Two authors have had an outsized impact on my continued desire to hone my writing craft: Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders. At the end of 2023 I read Lincoln in the Bardo and completed Liberation Day to begin 2024, both by Saunders, so he is front of mind.
Continue reading “George Saunders and Writing Better”A New Place for Fiction
I’ve created a new website, markrichard-fiction.org. I’ll reference any stories or other writing I post there on this blog, but they’ll mainly be hosted there. It’s using the Write.as service, which is a sleek and quick spot to make an incredibly simple blog. I wanted to separate what I write here—almost exclusively blog and essay fare—from stranger projects I hope to undertake.
The Appeal of Pageless Documents
Today I discovered that Google Docs has supported pageless documents for over a year and a half. I learned this at precisely the right time, and now I’m rethinking how I handle many of my digital documents.
Continue reading “The Appeal of Pageless Documents”NaNoWriMo 2023 Recap
I just completed my NaNoWriMo project for 2023. I wrote three stories for The Last Question world in thirty days, totaling 30,984 words. You can find the drafts on the NaNoWriMo page of this blog, with the caveat that they are indeed drafts. Let’s get into how this all went.
Continue reading “NaNoWriMo 2023 Recap”NaNoWriMo 2023 Check In
I’m behind my 30,000 word goal, which is why I’m writing this post as a fallback instead of something longer and unrelated to NaNoWriMo. It’s still possible for me to maintain a pace that gets me done on time, but I haven’t been making as much progress in my free time as I’d like.
My biggest issue this year is that I’m still not allowing myself to write freely. I’m thinking a little too much in the moment, trying to self-edit, and not just getting a story out there that can be refined at a later date.
Yet I’m happy with the work I’ve done so far. I think I have the bones of compelling stories, and I look forward to coming back to them after this month is over when I’m ready to do some editing in earnest.
NaNoWriMo 2023 Announcement
I’ve done something for National Novel Writing Month each year since 2019. That first year was the only time I’ve “won” by getting to fifty thousand words, but I’ve always appreciated the exercise and change of pace required to make a reasonable attempt. November is just around the corner, so it’s time to consider my plans for this year’s effort.
Continue reading “NaNoWriMo 2023 Announcement”(Another) iPad Writing Setup
I switched back to Ulysses and refined the Writing homescreen on my iPad. I have no idea how long this particular setup will last considering the short time spent since I previously discussed this, but it feels stable, all my writing can live in a single app, and I can drop the dance I’d tried with iCloud to make iA Writer work across all my devices.
Continue reading “(Another) iPad Writing Setup”Going Back to iA Writer
I’ve finally decided to go back to using iA Writer on my iPad. This has several knock-on effects, with the most notable being that my drafts will all be synced via iCloud.
I say “drafts” because my plan is still to use Dropbox as long-term storage. I now have a monthly reminder to copy completed blog posts over to the proper spot in Dropbox1I’m sure there’s some automation to do this, but I don’t really care enough for the scale at which I work. and will only use iCloud for in-progress work.
I’ll continue checking iA Writer’s stability with Dropbox. However, I’m content to use an app I thoroughly enjoy for a small bugaboo of a process change. Plus, the WordPress integration is a true integration, rather than a Javascript-based set of actions that amounts to a copy-paste.
- 1I’m sure there’s some automation to do this, but I don’t really care enough for the scale at which I work.