To Be Followed By NaNoEdMo

It was uhh... dark, and, umm, stormy, err, evening.











disclaimer:

Yeah, that's it. Hoo boy is it going to be a long month. NaNoWriMo.

As mentioned last week, the guys over at Q.I. Software had been working on something for a few weeks, somewhat related to the old NaNo... we lied, sort of, as you weren't really the first to hear about it, but here it goes, you're pretty darn near the first: Writer.app.

It's a drafting tool to help you bang out those difficult chapters when your agent has barricaded you in a room with nothing but your laptop and the ultimatum that you are either going to emerge with enough pages for that novel you promised him/her or you will die in that room. It'll lock down your network, it'll mute your sound, it'll turn iChat off. So those are the typical distractions taken care of for you... what about all those damn choices with these fancy schmancy word processors these days? How the heck are you going to concentrate when you can delete everything you've just written? Or move some words around like magnetic poetry? Or play with italicizing that word for hours on end? Well, we've taken care of that for you, too.

Based on Khoi Vinh's idea at Blockwriter.com, it's about a word processor that's more like a typewriter than you've ever... well, okay, if you've used a typewriter, it's a bit like that. But if you haven't, then it's more like a typewriter than you've ever seen. You can go select text with your fancy mouse, by if you type over it you'll only strike out the text... you can only type at the end, so there's no going back, no worrying about editing too much. It encourages you to get writing. Well, not actively. That'd be distracting. It does it in an eminently non-distracting way.

You can save your work as rtf, and open it all up, strikethroughs and all, you can print it out, strikethroughs and all, or you can export it, without strikethroughs, to import into Tinderbox, or Mellel, or Microsoft Word (they don't need our helps with links, to be honest). And then you can polish off the novel, slip it under the door for your agent to verify, and then you're free! Run free! Wait for the thing to get published! Get ready for your big book tour!

So go on, download Writer.app, check it out. It's Mac OS X-only, like all the Q.I. Software stuff, and it'll run on Intel or PPC Macs, if that means anything to you. If it doesn't, it means it'll run on your Mac.

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If you had feelings about this week's issue, be sure to let us know how you felt. If your feeling isn't covered here... well, I guess you're stuck, then, aren't you?
Liked it.
Didn't like it.
Would have liked more references to bats.
I'd rather be boiled in vinegar.

Also, we'd like your take on the now missing Summary Feature (email subscribers can still access the summary for the current week's issue only and you can sign up here). How do you feel about the (now gone) summary feature on each issue?
I miss it.
Didn't use it.
What summary, you mean I can get away with reading less?
Don't miss it at all.



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06 Nov, 2006

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