Post-ApocaValentine: Bridge of Birds
Give me mine… bittersweet.
For a long time, there was a gap between me and the world, because I did not understand what love meant.
One night, there was a bridge of birds.
Month Archive: February 2008
Blogs by Writers, for Writers, Part 1
Welcome to the next article in the meta-series, “I am still working on those other websites,” where I dig into the heart of my RSS subscriptions and unearth writing blog treasures to share with you.
DeepGenre is my favorite writer group blog. You may have heard of some of these people. Their works sit on the fantasy and science fiction shelves at your local bookstore.
The focus of DeepGenre is on writing, with excursions into exploring fantasy and science fiction. DeepGenre is also very much a blog that encourages discussion, with open-ended posts and questions. Indeed, one of the most popular articles, Writing My First Novel, is mostly over 500 comments from authors across the lands of genre.
I know not whether the 13-Line Critiques are still going, but the archives are instructive.
DeepGenre is not updated daily, but when it is, the content is always worth reading.
I must go now. Wordpress has challenged me to a duel. There can only be one.
A Blog That Writers in the Market Should Read
Good morning. At least, it’s morning PST, which means about siesta time everywhere else. I’ve been playing around with websites and have got 98% of one done. Three in all. So every other day or so I’ll be posting up links to writer’s/writing websites that I really, really like; the other days I’ll be posting my own stuff.
I already pointed you towards Whatever this week (in fact, in the archives, I’ve probably pointed you to Whatever several times). Some of you who visited there may have discovered an announcement about a new literary agent on the block.
I’m very happy about the announcement, but only secondly because of the new literary agent thing. I am primarily happy that the blogger behind The Swivet finally got a job again in the publishing industry.
Blade off the Feather
In Sweet Dreams on Auria Cortes’ blog, she talks about how her drive to fulfill her dreams went against the traditional wisdom of “balance”, yet still worked.
I admit, this is the sort of thing I like, because it’s a reminder that traditional wisdom cannot be applied straight in every case—like anything else, there are many factors involved.
Let me tell you a story.
Scalzi Talks About Money, Writing, Being Sensible, Etc.
Still working on all the websites.
But you should take a look at what John Scalzi says about writing and money. He currently makes $100K a year. I only make more than him by dint of very nice stock options. He knows things, this man. Things you need to know. Even if you don’t like them.
Sd’s Sister Sites for the Future
What I’ve been working on:
- Move the Sherlock Holmes stuff to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately. I have material planned, but not all of it is writerly type stuff.
- Move my Fiction off to its own blog so I can focus it appropriately, and I can feel better about updating it without drowning out the writing technique “signal” on Sd.
- Do quite a lot of more fine-grained re-categorization of the remaining Sd material.
- “Life” stuff will remain, in its own little category while the writing category diversifies.
- If Reviews or Blogging really start to break the “it’s about writing” focus (and they already sort of do, a bit), I will start looking for places to guest-post or submit those particular articles.
- As a result of the above, I should be able to refocus Spontaneous Derivation as a writer’s resource.
When all the shaking gets done… which won’t be for a couple weeks… I hope to get each site focused like a laser. That means more article series like Writing on the Stage, more resource articles like 6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word-Count Obsessed, and more one-offs like Writing and the Mysterious, Nebulous, Fickle Audience.
And lowering the noise ratio by a LOT.
Stumble-Upons of Late
Because I’m busy setting up extra websites, here’s what’s currently on my StumbleUpon blog. I tend to write semi-detailed reviews, and treat my StumbleUpon like a “real” blog rather than just somewhere I dump links off to (for that, there is del.icio.us).
6 Word Meters and Trackers for the Word Count Obsessed
And what writer isn’t slightly obsessed by their current work-in-progress word count? I mean, apart from well-adjusted ones.
Well, I’m a little obsessed, sometimes. During NaNoWriMo, of course, my mind gets as focused as a diamond-cutting laser on little else….
Without further ado, here are six word count tracking utilities from around the web. The examples are drawn from my current Crime and Violins serial, which has been running almost regularly with 500 words per week.
1. Zokutou Word Meter
Update! The most famous word progress meter on the web is back—and stable.
Zokutou uses small images of various styles, piecing them together into a meter, defaulting to a classy, rounded model:
5,500 / 100,000
(5.5%)
But there are options to change both color and size:
5,500 / 100,000
(5.5%)
And a cute alternative option, the bookworm:
5,500 / 100,000
(5.5%)
There’s also a plain text option, for those of us who don’t quite want to bring Zokutou down:
( #=============== ) 5,500 / 100,000 : 5.5%
Zokutou is quite popular during NaNoWriMo, which tends to pound all stuffing out of the zokutou server until it falls over around November 3rd. If images are broken above when you read this, that’s probably why.
I’ll note also that many blogs these days come with a stylesheet that puts a border around images. This plays havoc with Zokutou meters. Example of havoc:
|
|
|
5,500 / 100,000
(5.5%) |
I had to embed special CSS in this post to keep that from happening—specific to this theme, in fact. As such, I’m not as pleased with Zokutou as I once was.
2. Writertopia: Picometer and Progress Meter
Two different progress meters from Writertopia, one very slimline:
And one rather verbose and feature-filled:
including a mood for the cartoon character, who looks rather like a bean or potato:
The downsides to the Writertopia meters is, because the images are generated by a server, it’s probably going to fall over the first few days of NaNoWriMo when that comes along—other word count meters have stopped being offered entirely due to the November traffic rush.
Update: Bill from Writertopia comments on meter stability and alludes to new meters later this year!
3. Curious Device: Another Little Progress Meter
A small progress meter that doesn’t depend on images; the CGI script here will generate code for you to use. An example:
5500 / 100000
Hovering your mouse over the bar will probably show the percentage.
This meter has the decided advantage that it won’t fall over during NaNoWriMo load. If you know CSS well enough, you can also play around with it:
5500 / 100000
4. Language is a Virus: NaNoWriMo Word Meter
Here’s another word meter that doesn’t depend on images, and displays the percentage outright as well. Not as svelte, but again, you can play with the CSS if you want to.
Again, not going to fall over when NaNoWriMo arrives.
5. Gnomebox: Writing Projects Plugin
Rather full-featured, this is a Wordpress plugin. (No, this isn’t for you, Wordpress.com folks who aren’t allowed to install their own plugins; this is for self-hosted Wordpress installations.)
I used a few tags provided by the plugin here, to display the current title, current number of words, and current progress bar. Displaying the percentage doesn’t work for me, and while the word count will always be dynamically updated, no matter when in your blog you show this meter… the problem is, the word count will always be dynamically updated, no matter when in your blog you show this meter. So if you wanted a historical progress of your novel, well, it doesn’t quite work.
Otherwise, it’s nice, and—since it runs on your server—won’t fall over when NaNoWriMo comes.
6. Gnomebox: Daily Word Count Plugin
Another Wordpress plugin, this doesn’t provide any word progress meters, but it does go beyond the others: it keeps a historical record of how many words you’ve written each day, and can summarize the counts in various, more flexible ways. The Daily Word Count can be integrated with the previous Writing Projects plugin, so that updating a project updates the word count (you’ll have to go to the options for both plugins to tell them to integrate with each other, though).
Along with just summarizing counts, including only counting words “up to” a particular date, Daily Word Count can also do calendars, such as for a specific month:
I don’t know if Daily Word Count deals well in all cases with year wrap-around (such as when a project crosses from 2007 into 2008). The Daily Word Count also merges word counts between projects with most of its special tags; it’s best mostly for an aggregate count, although you can show the current total for any one title.
Right now I like it best as a daily word tracker. With calendars.
What I’d Pick
Really, despite all the fanciness of the Wordpress plugins, I prefer the simple word count meter from Curious Device. It won’t crash during NaNoWriMo, its footprint is delicate and small, and I’m fine with CSS and thus have no problems changing the appearance.
For those who want a reliable word meter, don’t want/can’t have a plugin, and aren’t all that great at CSS, I would recommend using the meter from Language is a Virus.
For those of us who are Hooked On Plugins, there’s only one solution of course (to install ‘em BOTH).
Break for 5
So what do you think about these options? And do you have any meter or tracking alternatives out there? Curious and word-count-obsessed minds wish to know.
End of the Line: A Final Farewell to the January AW Blog Chain
But we’ll meet again under different skies and different topics.
Participants:
- living my life all over again
- Spontaneous Derivation
- Jenn Hollowell: Working Writer
- Peregrinas
- Techtainment
- Anything That Pays
- Polenth’s Quill
- wfg thinks out loud
- Spittin’ (out words) Like a Llama
- A Thoughtful Life
- The Speakeasy
- Virtual Wordsmith
- The Writer’s Round-About
- My Copious Notes Blog
- Tennessee Text Wrestling
- Writings
- Twisted Fantasy
Let’s do it again!
Work is shredding every last writing bone in my body
Because my soul is not enough.
Heh, nah, I’m just kidding. But it’s that time of year for everybody who works in certain kinds of jobs: evaluation time. That means I get to spend all my time writing about work in the last year: myself, my peers, my managers; all projects, tasks, and their outcomes and how they affected the company.
In total sum, should be about 5000 words for the self review, and anywhere between 10k and 15k words total for everybody else.
What does this mean for you?
Well, it does mean my writing weekend is totally tanked.
If I get out from under before Monday, actual thoughtful posts shall appear here. At least there’s a pretty rewarding amount of formerly featured articles to go through.
Otherwise, until Tuesday, I remain writingly yours,
Arachne Jericho
