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Author, Writer, and Editor Lisa Adams | 'Society of Stepmothers,' 'S'mores: Gourmet Treats for Every Occasion,' 'Feshy's Dreamworld,' 'The Evil Sweater and Other Stories,' and 'Why We Read What We Read,'

Author, Writer, and Editor Lisa Adams | 'Society of Stepmothers,' 'S'mores: Gourmet Treats for Every Occasion,' 'Feshy's Dreamworld,' 'The Evil Sweater and Other Stories,' and 'Why We Read What We Read,'

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Category: News & Blabber

Writing software? Is it worth it?

LisaApril 28, 2010

Okay, this is slightly off-topic, but I know that many of you are writers and might know some things. I was sniffing around the web looking for software that would help me track my story/article/book submissions. There are lots of options out there…as long as you write on a PC. Which I don’t. So the one I actually did find was full-fledged “novel writing software” called WriteItNow.

I downloaded the demo, and it’s pretty hardcore. For each project, you get all these tabs that help you organize your thoughts on characters, locations, and events. There are also sections for “ideas” and “notes,” and interesting features like event and relationship charts, character generators, and readability analyses. Once you’re ready to print something, the software exports the piece in rich text format (RTF) to be opened in a word processor.

Now maybe I am missing something, but I have never felt the need for anything like this. For every project, I just create another Word file for notes. (I also create another Word file for omitted text, which interestingly in WriteItNow does not get its own tab.) It seems to me that this kind of software would just encourage people to slack off, dinking around in all the fancy tabs rather than getting any actual writing done.

But I’m curious. Have any of you used similar programs? Did it make writing easier and more organized, or did you start messing around with your relationship-charts seven years ago and never return? I may still buy the real software…but I think I need to hear some real-life case studies. If you’ve used something like this, let me know!

Justice is served

LisaNovember 28, 2007May 29, 2014

So I wrote this post last month about how I was going to become a bestselling author writing affliction fiction about a woman with Restless Legs Syndrome. And some lady got all mad at me for making fun of RLS. But I have been punished for my sins! I don’t think I have RLS exactly, but I have an odd and frustrating pain in my left leg that actually hurts quite a bit and even when I don’t sleep on it, I wake up with lots of pain. So see, there is a God.

But I still think RLS is funny.

B&B&B

LisaOctober 25, 2007

So I do this sick thing when I stay at B&Bs. Before I tell you what it is, let me emphasize that I love these froofy little inns, with their bad decor and jacuzzi tubs and wine-and-cheese hours and fancy breakfasts. In fact I have been known to sob inconsolably when a pre-ordered and much anticipated breakfast was delivered to another room. (I wanted everything to be perfect, okay?)

Anyway, so you know how B&Bs always have a guest book. Or three. I always read them. The typical guest book is filled with rapturous reminiscences of wedding nights and anniversaries, pulsing with infinite hopes and seasoned with the occasional reference to Christ’s love. All in all, it’s just way too upbeat. My love of tragedy demands a somber note, and it’s sure as heck not going to come from the sappy and starry-eyed.

So I add my own. I just make stuff up. About my divorce, or my family feud, or my battle with cancer (I was going to say RLS, but I don’t want those people all up in my business again). I’m not all depressing, mind you. I talk about how the stay at the inn has refreshed my tender spirits and stuff like that. I just need to add a little more balance to the official record.

Anyway, now that I’ve confessed, I hope you’ll all follow in my footsteps, because the world really needs more interesting guest books. But that actually wasn’t the point of this post. The real point is that I always get a kick out of the desperately tasteful books found in B&Bs. This last one (John and I went away this past weekend) had, among some other desperately tasteful tomes, the short stories of Hemingway and the complete works of O.Henry. And, of course, a book of Love Poetry. I capitalize that because you have to say it that way: Love Poetry. Preferably with some ridiculous accent.

Does anyone ever read those books? Earlier this year I did actually pick up Moby Dick in a B&B and read 30 pages or so. But I think that’s the first time I’ve ever done that, and it was a book I had been meaning to read anyway. Would people be more likely to read the B&B books if they were written by Dan Brown or John Gray? I’m not sure, but the presence of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus in a romantic guest suite would quite make my day.

John is just really busy

LisaOctober 15, 2007May 29, 2014

I swear I didn’t cut him into tiny pieces and bury him in the basement.

The Island of Unread Books

LisaOctober 11, 2007

So this list is going around revealing the top unread books in the Library Thing catalog. It’s apparently all over, but I saw it on SPM’s blog, pages turned, so I’m going to give her all the credit. Her poor husband has RLS and her parrot has gout, so for god’s sake she deserves it.

Anyhow, the list of books is below!

But before I post them…For the record, I don’t think the list says a whole lot about reading habits, or even the actual books that got nailed. Anyone who is going to be on Library Thing is a big fat nerd (in a good way, of course!), so I highly doubt these folks are opting for Your Best Life Now! instead of Foucault’s Pendulum. This list is composed of classic literature and contemporary literary bestsellers, books that well-meaning readers just haven’t gotten around to yet. But it’s still super fun and so I had to jump in and share my own anecdotes. You’re supposed to do all this fancy formatting to indicate your various shades of affection for the titles, but I just bolded the ones I’ve read.

  1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
  2. Anna Karenina
  3. Crime and punishment
  4. Catch-22 (One of my favorite books ever.)
  5. One hundred years of solitude
  6. Wuthering Heights (Love that Heathcliff!)
  7. Life of Pi : a novel
  8. The name of the rose (Latin nerds unite!)
  9. Don Quixote (I bought this from a homeless man for $4 about 10 years ago, but haven’t read it yet. Now that I think about it, he probably stole it. But I hope not.)
  10. Moby Dick (Read about 30 pages in a B&B earlier this year. Actually liked it—I was surprised.)
  11. Ulysses (Haven’t worked up the courage.)
  12. Madame Bovary (I played the heroine herself in a brilliant high school video that my teacher carelessly misplaced. God that was a good video.)
  13. The Odyssey
  14. Pride and prejudice (It took me several tries to get past the first chapter, but now I love Jane.)
  15. Jane Eyre (Not this Jane. She was kind of annoying.)
  16. A tale of two cities
  17. The brothers Karamazov
  18. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
  19. War and peace (Took me forever. I think I picked the wrong Tolstoy.)
  20. Vanity fair
  21. The time traveler’s wife (Best romantic book ever.)
  22. The Iliad (Yeah, the whole thing, even the catalog of ships. For best effect, read near smoky campfire.)
  23. Emma
  24. The Blind Assassin
  25. The kite runner
  26. Mrs. Dalloway
  27. Great expectations
  28. American gods : a novel
  29. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
  30. Atlas shrugged
  31. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
  32. Memoirs of a Geisha
  33. Middlesex
  34. Quicksilver
  35. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West …
  36. The Canterbury tales
  37. The historian : a novel
  38. A portrait of the artist as a young man
  39. Love in the time of cholera
  40. Brave new world
  41. The Fountainhead
  42. Foucault’s pendulum
  43. Middlemarch
  44. Frankenstein
  45. The Count of Monte Cristo
  46. Dracula
  47. A clockwork orange
  48. Anansi boys : a novel
  49. The once and future king
  50. The grapes of wrath (Never got around to it. As a native Californian, I think I’m betraying my state.)
  51. The poisonwood Bible : a novel
  52. 1984
  53. Angels & demons (John had to read this one, ha ha. Don’t bother, everyone—it’s the same book as The Da Vinci Code.)
  54. The inferno
  55. The satanic verses (Loved it)
  56. Sense and sensibility
  57. The picture of Dorian Gray
  58. Mansfield Park
  59. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
  60. To the lighthouse
  61. Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  62. Oliver Twist
  63. Gulliver’s travels
  64. Les misérables (Sooo much more boring than it had to be. Read the abridged version.)
  65. The corrections (Wonderful)
  66. The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel
  67. The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
  68. Dune
  69. The prince
  70. The sound and the fury (Wrote my AP English essay about this one. “Caddy smelled like trees.”)
  71. Angela’s ashes : a memoir
  72. The god of small things
  73. A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
  74. Cryptonomicon
  75. Neverwhere
  76. A confederacy of dunces (John gave this to me about 10 years ago, telling me how the author died a failure before his book got published and went on to great acclaim. I hadn’t been published at the time. Somehow he thought this story was supposed to be inspiring.)
  77. A short history of nearly everything
  78. Dubliners
  79. The unbearable lightness of being
  80. Beloved : a novel
  81. Slaughterhouse-five
  82. The scarlet letter
  83. Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Pu…
  84. The mists of Avalon (OK. I’m not really into the women stuff.)
  85. Oryx and Crake : a novel
  86. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
  87. Cloud atlas : a novel
  88. The confusion
  89. Lolita (One of my favorite books ever.)
  90. Persuasion
  91. Northanger abbey
  92. The catcher in the rye
  93. On the road
  94. The hunchback of Notre Dame
  95. Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of… (John read it)
  96. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into …
  97. The Aeneid
  98. Watership Down
  99. Gravity’s rainbow
  100. In cold blood
  101. White teeth
  102. Treasure Island
  103. David Copperfield
  104. The three musketeers
  105. Cold mountain (I knew this one would be on the list!)
  106. Robinson Crusoe
  107. The bell jar
  108. The secret life of bees
  109. Beowulf : a new verse translation (I don’t know about this “new verse translation,” but I’ve certainly read some translation, and that counts, dammit.)
  110. The plague
  111. The Master and Margarita
  112. Atonement : a novel
  113. The handmaid’s tale
  114. Lady Chatterley’s lover

Isn’t this fun? It makes me feel like I should go read one of the titles I have in my library but haven’t read yet. It also makes me think of that homeless man. I hope he’s okay, even if he did steal Don Quixote.

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