Author: MS Manz (Page 2 of 5)

If anyone ever asks me a question about my writing process, I like to think they will probably ask me what tools I use to get things done (or fail to get things done, as is more often the case). No one has ever asked me this question, or really any question about my writing, but nonetheless in this post I’ll go through a quick list an exhaustive list of the things I use in my writing, with a brief description of why and how I use them.

Just in case anyone ever wants to know.

Pen and Paper

Yes, that’s right. I’m old school.

I have an A4-sized (8.5×11 for the North Americans in the room) clipboard with a small stack of copy paper (80gsm for those keeping score) on my desk at all times. My pen of choice is the Uniball Eye (or the Snowhite Galaxy which is a clone of the Unball) 0.5 roller pen. The part number is Mitsubishi UB-150 if you’re interested in picking some up.

I find I plan a lot better on paper than I do on a screen. Ideas flow more freely and are of a generally higher quality when I’m handwriting. Oh, and yes – I write in cursive.

Software

ClickUp

I’m an idiot who can’t seem to focus on fewer than 5 projects at a time, so I need something to keep track of all the bits and bobs I’m working on. This is where ClickUp comes in.

The free version is honestly more than enough for a single person operation such as myself, but I pay for the first paid tier just so I can have Gantt charts. I love me a Gantt chart. It’s a pretty straightforward project management platform, and it keeps my tasks available to me on all of my devices. I’d be lost without it.

Obsidian

Obsidian is a fairly straightforward markdown editor. It is also one of the most flexible and powerful note-taking and knowledge management systems ever created by mortal man. I have to admit I’ve drunk of the Obsidian kool-aid.

I have no regrets.

I use Obsidian to keep track of story ideas, plot structures, stuff for my day job, information for online classes I’m taking, information for online classes I’m creating… Basically, anything I don’t want to have to keep in my brain all the time, but that I’ll need to have in my brain at some later time goes into Obsidian. I don’t want to take the time to go into details on its use here, but it is so very well worth the Google if you are at all interested in learning things and keeping track of information.

Scrivener

I mean, of course I do.

I’ve thoroughly tested played around with other options: Wavemaker Cards, Obsidian (for drafting of prose rather than just for knowledge management), yWriter, iA Writer (for writing on my e-Ink Android tablet), and even some online services, though I am fundamentally opposed to storing my work only in someone else’s cloud. Basically, if it comes up as an alternative to Scrivener in a Google search, and it isn’t Apple only, I’ve tried it. I keep coming back to Scrivener. Even though it doesn’t run on Android (more on that later)

Aeon Timeline

This is a recent addition to my process (like, yesterday recent) and is largely the impetus for this blog post because it forced me to reconsider my entire writing process from start to finish.

Aeon Timeline has been around for a while, and I actually bought version 2 back in 2016, but didn’t find it useful enough to bother with it much. Enter two of my current flock of projects: “Tomorrow”, and my Interactive Fiction Lunden novel.

Tomorrow is a set of three concurrent novellas whose characters never directly interact (much) but whose storylines affect each other a great deal. I will need to make sure that all of the various things happen in a logical timeframe relative to each other.

The Interactive Fiction novel is, as the name suggests, interactive. I’m also planning to write four different stories, with four different protagonists, where all four interact with each other and the reader can choose which of the protagonists to inhabit. That means it’s going to be rife with complicated interactions that are dependent on reader choices. It’s a total mindfuck to plan. Aeon Timeline should help tremendously in keeping all the details sensibly organized.

Twine

Speaking of the Interactive Fiction novel(s) – I’ll be writing them in Twine. Twine is a piece of software designed for the creation of interactive fiction. I haven’t done any more than install it and poke around randomly a bit, but it looks like it’s exactly what I need in order to do what I want to do. I’ll keep you updated as things develop.

Hardware

Keyboard

I take my keyboard very seriously. About two years ago I took a deep dive into the world of custom mechanical keyboards. I tried just about every style and variety of case, switch, keycap, and layout you can think of to find out what exactly works best for me.

My overall favourite is the Keydous NJ80-AP with Keychron kPro Mint 65g switches and my Autumn Fog clone OEM keycaps. I own three of this keyboard, though I built one of them out with Outemu silent whites for when I’m working in an environment that wouldn’t appreciate my clackitty-clacking away.

This will all make perfect sense to any other keyboard nerds out there, and absolutely none to anyone else.

For when I need to be portable (though I almost never need to be portable, I have Keychron K7 Pro (reds, of course) which is surprisingly useable stock. It’s tiny and smol and I like it more than I thought I would.

Computers (traditional)

I have a desktop computer with very beefy (for three years ago) specs and dual 27″ monitors on swivel arms (and a third 13″ monitor in my vocal booth) because I do video content creation as well as writing.

My laptop is a Acer Swift 5, which was one or two versions behind current when I bought it. I chose the older one because it had a less powerful graphics card which means an hour or two more battery life in real-world use cases. It also does video out via usb-c, which I’ll get to in a minute. It’s a tiny little thing and replaces my old Dell XPS 15 which now lives in the music room and is used for music production almost exclusively.

Computers (non-traditional)

Display

In combination with my tiny little laptop, I use a pair of XREAL Air 2 Pro AR glasses, generally with the Beam accessory. This is why it was important for my laptop to output video via usb-c. The glasses project a very large, reasonably crisp screen in front of me, and with the beam I can anchor it in space wherever I choose. The pro 2 version (which replaced my old version 1s) also have electrochromic dimming, so when I’m writing I can darken them completely and focus on my main screen and when I’m doing admin work I can clear them up and go dual monitor with my laptop screen.

If I’m gonna write science fiction I should go full cyborg, right?

Tablet

I have two Boox e-ink android tablets. The 10″ Note Air lives in my vocal booth now, and I use it for scripts and books I’m narrating. My 13″ Max 3 is my workhorse. It’s A4 sized, so I can read most pdf files at native resolution. I can also split the screen and put something I’m editing on one side and take notes on the other. The handwriting recognition is almost flawless, so I can actually do a lot of planning and that type of work on it and then export my work as copy/paste-able text which I can then throw into scrivener or obsidian. Hell, it’s a full-fledged android tablet. I have Obsidian installed on it. I can write stuff directly into Obsidian.

This device, by the way, is the reason I’m annoyed that Scrivener doesn’t have even a bare-bones Android version. The e-ink screen on this thing is a joy to use. I can connect my keyboard to it via Bluetooth and type away on a screen that doesn’t hurt my eyes (even over the course of an entire day). If Scrivener had a useable Android app, I’d have my end-game writing setup immediately sorted.

Phone

When I replaced my phone last time, I made a move from my OnePlus 7tPro, which was my third OnePlus phone in a row (and I don’t upgrade my phone more than once every 4 years or so ) to the Samsung Galaxy S22+. I did this for one simple reason: Dex.

Dex is a feature of (some, most… I’m not sure) Samsung phones that provides the user with a full desktop computing experience when the phone is connected to an external display. My XREAL glasses are an external display. It is a beautifully functional pairing.

If I’m on the go and I have my phone and my glasses (almost always the case) I can connect them and have instant productivity. I don’t have Scrivener on my phone, of course, but I do have google docs. I also have the microphone built in to the glasses and I can set the phone to work as a trackpad when using Dex. This means I can open up a google doc, and dictate through my Google keyboard’s speech to text option using the microphone next to my face. If I have a scene I want to draft, or some ideas I want to flesh out while I’m on the go (something more involved than just a list of things, which I can do more easily with just the phone), this works exceptionally well.

As a bit of an aside, once I had the phone I decided to replace my fitbit with the Galaxy watch 5 and got a pair of the Buds 2 pro because I wanted to see what an Apple level of device integration felt like and I will never willingly use an Apple product. Reader, it changed my life. I highly recommend it. It almost makes me understand Apple users.

Okay guys, it’s time to wrap it up…

So that’s all of the tools that I use regularly to get my writing work done.

This kind of blog post is what I do when I’m avoiding actually doing any of that writing work.

If you are interested in more information on any of the individual things I mentioned here, drop me a comment and let me know. I’d be happy to go into more detail. Also make sure to subscribe

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Oh, also, if you want to gain unlimited access to all of my world building resources (for a writing project of your own, perhaps) and a minimum of two new short stories a month from yours truly, head over to my Patreon and sign up for one of my reasonably priced tiers. You’ll be helping to support my work and helping me to entertain you all at the same time and all for the price of a coffee or two a month.

Cheers!

The other day, during my quasi-random internet wanderings (probably on facebook, really) I stumbled upon this quote, which is attributed to Sir Terry of Pratchett.

The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.

Sir Terry of Pratchett

At first blush, this seems just another empty, insipid bit of pop-inspirational drivel – like most of what so many people circulate around the internet. But Sir Terry is one of the wisest and most insightful people to have put words to page over the last two centuries. Sir Terry wrote 41 novels in the Discworld series, 39 of which provide deeply cutting satire and an incisive examination of various aspects of Western society that the vast majority of people take for granted as “just the way things are” (all while simultaneously being absolutely hilarious and charming and lovely), and 2 of which were hamstrung to varying degrees by his dementia and, in the case of the final novel, by having been completed by someone who was not Sir Terry (which in no way tarnishes his legacy). Sir Terry doesn’t do drivel. Sir Terry doesn’t do insipid. If Terry Pratchett said a thing, then it is worth considering that thing, and so I did. And it changed how I think about writing in a pretty fundamental way.

You see, I’ve always been very much a plotting sort of writer. I love me an outline. This is something that’s true of many writers, and in particular of full-time professional writers (something that I still aspire to become). If you are writing for a living, you need to be organized and focused. You don’t have time to faff around for months hammering out a sloppy mess of a first draft, most of which you’ll have to throw away anyway, right? You need to know where you’re going, and you need to get there in a reasonably efficient manner. Pantsing your way through a first draft might possibly be fun and interesting and whatever, but it is not efficient. Outlining gets you there faster and more easily.

I’m fond of saying that everyone outlines, it’s just that some people do it differently. Plotters outline by using bullet lists or the snowflake method or various other tools to cut through the cruft and get to the meat of their story quickly so that they can get down to the business of actually writing that story as quickly as possible. Pantsers also outline, but they do this by wandering their way through hundreds of pages of prose. A plotter’s outline looks like the skeleton of a story, a pantser’s outline looks like a story. But it isn’t a story – not yet – it’s just an outline that’s shaped like story. I mean, I’ve always felt that by building a well-thought-out outline before starting my first draft, I was even taking care of a lot of the work that a first draft is supposed to accomplish. Effectively, my outlined first draft should be the equivalent of a pantser’s second or third draft, right?

But that’s not what an outline does.

An outline doesn’t remove the need for a first draft, because the first draft is just you telling yourself the story, and an outline doesn’t tell you the story. An outline just shows you the shape of the story. Outlining might help you produce a more focused and cohesive first draft, but at the end of the day, both the plotters and the pantser’s first drafts are doing the same job.

One analogy I quite like for this is a sculpting analogy. I’m skeptical of those (like Stephen King) who claim that their stories already exist in the universe and that the job of the writer is to uncover them, to dig them up from the dirt of the ether and present them to the world, but I find this sculpting analogy compelling. It goes like this: the first draft is the writer gathering the raw materials, the marble or whatever that will become the sculpture. Once the materials are gathered, the writer’s job, to paraphrase Michelangelo, is to chip away all the parts that aren’t the story.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be sticking to my outlining and my planning. I find it gives me a much better idea of which parts of the first draft are the story and which ones aren’t. Pantsing gets you your block of marble, but plotting gets you a statue-shaped block of marble and I’d rather start that much closer to where I’m trying to go. Going forward, though, I probably won’t spend nearly as much time nailing down the details in the outline. The level of detail I have historically put into my outlines is largely a waste of time, because the outline is not the place where I should be telling myself the story. That’s what the first draft is for.