summer ends, leaves fall, and slumbering writers stir. Across the nation they are responding to the call of the annual National Novel Writing Month challenge commonly called NaNoWriMo. Participants are fondly called Wrimos. My name is Vikk Simmons and I am a Wrimo.

Tens of thousands of Wrimos are making novel choices, charging batteries, signing up as 2007 particpants, posting their 2007 Participant icons, selecting forums, making connections, scoping out writer-friendly cafes, sharing the NaNoWriMo news, and encouraging other writer friends to join them in this annual exuberant experience of writing white-hot. Writers cursed with strong internal editors are dragging out their Alphsmarts. Shed your fears, become a Wrimo. You have nothing to lose and wordcount to gain.

Already have a novel in progress? Pledge to write another 50K words. If you look to the top righthand sidebar, you'll find my NaNoWriMo Countdown. On November 1st the clock will track the countdown for November. Every year I keep a separate blog on my Wrimo experience. VISIT NaNoWriMo and JOIN. You'll find other links below.

ARE YOU READY TO WRITE THAT NOVEL?
Read my NaNoWriMo blog WHIRLPOOL.
VISIT NaNoWriMo and JOIN.
More NaNoWriMo posts:
No Excuses
Check out my NaNoWriMo blog
Still on the NaNoWriMo Train
NaNoWriMo strikes again
No Plot? No Problem
NaNoWriMo ends but the writing continues
Hours away from NaNoWriMo. Are you ready?

Writing Tools & Strategies: Five minutes to story

Start off the week with a quick batch of 5-minute timed writings. To make it easy, I've found a handy tool called TimeLeft. In minutes I had the program downloaded and installed. Ten minutes later I had a clock, a stopwatch, a 5-minute timer, a countdown clock, and a sign on my screen. There are any number of uses for the program but for writers the timers, countdowns, and stop watches can actually become part of a strategy to make sure time is spent writing. So what is TimeLeft?

TimeLeft is a versatile desktop utility, which may be used as a countdown clock, reminder, clock, alarm clock, tray clock, stopwatch, timer, sticker, auction watch and time synchronization utility.

Since I'm such a fan of timed writing exercises, I created the 5-minute timer first. I suffer from major muscle spasms and often need a timer or stopwatch. I have to make myself get up from the computer every hour to give my neck, upper back, and shoulder a break, so I write for 45 minutes and then walk away for 15. So a 45 minute tool is on my to-do list.

When it comes to writing, I pretty much have two words that make up my discipline: "breathe" and "write." Using the signage utility I created a stamp that displays those words so they constantly inform my subconscious during my time at the computer. All these items that TimeLeft creates stay on the computer screen and are visible no matter what program you are using. I have mine in the lower righthand corner. Finally I have a countdown clock that lets me know how many months, days, hours, minutes and seconds until the new year. With NaNoWriMo around the bend, I'm sure I'll set one up for the month of November. The countdown can be used for writing or contract deadlines, contest deadline reminders, and those personal phantom deadlines. Because I'll be going back to the Donald Maass Intensive workshop in Portland in March of 2008 and want to have a completed first draft of my novel, I will also need a countdown clock for that, too.

Over the last 20+ years I've discovered many different strategies that have enabled me to stay engaged with my work, actively creating stories, and remaining full of energy and the desire to write. If one doesn't work, I go quickly to another. All have been tested by me and by my fellow writers and artists; they work. But when it comes down to it, the best way to remain productive is to breathe deeply, relax, and write.

To download TimeLeft, go here.
More information:
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises to create 55-word stories.
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises and a computer-generated story starter to create stories.
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises to write a novel.
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises to write a memoir.
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises to overcome writer's block.
Use 5-minute timed writing exercises to free yourself from the dreaded internal editor.

In search of a fictional world and those who live in it-Part 1

What makes a fictional character alive? How is it that a string of words read by someone other than the writer recreates that author's experience of a character? How does a writer use words to till the reader's imagination to the point where characters sprout and spring to life? Is there one way? One secret? One sacred process that only a few divinely-touched authors possess? For the last twenty years I've been in search of that alchemical process that allows a character in my mind become words on a page and then morph itself again and be recreated in the mind of another, all through the simple process of reading. Truth tell, I've really been trying to figure out how the creation of a fictional world, complete with charcters and settings, is seeded into the imagination of another and encouraged to bloom. How do you ensure that the reader experiences the full impact of the world and its characters? That has been the subject of a lot of my reading, even more pondering, and eventually became the subject of my thesis.

What set me off on this quest? Early on I learned that it wasn't enough to have an idea or a sense of a person in mind and hope for the best. I learned it the hard way. When I first began writing, I took several creative writing college classes and three of us formed a critique group. My efforts had been focused on writing short stories, developing stories and writing proposals. My critique members challenged me to finish a novel from beginning to end. So I set up a process to write a first draft, one of those white-heat drafts where you go from the first sentence to the last and never look back, and I wrote my first complete novel. That's "complete" in the sense that it had a beginning, a middle, and an end--not that it was finished. I also did it in 21 days.

Twenty-one days, you say? Yep. This was back in my early bowling days. The local bowling alley had a nice cafe and a couple of my non-writer friends worked behind the counter. Every night I showed up and claimed the same bar stool. I pulled out my cheap, school-type notebook and pen. Ordered the non-stop coffee. Bent my head and wrote for the next four hours. From six in the evening until ten I wrote page after page. My main goal was to create a chapter an evening. My friends poured the coffee and left me alone. I did this every night. (It's a great way to increase your powers of concentration.) Three weeks later I had finished.

If you haven't finished the first draft of a novel, it's true. There is a rush that accompanies the final sentence. But how, you ask, does this have anything to do with developing characters?

I promptly took my handwritten notes and transferred them to the computer, a process I have long since abandoned. It felt too much like repetitive work, so I taught myself to compose on the keyboard. I then handed the novel off to my critique members. Who, naturally, were appropriately impressed. We met a couple of weeks later, and after they had read all 60,000 words, and discussed the book. Apparently they loved the concept, enjoyed the story, appreciated the dialogue, but there was one teensy tiny problem. They didn't have any visual construct of a main character. All they knew was that he smoked and had green eyes. That's it.

It didn't take long for me to realize that, although 80-85% of writers claim vision to be their primary sense, I am among those who hear and feel before I see. Actually, vision is one of the last senses that kicks in. That discovery had a major impact on how I approached learning the craft of writing.

(stay tuned....)