1. Freedom of Speech I am grateful to live in a country where we can write and share our words without fear. These are the top ten countries that censor words and imprison or harass writers.
I am grateful for the writers and authors that I've met on line and face to face that join me on this journey. Check out 12 x 12, NF 4 NF, RhyPiBoMo, ReFoReMo, and PiBoIdMo, to name a few.
I am grateful for the amazing technology that enables us to snap a picture, record a sound, and share our work.
(Learned how to take slides from power point, make an imovie, add music and upload to YouTube to put in a blog post--this week.) I also love pen and paper to start a project.
If you write non-fiction, or find yourself using many resources to help you build 'background' for your fiction projects, you have the need to keep track of your sources. If you're anything like me, that probably once involved a handwritten bibliography, tons of messy notecards, and page after page of sources you printed out but have no idea where they came from. I should say, that used to be me.
EasyBib is an incredible resource that has completely changed the way I research my writing projects. I learned about it in my work as a Library Media Specialist. Fourth graders needed guidance in creating bibliographies and I was on the hunt for tools that would make the process easier and more efficient. In the process, I found a tool that I use extensively with students, but also in my own writing. EasyBib at its core is a simple bibliography generator. You plug in information and it spits out a properly formatted bibliography. EasyBib (basic) is available for free, and for a small fee you can unlock some additional features. For example, the citations created in the free version are in APA. If you need MLA, Chicago, etc. you have to upgrade to 'paid' version. To be honest, I've never paid for the additional services, but as I continue to learn more and more about the tools I am considering it. This review will give you an overview of the free tools and a brief look at some of the paid resources. I recommend creating a free account. With an account, you can create and save 'Projects.' These are your bibliography lists for each. There is no limit to the number of projects you can create with the free version.
When I am first in 'research' mode, I spend hours searching the internet. I can easily fall into what I call a 'rabbit hole.' An hour later I realize that I have read over a dozen articles, watched a myriad of videos, etc. and I have no idea what was useful or not. This is where EasyBib has made my life easier. I add any resources that I think might be valuable for me in the future. In this way, I can always return to the sources and delete them later if I don't want to keep it. One of the features about EasyBib that I love the most is that as you add new resources, it continues to alphabetize your list. Since this is internet researching, most of my sources at this point are URL's. I simply copy and paste these into the "Cite Source" section of the website and it usually figures out what type of source I am using. You can 'fine tune' the citation by adding author, site name, etc. if it does not glean that from the URL. The few seconds this will take will pay off later on when you need to access the source again to check your information.
To me, the real power of EasyBib is the variety of sources that you can create. There are 59 options for sources, from advertisement to a website.
Rather than recreate a basic tutorial on the program, I found several online that do a fantastic job. Here is a quick introduction:
EasyBib also has an app that you can use to scan the barcode of any book and it automatically creates an annotation for you and drops it into your project. I have this on my phone and iPad and it was super helpful on my last research trip to the Newberry Library. Here is a quick overview of how to do this:
I recently learned that EasyBib has an 'add on' to Google Drive that allows you to work seamlessly within the Google Docs environment. I've started using Google Drive Docs to brainstorm and even create drafts of writing projects, but I've not yet begun using this add on. It looks like another way be even more efficient in my research and note taking. I may use this instead of the pricey add ons that you can access through EasyBib. Here is a tutorial on how to get and use the add on.
If you find yourself loving Easybib and have extra funds laying around, you might want to go ahead and sign up for a subscription; it's only $20 for a full year. The perks are pretty cool: the virtual notecards and dynamic outlining are tremendously useful; I've just found other tools (Google Docs and many free add ons) to do the same job for free.
I wrote a post late last year about how EasyBib fits into my research process. You can read more about that HERE.
So, there you go. Get started on that research and save yourself a great deal of grief and frustration by documenting as you go. I would love to hear about your experience with this tool in the comments section below. What do you love about it? What do you wish it could do that it doesn't? What tool do you use to keep track of your sources?
Last week I posted about Story Toolz from author Chuck Heintzelman This week, I am going to share with you an interview I recently did with Chuck. Chuck Heintzelman lives in Spokane, WA with his beautiful wife and
three children. Each day he juggles his passion for writing with his
family, a full-time job as a computer programmer, and the inevitable
curve ball life seems to throw.
Find out more information about Chuck, free fiction, and more at http://StoryChuck.com
You'll see my questions are below in black and his answers are in blue.
What is your path to publishing? How did you get to where you are now?
I’ve
always had the philosophy if you want to do something, just do it. Do
it yourself if needed. That’s what I did in the 1990’s when I created a
dot com and sold it. I didn’t start writing fiction until the mid 2000s
and followed the same path … just do it. I just wrote and when I thought
my writing was decent enough I started indie publishing.
You are a prolific writer! How many books have you published?
Hmm. About 15 titles, a combination of short stories, novellas, and story collections.
From
what I can see, it looks like you write for an older audience. Have
you ever written anything for children or young adults?
Sure.
In fact I have a YA story coming out in an anthology next year titled
“Sparks” (put out my WMG Publishing). Several of my books can be
considered YA or Middle grade. “The Train Bandits” features a pre-teen
protagonist back in the wild west days. The main character in “Freshly
Ghost” is seventeen years old.
I
see that you publish with Kydala Enterprises. Can you share your
thoughts about going with this publisher? How did you make your
decision?
The
Kydala Enterprises publisher is me :) When I decided to indie publish
my fiction I created a company to do it. Right now I’m working on print
versions of my books, but what I really need to do is finish my dang web
site for Kydala. It’s funny, because I’m a software developer so you
might think that all the techie, web stuff would be taken care of … but
nope. I find web page creation incredibly boring and procrastinate more
than I should.
What are you writing about next?
I
am working on a non-fiction programming book due out Spring 2014 after
that I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a series structured like
a television program. Several “seasons”, each with six to ten
“episodes” which readers can sample to see if they enjoy before moving
on to the next episode or the entire series.
Story Toolz is a very interesting resource. What was your inspiration for the tools?
My
first inspiration was Holly Lisle and some of her idea generation
thoughts. Then I needed a word count meter to track my own projects so
created those. The other tools sort of evolved along the way.
Do you have a favorite tool from the ones available on Story Toolz?
The
half-title generator is my favorite. I use it almost weekly just to
practice writing new openings. That idea came from Dean Wesley Smith and
how he writes many novels and short stories. He puts two halves of two
different titles together and BAM … he’s off and writing something new.
Do you have any other Toolz you hope to create?
None are planned, but I do want to update the site and give it more of the Windows Metro feel.
Where do you turn, besides Story Toolz, for inspiration?
Life. Inspiration is everywhere.
What should I have asked you about, but I didn't?
Wow.
That’s a tough one. You should have asked what my biggest regret is
with writing. Mine is that I didn’t start sooner. See, I kind of played
around writing in the mid-90s and found it was fun, but I had this
strange notion that writers emerge from the womb fully formed, ready to
start churning out novel after novel. So I played around a bit with my
writing and didn’t start to focus until the mid-2000s. It wasn’t until
three years ago I finally decided to get serious. I wish I would have
jumped in with both feet back when I first had the notion writing was
something I’d enjoy.
Chuck, thank you so much for sharing with us some background on both your writing process and the tools you've used to help us be better writers!
This week, we are going to take a look at tool that is a simple, but very exciting set of resources for authors of all ages. The site was created by Chuck Heintzelman. The first thing you'll notice about the tools is the simple interface. You can see below that there are seven separate tools. (click on any image to enlarge.)
The first tool is the the Story Idea Generator. This tool is quite a bit different than any other story idea resource I have worked with. It generates three random conflicts for you.
If you don't like the conflicts that pop up, just hit: Generate New Conflicts. I was curious as to where these conflicts come from and when I clicked on the concept tab, I was given some really cool background.
I'm not sure if you can read the text there, but it says the conflicts come from the Internet Public Library's list of 7, 20 and 36 plots; these conflicts are "...generic enough that you must supply your own details." Chuck also shares Holly Lisle's classes that expand on these ideas.
The second tool is the Random Conflicts Tool. It does just what it says, it generates random conflicts. I was intrigued by his 'How to Use This Tool' notes:
Word Count Meters are simple, effective ways to track the writing on a particular project. If you are writing a chapter book, or novel, you can use one of these tools to share and track how much you have written. I could see this being used on a writer's web page or blog to update his or her readers.
The readability tool analyzes your writing and gives you very specific details about your prose. If you register (free) with the site, you can load as much as 50 KB of data. If you choose to not register, the limit is 5 KB. I entered some of the text from a recent blog entry that I completed. When I did, I was presented with the following resources regarding my text:
I'm not very familiar with text analysis, but the detail in this free tool seems impressive.
Next, let's look at the Half Title Generator. As Chuck says in the about tab: "The title is used as a starting point for his story creation. It may change
over the course of creating the story, but it's the seed that started the
process.
I compiled every nomination from the Hugo
Awards and the Bram Stoker Awards.
I cut the titles of each nominated work in half and used that as the data to
power this generator."
What I really like about this particular tool is that you choose 'halves' of stories and then the generator combines them in interesting ways. It then presents them to you in the pink window and you can 'eliminate' those you don't like. What a cool way of pushing yourself to think differently!
The last tool is called Cliche Buster. Chuck describes the function of this tool:
There you go. A simple, free and very unique set of tools to either jump start your creativity or to bust any writer's block you might be experiencing. To top all that off, there are some extra tools that will help you analyze and evaluate your text too. I hope that you will find these tools useful. Would love to hear how you think you might use them in the comments section.
Next week we will have an interview with the creator of Story Toolz, who himself is an avid writer.
