Discussion The Scribble Pad (Fanfic Writing Discussions)

Nice one @Thumper09. I appreciate it as well. Having just posted some drabbles as the first thing in some time, it makes sense.

 

Lame question alert: Is there a free text to speech site other than WordcounterDAHTNET's proofread feature? Today, rather than the usual so-so mechanical male voice speaking American English, there was a heavily German-accented female voice reading my deathless prose. Reloading the site did not help; it's amusing to listen to 'sports' being pronounced 'shports', but I would like to know if others suggest a site. I do not have Word and use the lowly WordPad that came with Windows.

Xposted to the technical issues thread. Thanks in advance.

EAD: Upon playing around, the 'US English Male' setting switched to 'Google Deutsch' without my doing, I'm 99.9 per cent certain I did not click anything to do this. Anyway, problem solved. Also, I discovered that Win 10 offers Narrator for the visually impaired, with better voices, too.

 

I suggest downloading OpenOffice, an open-source office suite that imitates Word and loads Word file formats while being significantly more powerful than WordPad.

 

Google docs is another great free alternative to Word.


I feel like my muse is a "bad-luck Brian" meme (or maybe a bad-luck Briannakin). Finally gets an idea I'm motivated to write; gets second shot of the vaccine and is too exhausted and achy to sit at a computer and write. (I'm kidding, I am super grateful to be fully vacc'ed and the side effects haven't been too bad but I want to write after muse being a limp noodle for weeks... but now my body is being more of a limp noodle than usual.)

 

I do hope the effects fade quickly; it's nothing to ignore, that's for sure, even if we could. I felt terrible post 2nd Moderna for 30 hours with fever and chills and then it just went like that *snaps fingers." Hang in there!

 

Unfortunately, the side effects haven't faded quickly but it's just exhaustion hitting me so it's not horrible (I do love naps but it's starting to get annoying).

Anyways (speaking of exhaustion) a big factor in the past few months of me not really writing has been the physical exhaustion writing takes on my body, specifically my wrists due to a repetitive stress injury. I have an ergonomic keyboard I use for work and writing but it still doesn't eliminate all the pain and it can be hard to get comfortable with that setup on my couch or in my bed (even with an adjustable bed!). BUUUUT I just discovered the word processing program I use for fanfic (Scrivener) has a mobile app! And could sync all my projects between my laptop and phone. Problem is, the app is a different licence so it costs $28. But I'm kinda thinking about paying it.

Sure my speed typing on my phone isn't great, but it would be fun to write fanfic in bed, or out in a park or when I am just waiting in a waiting room. BUUUUT I know about 10 years ago I didn't have a laptop all summer so I just used my iPad and it kinda killed my muse - but that also might have been because I was working in Notes.

I know I could pretty much do the same thing by writing in google docs and syncing (which I might try for a few weeks to see if it would be worth the price). But my creative brain just loves Scrivener.

Does anyone else have a preferred word-processing program that their brain just loves and cant create in anything else?

EDIT: Booo! Google docs doesn't allow word prediction. Kinda puts a dent in my experiment.

 

Microsoft Word.

 

I miss having Scrivener- it got lost to an older laptop that was a mac and I just never re bought the license. I don't think I could use it on a Chromebook now anyway. I've been using GoogleDocs if only because I'm tired of losing things when I run a laptop into the ground and have been bad about backing things up. Sure, Google could decide to do away with it (doubtful) but they'd at least give some warning. Now that you can set something up to edit offline and it will save it to the cloud when you go back online, I think it works a lot better than it used to.

 

I had to go look up what Scrivener was just now... that actually might help with my bits of story on various pieces of paper problem that seem to happen because the bits that keep happening don't seem to happen when I have a comp book handy.

 

I totally recommend using a speech recognition program (Dragon is a good one) and using that with something like Word and maybe Scrivener. I think (maybe or maybe not, please forgive me if I'm wrong) but I recall you having a speech disability but even then something like Dragon is so, so good at recognizing your own voice once you train it. You will rarely have to use a keyboard to type again. You can use a similar function in Chrome (Speech ---> Text).

 

One of my hesitations to getting a chromebook once my macbook finally dies (it's on it's last legs) is the fact that I cant use Scrivener on a Chromebook. There are other reasons too (accessibility features, work all runs on apple so we use airdrop a lot).

Scrivener does offer a 30 day non consecutive trial, which is nice to see if your use justifies the cost. I also bought it as a student so not only did I get a discount, it made writing papers and doing citations (ughhh Chicago Footnotes) so much easier. Not sure I could have done my dissertation without it. But yeah, I'm not sure I would have bought it and fell in love with it just as a fanfic writer.

It's great for just that purpose. The free trial is a great way to see if you like it.

Yeah, I have a pretty bad speech disability so I've never bothered looking a ton into speech to text software. I doubt the cost (Dragon is pretty expensive!) + frustration would be worth it for me. All the occasional therapists I've seen never even brought it up because they knew it would be useless. But maybe I'll actually look into something if I can find a free trial or a free option. Cant hurt to try, right?

EDIT: Nope. I tried the google extension as a quick experiment and unless other programs are leaps and bounds better (and hey, they might be - I know they do 'learn' your voice - plus my microphone in my laptop PROBABLY doesn't help the situation), it's just not an option for me. Plus, I remember why I hate dictating (I had the option of dictating vs typing my exams in school); my brain can not think while trying to speak! Not sure if it's just because I have to concentrate so much on trying to enunciate as clearly as possible or if it's the speed. I just cant do it!

 

Yeah, the google extension isn't too great and Dragon is totally leaps and bounds better (the initial training is super frustrating but once you actually "train" it, it's amazing)--for both, you absolutely need a good microphone to work otherwise you get background noise interfering. It eventually works well even if you have an accent or a speech issue, but the amount of times I had to fix the damn words manually (trying to dictate something like "that was bold" and gives me "Hats was Bob's" or something weird) does get annoying.

Have you tried writing things on paper and then dictating? This would be extra work, but maybe would be a good idea just to at least give your wrists a break for a bit.

 

We all write differently and have different methods for getting there. I personally find it easier to write by hand and then type, and sometimes there is only the typing stage. And some things... I can write dialogue, but if I were to use Dragon, there is the problem of acting it out instead of writing what is coming to me.

 

Huh. Good to know. Looking it up, Dragon's mobile app is subscription-based and is only $15/month after a week trial. I think I'll likely give it a try for a few months - see if it is a solution (I'm willing to try anything).

My handwriting is pretty awful too, but I could outline a scene in shorthand or something

 

Hi, just found some words of encouragement and thought y'all would appreciate them (or maybe you just need them right now). It refers to art, but applies equally to fanfic (which is basically an art form).

 

Maybe I'm weird but I love my fanfic. Sure, often times when I am writing - particularly lately - I often question "is this worth my time, effort, physical exhaustion" and the answer is sometimes no and I want to throw my laptop off my balcony and give up. But I love going back and rereading my old fics (that have gotten to that final posted stage) if I want some comfort media. There's a healthy amount of cringe if I go back to my really early stuff, and maybe some "Oh man, I should have taken the plot in XYZ direction" but for the most part I write characters I love in situations I find interesting or strike an emotion I want to feel and I know exactly what story to reread to get that.


Also, I might have had one too many birthday drinks last night (I was also kinda celebrating being able to be out at a restaurant with other people) and I bought the Scrivener app. In my (drunken) defence, I was also thinking it might be nice to have another device that can open the .scriv files if my laptop dies (I do back things up to the cloud but only Scrivener can open the raw .scriv files and I have almost 250k words in one project) and I do other things in Scrivener besides fanfic. Honestly its a solid 9/10 mobile word processing app. Sure it might not be worth the price for everyone (but the price I sad was in CAD - it's probably a fair amount cheaper for USD) but I'm happy with it from an initial use. There's an extra row of 'keys' above the word prediction with commonly used punctuation for writing so you don't have to keep flipping your phone keyboard to the second 'page' to get quotation punctuation. You can swipe that extra row of keys to get arrows and highlighting so you can get the cursor exactly where you want it, or swipe again for the usual bold, italic, or underline. It has all the other Scrivener features I use too.

 

Sorry for the double post but... does anyone's muse decides to randomly (okay, not so randomly, my mini-vacation did wonders) start working and then they are so afraid it will stop that they will stop doing other responsibilities in order to keep on a roll. LIKE I REALLY NEED TO SHOWER AND GO TO BED, but I just wanna keep writing before my muse decides it doesn't want to write again.

Like yeah I need to be a responsible adult but at the same time, my muse is finally giving me something that's not total garbage.

Oh, well, we are in a heat wave. I keep joking about becoming nocturnal. Maybe I should actually do it!

 

I had exactly that happen to me last month. I had a story perfectly shaped in my head and I wasn't able to write a single word of it, and then suddenly I found the entry point. My muse became hyperactive and I wrote 30,000 words within a few weeks. My daughter has been giving me some really weird looks

 

Sigh...my muse is being a moose, as usual. I’m stuck on the last chapter of “ A Different Side of You” and it should not be this hard. It’s fluffy romance with my comfort characters, but it’s such a struggle to get the words out. And when I do, it feels stiff and awkward. I tell myself I can edit it later, but it makes writing kind of unsatisfying Meanwhile, the Kanera story I planned to do as a series of connected short stories for the Fanfic Olympics has decided, nope, it wants to be a long form story instead, leaving me with no ideas for my pentathlon

My moose seems to run more in fits and starts than it used to. I know this will pass eventually, but in the meantime, it’s not much fun.

 

This is me right now on the Eve of the Olympics with not a word written and hoping I'll be able to produce something worthy.

 

@Raissa Baiard that sucks that you're going through that with your writing. If it helps any I totally understand how you feel. I have so many WIPs and a couple of challenges I want to do, the Fanfic Olympics being one of them, but I've got nothing. And I'm not happy with anything I do manage to come up with because as soon as I write it out it just sounds clunky and, quite frankly, stupid. It's so frustrating.

Lots of hugs and good vibes for everyone struggling!

 

Perhaps you could just write the story, then break it up and edit it to fit the word limits and post the pieces in the proper reading order. I did that for a couple of "events" this year.

 

@Raissa Baiard I agree with @Seldes_Katne. I'm famously incompetent at writing very short stories, so I'm doing pretty much what they are suggesting and it was actually a really good booster for my muse – as in, I wrote the gist of the Olympics bits and built the story around them. Also, I asked @devilinthedetails and it's absolutely OK to do that for the Olympics.

 

I came across this and thought I'd share for anyone who needs to hear it right now (it's a short, quick read):

You're Not A Good Writer (tumblr thread)

Text under the spoiler cut for length.

Spoiler: You're Not A Good Writer by djdangerlove

"You're Not a Good Writer."

I once received a DM comprised of just that sentence. Nothing else. No constructive criticism or any reason as to why this person clearly agreed with my own view of myself.

For someone who has never told anyone in their real life that they write anything, reading something like this from an anonymous user only solidified in my mind the fact that this person was right.

I’m not a good writer.

After an embarrassing amount of minutes passed, in which I thought about deleting every story I ever posted, I decided to delete the message instead. Unfortunately, that didn’t mean I could delete the feelings it caused or change the fact that I’m not a good writer.

Two weeks went by and I didn’t write anything, let alone post. Then I received a comment on a story I had posted three years prior, one I’d written after a death in our family. The comment read, “Thank you for sharing this heartfelt story. I really needed this. I just lost my mom and this really got me today.”

I stopped thinking about being a good writer after that. I thought instead, “what if I had deleted my stories and that one person three years later hadn’t read it that day?”

Here’s what I realized: no one is a good writer.

Good means to be approved of, but stories aren’t created from approval. They’re built from life experiences, feelings, and emotions Therefore, the impact of anyone’s story isn’t good or bad. It’s a million other things.

Heartfelt.

Sad.

Funny.

Inspiring.

Romantic.

So to all the story writers out there, hold your head up, write what is in your heart, and never doubt that there isn’t at least one person out there that needs to read your story.

So, no.

We’re not good writers, but why would we want to be?