Friday Links

Happy Friday! Does everyone have plans for the weekend? Mine involve setting up my shiny new computer in the interests of transferring all my files before I get too many more blue screens of death. Ah technology, you make our lives so interesting.

Of course I have a few links for you all, so if you’ve got a spare moment or are just looking for some procrastination inspiration, I hope you’ll check them out. Have a terrific weekend, and don’t forget to get some reading and/or writing time in!

The Do-It-Yourself Lit Degree – Book Riot brings you some ideas on how to catch up on that academic reading.

Writing LIAR with Scrivener – Author Justine Larbalestier gives a great overview on how she wrote her young adult novel, LIAR, using Scrivener software. I’m linking to this because I was discussing the program with some writers in Denver last weekend, so it seemed like a good time to share this for anyone curious about how the program might help them.

How to Write a Manuscript: 5 Key Tips – A few ideas that might help you plow through.

HarperCollins Reaches New Agreements with Amazon and Others on E-Book Prices – An overview of how the DOJ settlement is starting to play out.

William Gibson, The Art of Fiction No. 211 – A great interview from The Paris Review archives.

3 thoughts on “Friday Links

  1. Thank you for linking to Larbalestier’s post on Scrivener! I’ve been curious about that software for a while, wondering what the big deal is compared to Word. I’ve gotten into the habit of printing out my first draft so I can separate it into sections by chapter or scene, flip between scenes easily, label sections as done or not-done and check them at a glance–and it looks like Scrivener could help me do all that without wasting paper! I love the arranging, color-coding, and labeling capabilities.

    I think it also really helped that I’ve read LIAR, so I could understand the changes she mentioned.

    1. Glad it was helpful! I think Scrivener is really fabulous software, personally, but I suspect my just saying that sounds like I’m somehow pushing this product, which is completely not the case. I’d forgotten about Justine’s post until I read something else linking to it, and it was perfect timing since I really had just been extolling the program’s virtues. I know you can get a free trial of the program, so really, you can try without any risk, which I love.

  2. I’ve been considering giving Scrivener a shot. The feature that most appeals to me was labeling scenes by how many times they have been revised. It’s possible to do this in Word using comments but it comes out looking cluttered. It’s annoying to put a fresh scene in an almost-complete MS and then have to go and hunt for it later because you know it needs more polish than the rest.

    In any case, it was interesting to see a good description of that feature being used, so thanks for the link.

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