Renewal

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I've been absent, both on holiday and down with a nasty cold. (Don't feel too sorry for me: I'm in Buenos Aires, after all.) I'm just going to post some blog links.

First, I'm honored that Mistress of the Sun was included in Margaret Donsbach's top historical fiction of 2009 list: click here. Margaret is both a demanding reader and perceptive reviewer.

I've been enjoying reading Margaret Atwood's blog. Her "Fifteen Book Tour Packing Tips" has excellent advice — not surprising considering that she spends most of her life traveling. (How does she do it?) I'll be reviewing her post on "Ten Editing Tips, for Your Fiction Mss." on my return to Normal Life. Early in January, I plan to read/edit the first draft of the novel I finished at the end of October. (Am I nervous? You bet.)

My New Year's resolution for 2010: finish drafts two and three (without going crazy).

Happy New Year, everyone. Twenty-ten has a nice round sound and bodes well.

Distracted by software

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I'm on a Mac (I'm one of the Fervent Faithful) and have been using Microsoft Word forever. I use many of its bells and whistles: comments, hidden text, footnotes, styles. My relationship with Word is conflicted, however: I use Word 2004 because I find Word 2008 impossibly confusing. And lately, Word 2004 has been sluggish and — worse — buggy. Several times in a day it has crashed on me; I've lost work and had to retrace. This is a terrible problem!

So I've been looking into alternatives. OpenOffice.org does seem to be a possibility, but I quickly discovered that I couldn't insert a space above a line (how basic is that?), that zooming and hiding text was cumbersome, and worse, that I can't split the screen. I'm constantly referring back to part of the manuscript I'm working on while working on another part. I need to be able to see both, scroll through.

(What's really nice about OpenOffice — other than the fact that it's free — is that clicking on "full screen" actually does fill the screen.)

I also tested Pages, which has a nice feel. Zooming was a little easier, but I couldn't see how to hide a text selection. But the clincher, for me, yet again, is that it does not allow one to split the screen.

If I could find a comfortable program that had these features, I would consider switching.

I was reading Wen Fu this morning, the ancient text on writing, and nowhere does it deal with the frustrations of a word-processing program.

P.S. "Print out manuscript" is still on the To Do list. Spellcheck took a day!

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Caroline Leavitt on Butler's "From Where You Dream"

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I'm a collector of books on writing, but few "speak" so clearly as Robert Olen Butler's FROM WHERE YOU DREAM. I've mentioned his book a number of times on this blog. It is within reach of my computer now, so I was pleased to see novelist Caroline Leavitt write about it on her blog today: here.

I've a flurry of things to do today. In addition to family and office matters, here's my writing-related to-do list. It's rather long, considering that I'm not, momentarily, actually writing.

1. Print out manuscript (in preparation for first read-through on return from Christmas holiday): this takes longer than one would think.
   
2. Finish writing newsletter — prepare to send it out soon!
3. Revise biography and send it with photo to San Miguel Writers' Conference for their brochure.
4. Set up character profiles. 

Of all of these, the last is the most important, yet it is the most likely to be pushed aside. Also neglected: research!