Green, Amber, Red

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On Monday I alluded to the system I use for colour coding scenes in my writing. This works really well in Scrivener because you can set the content labels in the Inspector to use different names and colours and this will be reflected in the outline or the notecards when you use them. You can achieve the same effect by changing the colour of your headers in Word or Writer (or even just putting in a note of the colour) or by writing out a list of your scenes in different coloured inks on a bit of paper. When writing Read more…

Angel of Fire Done, Back to Scrivener

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I finished the rough first draft of The Angel of Fire earlier this afternoon and I transferred it to Scrivener. I wrote most of the first draft in a combination of OpenOffice Writer and Microsoft Word. I switched from Scrivener to these more generic word-processors on a whim. I’m still not entirely sure why. I do know why I am going back to using Scrivener for the edit though. It simply gives more control. You can make changes to a scene and revert them back at the touch of a button. You can mix and match different versions of takes on a scene Read more…

John Locke, Market Research and E-Book Pricing

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I am a pretty hardcore reader. There probably has not been a week in the past 40 years when I have not bought a book. Many weeks I have bought far more. I think the most I have ever bought in one day was 45 but those were truly exceptional circumstances. At conventions I can easily buy 10-20 in a day. When I was a kid if I did not have enough pocket money to buy a book, I would spend my dinner money on them instead. When I was a student and a heavy smoker it once came down Read more…

What to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing

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Yesterday, I felt really slow of mind. I was tired after being woken in the middle of the night by an incredible thunderstorm. The day was very hot and sticky and I really wanted to be outside. My RSI was playing up. There were men working with loud power tools in my building. I did not feel inspired in the slightest. I did not want to write. I found myself planning a blog post about it then I thought this is stupid and I went and did some writing. What is my secret technique for doing this? I opened up my Read more…

An Easy Way To Increase Your Productivity

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For the past few days I have been out in the country. Like many Czechs my in-laws have a chatu,  a small place in the country, usually with minimal facilities but close to nature. On the weekends and in the long warm days of summer you leave the city, and go na chatu. Our’s is in a small village about 50 kilometres from Prague. It is surrounded by many lovely forest trails. There is no television, telephone or internet, and not much in the way of heating so we don’t go there much except in the summer. In the summer, Read more…

Writing the Warhammer Tie-in: Details

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When I am writing a tie-in novel I try never to assume that the reader is familiar with the background. This sounds strange, I know. After all, the developers have spent years building the world, the artists have provided us with beautiful illustrations so we know what everything looks like and hey, players have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours enjoying the game. They know what an ork or Chaos Warrior looks like, don’t they? They may have read dozens of Warhammer novels already. It’s a fair assumption that someone picking up a Warhammer novel is going to be a Read more…