Authors Electric

Hello! I’m drafting this on November 1st and am currently up to my eyes in what can optimistically be described as ‘preparing for publication’. If you saw my office, you’d be more likely to think of the aftermath of a violent storm. Almost every writing manual and self-help book I own (and that’s a lot) lies open on my desk, or on the blanket chest next to my desk, or on the bunk beds behind it. In pride of place, I have to say, is Chris Longmuir’s Nuts & Bolts of Self-Publishing , which has so far proved invaluable in negotiating Microsoft Word-whatever-version-I-now-have – the one with the ribbon, anyway. Thank you enormously, Chris, for writing this and for going into so much helpful detail – enough, it seems, even for me. My computer desktop is cluttered too, with so many files open that I’ve lost count. Got into a panic yesterday when I discovered I had the same file open twice – which one contained my painstakingly added latest revisions and which didn’t? Major pani...

“Henri Guérard at his press” The New York Library Digital Collections In case you haven’t noticed, the publishing world has been undergoing a massive change over the last few years. In the beginning, there were the traditional publishers! Well, not really. In the beginning, there were the professional copyists who prepared books on vellum or parchment. Moving swiftly on to the advent of the printing press, the guilds that handled the sale of most objects became involved in the production and sale of books. However, we mustn’t forget the printers, the people who produced books and performed the roles of editor, publisher and bookseller. Did you know that the first printer-publisher in Britain, William Caxton, printed more than ninety books in his lifetime? The publication business which developed through the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was still a mixture of producers and suppliers. But from the nineteenth century onwards the business of producing books became ...

Authors Electric. The clue is in the name. We are a collective of writers who embrace technology and the electronic world. We are not a bunch of luddites who turn our backs on anything electronic. Nor are we the kind of people who would not give house room to a computer, who shudders at any mention of the internet, and who would never deign to read an electronic book on an ereader. As the resident techno-geek who builds computers in her spare time, there is nothing I like better than exploring all kinds of software, although I will reserve my discussion today to writers’ software. Was that a collective groan I heard? It wouldn’t surprise me, because it became apparent from the comments on my last post , that not everyone is enamoured with writing software. In fact, the feeling is stronger than that, and the impression given is that you cannot be creative if you use said writing software. This was despite the fact that the post reviewed editing software, and editing is the pro...

I have just met the electronic version of Miss Whiplash, the editor from Hell. I’m talking about Autocrit which is described on their website as manuscript editing software for fiction writers. As you probably know I’m a sucker for software. I got seduced by Scrivener about a year ago and now swear by it as an organisational tool to whip your first draft into shape. The other software I’ve succumbed to is Dragon. I have the professional version and it’s superb. I’ve also added lots of other software bits and pieces to my long-suffering computer, but the programmes I’ve mentioned are the ones that stand head and shoulders above the rest. And if I run this through Autocrit it will smack my fingers for using such a blatant cliche. Now, there is no writing software on the market that will write your book for you, or if there is I haven’t found it yet. But what software will do is provide tools to either organise your manuscript into some kind of sensible order, or to highligh...

Displacement activity! This is something many writers know only too well. It can take many forms but its purpose is always the same and you don’t need many guesses to know that’s to avoid writing. However, I’m not going to discuss all the forms that displacement activity takes, I want to tell you about a new one I found. I’ve talked before about MOOCS the online education courses provided by FutureLearn. Well, I enrolled in Literature in the Digital Age , which is quite interesting, even though it talks about poetry a lot. As you know, poetry is not my thing. The course could be called displacement activity but I prefer to think of it as education. But it introduced me to an analytical tool which is perfect as a displacement activity. This tool can make comparisons between anything book related that you like, and if you want to try it out it’s called Google Books Ngram Viewer . You’ll also find an information page here . Please note that the search format is word,w...

It’s that time of year again. The time when all business accounts have to be made up to date to satisfy the tax men. Now, this would not be a problem if my bookkeeping was done on a daily or weekly basis, and every year I swear to do this to avoid stress at the end of the financial year. But, like all good resolutions this usually falls to the wayside after the space of a month or two, with the result there is a big blank hole in my accounts instead of lovely numbers which balance out immaculately. I have always used software to balance my current and credit card accounts because, although money and I have a love/hate relationship, I do like playing with software, which is perhaps why I use two different money programs. Money to me is just something I get paid and something I can spend, it has no more importance than that. Oh yes! I agree, it’s quite nice to have money in your pocket and quite stressful if it’s not there. Like most of us, I’ve had moments in my life...