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I’d like to take this time to thank a few apps, without which my NaNo-ing would not be possible—or, at least, without which I’d get much less done, in a much longer timeframe.
First, the newest discovery of mine, from a fellow NaNo-er on Twitter: OmmWriter! Here are my first four paragraphs, as they appear when I’m typing:
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| In case that’s too small to read, I’ve posted these 1st four paragraphs as my excerpt on my NaNo profile. |
Super minimalist, right? A mere wiggle of my cursor brings up this:
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| This screencap made possible by the wonderful Skitch, of course. |
Such a slick interface! Features that disappear when unnecessary, leaving you with just your words. But that’s not all, folks! One of those controls is a music note, which gives you, in the free option, three different ambient types of noise (they suggest you wear headphones, which of course I do while writing anyway), and let me tell ya, it’s pretty neat! There are also keyboard noises, which are somehow different from a keystroke click… I don’t know how to describe it, but it sounds delightful. Something about the slight noise of typing, and the absence of noise when you backspace makes you subconsciously want to JUST WRITE, which of course is the whole point of NaNoWriMo!
Of course, if you, like me, need a change of audio pace, say hello to Rdio!
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| Listen or subscribe to my NaNoWriMo playlist here. |
Rdio is a wonderful app. I actually have the paid subscription, so I never have to hear an ad and I have unlimited streaming on my laptop, online at work, on my phone while driving or anywhere else. It’s astounding how much music there is available. I run across artists every now and then who choose not to have their albums made available for listening (why, Metallica, WHY?!), but for the most part, I can hear anything I want anytime, which is wonderful for a muscially ADD person such as myself. I’ve NEVER been able to pinpoint a fave genre…
For writing, I prefer mostly non-lyrical music. Last year I almost exclusively wrote to Hans Zimmer’s Batman movie scores. Of course, I was writing about Bat Man last year, so that was super fitting, but in general, movie scores are wonderful because they embody drama and spur one to write without the distraction of words. Through another fellow NaNo-er on Twitter, I recently was turned on to Alexandre Desplat, who did the stunning score for The King’s Speech (which is currently making me tear up and want to watch the film right now again…) and scores for lesser-known films like Harry Potter (teehee, I kid, I kid.), The Queen, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Okay, so the third NaNo helper isn’t so much an app as a program, I think: OpenOffice. I don’t have Microsoft Office (I have mixed feelings about that… It would be nice to have for compatibility reasons, but BOOO MICROSOFT PROGRAMS BOO.), so this is my spreadsheet interface. And boy, do I love me a spreadsheet! What do spreadsheets have to do with NaNoWriMo?
Behold:
Now, the tracker on the NaNoWriMo site itself is actually pretty good, but I don’t know if it had that many stats last year… or if I just really wanted to be able to see how far behind my overall word count I was (Row J above), which they don’t show online… but I do like to see concrete evidence of my progress. It’s a compulsion.
Whelp, as you can see above, I’m doing WAY better today than I was yesterday (which registered ZERO on the word count side), and Day 1, but I’m still a couple thou behind where I need to be today to stay on course… and I’ve got some pretty exciting events coming up in the next week or two (including Mozcation, speaking at a Portsmouth Chamber small biz breakfast event on Twitter, and Digital Portsmouth) that might set me back on my word count, so I’m-a get back to it!
Thanks for tuning in, folks, and may the Muse be with you!
xoxox
—Crystal
