In the Mean Time: WriteOnCon

While I'm not going to be making real blog posts like normal during my hiatus, every once and a while I may post something interesting but low effort for your reading pleasure. This is such a post.

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I realized I never officially posted about WriteOnCon, so I figured this would be a great "In the Mean Time" post.

So, there's this thing called WriteOnCon. If you haven't checked it out, you should. Here's the data from the website:

WriteOnCon is an Online Children’s Writers Conference (rated MC-18, for Main Characters under 18 only) created by writers, for writers.

When: Tuesday – Thursday, August 10 – 12, 2010

Where: http://www.writeoncon.com

Cost: Free!

Who: That’s the best part—it’s for EVERYONE!

Attendees won’t need to take time off work, travel, or spend a truckload of money. You can enjoy the conference from the convenience of your own home, for free—and the schedule has been designed around working hours. (Transcripts will also be available of the entire conference, should anyone have to miss part of it.) Everything will take place within the website, which means everyone with basic Internet access will be able to participate in all aspects of the conference—no additional software or technology required.

Keynote addresses, agent panels, and lectures will be presented as blogs, vlogs, moderated chats, webinars, podcasts, and livestreaming—check our amazing list of presenters to see who’s signed on. There will also be a critique forum, where participants can post query letters and first pages, to receive helpful feedback and comments from their peers and industry professionals. And, as if that weren’t exciting enough, there will also be daily contests, giving random winners everything from books to personalized critiques from agents.

It’s everything great about a writer’s conference, without any of the cost or inconvenience. Click here to register now.

In the Mean Time: yWriter Again

While I'm not going to be making real blog posts like normal during my hiatus, every once and a while I may post something interesting but low effort for your reading pleasure. This is such a post.

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Today, I came across a great video tutorial showing how one author uses yWriter. You can find the tutorial here:

http://wordplay-kmweiland.blogspot.com/2010/07/ywriter-outlining-software-in-action.html

The interesting thing is that she uses yWriter strictly as an outlining tool. I'd never thought of using it in that fashion, and this tutorial does a great job showing some of the cool outlining tools yWriter provides.

However, in a comment I left for her, I wanted to point out some of the benefits of writing with yWriter. And so, I thought I'd repost those comments here for your reading pleasure.

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yWriter is actually an editing software (you can actually write your novel in the software), and there are some benefits to using it like that. By having each scene as a separate file, you avoid the problems that sometimes occur with large word files for the entire manuscript, and you also don't have to keep closing/opening files if, say, you have one for each chapter.

The tools it provides in the writing process, and especially the editing process, are great. It displays word count for scene, chapter, and the novel. It provides word count tracking, which is great for those with writing goals. And you can drag and drop scenes. This is very helpful when you realize that a scene really needed to happen earlier. You can drag and drop it, which is much easier than copying/pasting. You can even import a manuscript in, and it will split up the word file automatically into chapters/scenes.

The one downside to the software is that there is no grammar check and the spelling check only works if you download the additional plugin. Still, for a first draft (or for an editing round that you plan to follow up with a spell/grammar check in Word), it's great.