Category: Windows

My New Writing Workflow

KenMcConnell1 Comment

I’ve been changing my writing workflow this week. What follows is how I draft, edit and build my Indie novel ebooks. I’m admittedly an extreme corner case here, but I think no matter which OS you use, these tools are available. You may have to tailor some programs to your specific OS (Operating System).

I start with Plume Creator. Plume is a first draft writing program similar to Scrivener. Since I write on Ubuntu, I can’t use Scrivener and for the last three novels I’ve used Plume with great success. Plume is Open Source and can be downloaded for Linux and Windows. There is a Mac version, but it’s a few releases behind.

I then export to .odt and import the book into Libre Office’s Write. Then I send it to my editor and he marks it up using Write’s commenting features. When we get the manuscript perfect, I’m ready to build my epub. Write is Open Source and can be used on Linux, Mac and Windows. After all my edits are made, I clean up the document removing tabs and extra spaces.

I now use Jutoh to import my .odt document and divide it up into separate chapter files and add front and back matter pages. I use Jutoh to set my style sheet and import special fonts. When done, I unzip the epub and look it over in the fourth program – Sublime Text 2. Jutoh is NOT Open Source but is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

Sublime Text is an editor used by programmers. It lets me manually tweak the XML in the epub. Sublime Text is NOT Open Source and is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. Reminder – you must unzip an .epub directory to get at the raw XML files. As you can see below, Jutoh leaves a nice clean base to work with.

You can probably substitute Scrivener for Plume and Word for Write on both Mac and Windows OS. There are many other programming editor tools available on Mac and Windows that are free or low cost.

Plume Beta Sneak Peek

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Thought I’d offer my audience a look at the latest Plume Beta, since it’s really not for public consumption yet. This being Beta software, things are not final and are subject to change. With that disclaimer out of the way, let’s see what’s cooking for the next Plume Creator release.

Cyril has been giving the Project Tree an overhaul in an effort to make drag and drop smoother and faster. All his hard work is beginning to pay off, because in the limited testing I’ve done, it’s working great. Another new addition to the Tree is icons for Books, Acts, Chapters and Scenes. Yes, you read that right. Acts is new. As you can see in the screenshot below, your novel or book can now have Acts. Very cool. Kudos to Tushant Mirchandani, the new icons look clean and sharp. Again, things are in flux in this area, so the icons may change before the next release. Tushant is also responsible for the new layout options of the main screen.

PlumeBeta

Below is a screen shot of the Outliner which is now called the Workbench. This is where you are supposed to create your book in outline form. All changes to this Workbench outline immediately show up on the main screen shown above.

PlumeBetaOutline

There are more new features planned and I’ll let you guys in on them as I test them. Rest assured that Plume Creator is still very much in development and is getting better with every release.

New Version of Plume Creator Released

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Version 0.61 Beta of Plume Creator has hit the download servers at Sourceforge. Get it while it’s hot!

Lots of attention has been placed on the look and feel of this release. If you are a writer who likes the idea of a Scrivener type program, but needs it to work on Linux like I do, this program is well worth the effort to get and start using. It’s also available to Windows users.

I’m one of a handful of people helping the developer, Cyril Jacquet, test the program. In fact, I’ve been using Plume Creator to write my latest novel and absolutely loving it. This is still beta software, but I’ve never had it completely botch my novel. Normal backups guarantee that peace of mind.

Cyril is very open to suggestions in making the program better, so if while using it you think of a way to improve it, let him know. You could see that feature in a future release! Plume is Open Source and uses the QT libraries, the same as KDE. As you can see in the above screenshot, it looks fabulous in Unity.

Sublime Text – Setup

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I’ve recently converted my coding text editor to Sublime Text. This post is a reference for if I have to set it up again. The editor can be used on any OS and looks particularly nice on all of them. It’s also a Python program. (This post subject to updates, as I find nifty plugins)

Get it here: Sublime Text

Reference this blog post for common plugins and general tomfoolery.

Package Control

HTML auto fill.

GIT plugin.

Code Completion plugin.

Lint plugin.

Make Sublime your default editor in Ubuntu.

Make your default Monokai theme have a dark side bar.

 

 

Geany IDE and Python Programming

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I’ve been helping my youngest son, Spencer, learn to program in Python by designing an RPG game. We’re following this guy on YouTube and will then branch off and add to his framework. Spen’s using my old netbook running the latest Ubuntu and he decided that he liked the Geany IDE the best. I checked it out and have to agree with him.

The screenshot shows our first class and a bit of test code to see if it works. The IDE will let you hit Run and open the program in a terminal to see the results. Very handy. Personally, I’d just use Scribes with an open terminal, but since he’s new to programming, I think it helps to have an IDE.

We set up our project on Dropbox so we can both access it from different computers. We have a Windows laptop that he also uses and yesterday I set up Python on that and wrote a quick batch script to run the current test class automatically. I think we are set for some fun times ahead.

Sometimes You Write, Sometimes You Give Back

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I’ve been doing two writing related things this week since returning from my summer vacation. Finishing my first draft of Starveyors and helping to redefine how I will write my next novel. Sometimes you write and sometimes you help others write. Either you help them learn the craft, or you help create a new tool that will help them write more efficiently.

I mentioned a while back that I found a new writing tool for Linux. Plume Creator is an Open Source project that is available on all three operating systems – Linux, Mac and Windows. I’ve recently moved to Linux and so I’ve been looking for something similar to Scrivener to write my novels in. Plume Creator is not a Scrivener clone, but it does work in a similar manner.

I’ve been working with the developer – Cyril Jacquet, to test and improve Plume Creator to make it the best free writing tool on any operating system. It’s a slow process. Cyril is trying new things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, but his willingness to keep working at it is really impressive to me. All I’m doing is trying to spot errors so he can squish the bugs and make the program better in the process. There are others helping too, because we all want a better program. This is the essence of Open Source programming, people volunteering their time and effort to make something that we all can use and benefit from.

This weekend I had so much fun watching Cyril change the program and make it better that I neglected to work on my novel. I’ll have to double down to finish up the novel. However, the time spent helping Cyril improve Plume Creator, will help other writers down the line. My next novel, which I will begin in a matter of days, will be completely written in Plume Creator. Programmers call this eating their own dog food.

Cyril has released a new beta version of Plume Creator. If you would like to take it for a test spin and let him know what you think, he’d really appreciate it. Since this program is in heavy development, some parts are not working yet. The program runs on Linux, Mac and Windows.

Amazon, Apple and Microsoft

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The new Big Three of digital publishing. Ugh! Can I have a new future please? No? Drat. Okay, then put me in two of the three major markets. Apple still makes me pay to play with purchasing an ISBN. Who knows what kind of lame format Microsoft will insist on after they consume B&N’s Nook inventory. Amazon is already in their own darn universe when it comes to ebook standards and availability. Really guys? Are you just trying to piss off everyone?

All three media companies want you to use their own ebook formats. Let’s continue to make the same dumb formatting decisions we made when the web first started. Remember the Netscape, IE, Apple/Linux web browser wars? Yeah, well ebooks are basically just fancy web pages folks. So the battle of the formats continues to rage.

As long as I continue to play the do-it-yourself publisher game, I’ll have to have my books formatted three different ways. Lame. This forces me to make decisions. If I want to be in all three markets, I need to spend more money converting my books. That’s just not in my financial future. Maybe after I start living off my ebook sales, I will have the money to be in all three markets, but for right now, it’s only going to be two. This assumes that Microsoft doesn’t mess with epub for another year or so. But you know they will, it’s in their company genes to make proprietary formats.

Since I make the lion’s share of my pittance from Amazon, I will have my ebooks there first. Since my ebooks are born as epubs, making them available on PubIt, is a no-brainer decision for now.

You may be wondering why I don’t just throw out a shingle and sell my books on the web site? Because I’m a largely unknown writer selling my own fiction and my audience is too small to justify the effort and money required to set that up correctly. When you are undiscovered, nobody comes to your house. Again, if I were selling thousands of books a day, I’d damn sure have a way to buy from this web site. But until that happens, I have to ride the long coat tails of the Big Three.

But over all, I can’t complain. My audience is mostly finding me on Amazon. Not in great numbers but about a hundred times greater than on B&N and Apple. So it makes sense to cater my ebooks to Amazon the hardest. You can have a thousand lines in the water, but if all the fish are in another pond, you’re not eating fish tonight.

I still feel like Google is sitting this one out. My local Indy bookstores are using them to sell ebooks, but Google’s author back-end is not easy to use and at times hostile to authors who publish themselves. It would be really great if Google spent some time to make their process easier. I’d love to be able to sell ebooks locally and let my favorite bookstores have a cut.

 

New Family Laptop

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We decided to get the family a laptop computer to share. Currently we are using my old MacBook and that makes it hard for me to go off and write on it. The wife wanted a Windows computer so the kids can use all the Windows specific stuff that the school system insists on using. I made sure to get the recovery CDs so I can clean it up after the kids destroy it with viruses.

I settled on a low priced HP Pavillion g6 model. About the only thing extra I purchased on it was the student edition of Office. Again, primarily for the kids. It won’t be a surprise for them, they knew we were going to get it.

We should have the new addition to the family sometime the week before Christmas. It will be the second HP laptop we own, the other being the Mini; and the third laptop. The MacBook is on its last legs and will probably crash sometime in the next year or so. But like cars, I tend to drive my laptops into the ground before replacing them. So won’t be planning to replace it until it croaks.

Can’t promise that I won’t make it duel boot to Linux. You know, so I can play with it sometimes. ;-)

I’ll do a review of it after the holidays to let you know how its working out for us.