Writing tools and writing writing tools :p

It’s something that has bugged me for a while – there just aren’t good writing tools around. Sure, you have Word or any of the other garden variety word processing software out there. But are any of those really targeted at writers? How easy is it to move scenes around? Or to see where the passive sentences are? Or where the adverbs are?

Sure Word allows you to cut and paste and it has a grammar checker which (not too accurately at times) points out the passive sentences. But it really doesn’t go much further beyond that. Some time ago, I started writing a writer’s editor called Amanuensis just for this reason. It had a treeview where you could navigate your individual chapters/scenes easily and even move the chapters around by simply dragging a node on the treeview to the desired location. It had timers to time how much work you’d done in this particular session and a word counter to keep track of the actual number of words you’d written. I actually got started on my first novel using Amanuensis. Then I switched over to using Word and Mind Manager and Amanuensis development came to a grinding halt :p

However, even while using Word, I’ve been really bugged about the actual lack of good writing aids in Word. I have looked around for plugins and add-ons which might help but what there is, seems to be commercial and a bit overpriced. I’ve been thinking about writing a couple of simple tools – an adverb highlighter, a commonly overused word highlighter etc. – for a while now but never got around to it. At least, not till yesterday 🙂 I finally decided to put some time towards getting a macro written and after a whole evening spent debugging the code, I had a working macro for highlighting adverbs. Of course, since the code simply highlights words ending in "ly" (this is how I’ve been doing it in Word till now – use Find/Replace to highlight all words ending in "ly") it ends up with quite a few false positives. So, I added an exclusion list and it all seemed to work fairly well. I have to change the code to include support for footers as well – it currently only works on the document body. And then, I intend to add highlighters for a few other word lists. Once it’s all done, I think I’ll release it so that others can benefit from it too 🙂

From the depths of the dungeon …

I finally managed to get a release of WriteTrack out yesterday :p This is the second beta release but except for one area, I feel much happier about this release than I did about the previous one. This one has a real-installer (not a self-extracting executable) and also has some rudimentary documentation and better overall GUI help in the form of tooltips. The one area that I’m not happy about is templates. The template feature itself is working now so that you can create a submission letter or a query letter based on a template and have it either e-mailed or printed out for multiple contacts in your WriteTrack database. What I don’t like is how the templates are created. I hadn’t given enough thought to the template entry screen and so the UI is not as easy to use as it could be. The good news is that that issue will be fixed by the time the next release rolls out 🙂

The next release of WriteTrack will probably be a non-beta and so that will probably mark the end of the development cycle on WriteTrack since I can’t think of any other features that I really want to add :p So, I’m thinking of getting back to work on Blog and finishing off all the little things which has contributed to this extraordinarily long delay in the release of Blog 8.0 … On the other hand, there is another completed app of mine which has never been released – PlotCraft. That one’s for collecting all your plot ideas together in one database. The app was completed a few months back but I still haven’t gotten around to releasing it. I need to write up documentation about it and I’ve kept on putting that off :p I’m also thinking about shifting to some sort of help file format (either HLP or CHM) for the documentation instead of the text files I currently use. The text files are so easy to update for me but aren’t so easy to cross-reference for the end user. Guess I’ll have to look into that …

Back at the helm

We were gone for a couple of days since we went to stay with my parents. It was the Haj festival (the second of the two Muslim festivals but I think mentioned that already in my last post :p) yesterday and we’d been staying with my parents since day-before-yesterday. Since we didn’t take our computers with us and since my parents don’t have any form of high-speed access anyway, we wouldn’t have been online. It was nice to get away from everything and to get back with family. Besides, my sister was there with her kids (we hadn’t seen one of the kids since she’d been born) and since we hardly ever get a chance to see the nieces, it was a double (or triple) pleasure 🙂 Of course, what with all the playing, the carrying around of kids and the general running around, I am sore all over and sorely aware of the fact that I need to exercise more :p

It was good to get away from things as well. We’ll actually be going back to my parents’ place again today since today’s the last of the three days I have off. My parents live only about 15 minutes away and so we could have come back home the last couple of days as well but my parents like us staying with them (I have no idea why :p) and so we figured we might as well do so for at least a day. Of course, tomorrow I have to get back to work on things and I guess figure out what I need to do now.

I did get some feedback about WriteTrack but I haven’t had the chance to do anything since we were away from the computers. I’ll probably finish that up first and then start thinking about what needs to be done with Blog and get back to that next … or something :p

Aimless Again

Now that I’ve got the site sort of working the way I want, I am aimless again :p There are plenty of things I really need to do – I need to finish work on WriteTrack and put that up for download, I *really* need to put out a new release of Blog, I should get working on my next novel and so on. But I just don’t feel as if I have the energy to do any of it. I’m taking a couple of days off due to the second of our (meaning Muslim :p) festivals tomorrow. I’m hoping that the time away from computers and work and all the other stuff that go into normal routine will help me recharge my batteries and get back into the thick of things.

WriteTrack is actually almost done. All the major work is over and I have one more section to add – the one for tracking income and expenses. Laurie has been trying to get some beta testers for it on a couple of writing lists that she’s on but we haven’t got that much of a response. There were a few people who downloaded it and one who actually provided some feedback. But then again, I guess one person with feedback is better than none :p

As for Blog, it’s actually ready for another beta release and has been for a while. I’ve been using it to post to WordPress for like the past year or more – I’ve just been kind of reluctant to release it since I know that there are a lot of areas that I personally don’t use which are going to prove to be troublesome. I don’t want somebody to jump in to the beta and then find that they have reduced functionality. So I should actually get off my butt and fix this stuff, right? That’s where the lethargy comes in :p But there are a few niggling things that I really want to fix and hopefully, I’ll get around to fixing those and doing another release after this little break …

And the winner is …

I was looking around for a mailing list/notification list script yesterday for a bit before I decided to customize one for my own use after all :p It seemed to be the easiest course of action since I couldn’t find even one that had all the features that I wanted. So I went to work, combined the code from two scripts that I liked and finally ended up with something which works (sort of) and is both secure enough and extensible enough for my tastes.

Of course, now that I had the mailing list software, I had to go ahead and use it :p That meant a further site update. The reason I’d needed a mailing list in the first place was because I wanted to provide the option to anybody who might be interested in my book(s) to be notified of any changes or events of note – such as the actual publication of the book :p (Not that I really know for certain that anybody is interested mind you … but there is always the off-chance that somebody is :p) So, I hastened to add a new page to the Books section of the site, add links, set up the mailing list subscription and so on and finally it all seems to be working. If you’re interested, you can go here and check it out yourself :p Don’t expect too many mails to come from that list but I’ll try to send out a mailing every time something of note happens … so whadda ya waiting for? Go on, sign up, you know you want to :p

Choices …

As you grow older, do you just get pickier or do you simply become more selective because of the lessons that experience has taught you? Or is it just two sides of the same coin? :p I realize that most of the time these days that I at least tend to want more out of software than most software offers. I want it to be simple, easy to use, safe and secure. Unfortunately, most of the stuff out there seems to be lacking in one department or another. One good example was my search for tagboard software recently. I couldn’t find one board which had all the features I wanted and had to end up trying to combine the code from two different boards which came fairly close. Of course, I got sidetracked by something else and that project kind of went into limbo :p

Now, I want a mailing list script. I looked around and while there are plenty of heavy-hitter scripts which will do the job fairly well, I didn’t want a heavy-hitter. I wanted something simple and easy. But do I find one? No :p Either the script has no admin interface at all or it has an admin interface but no protection – you have to go with directory password protection. Is it too much to ask that you have a well-secured script? I didn’t think so but then again, maybe I’m wrong.

So I again took two scripts and started to merge their features together. But then I realized that I’d probably end up spending another week on tweaking, modifying and getting things to work exactly right. Do I have that kind of time to waste? I wasn’t sure that I did. So I’m back to searching for a mailing list script :p Maybe I’ll go with a heavy-hitter after all but the problem there is that the scripts can get so cumbersome that if there is a script exploit, that I won’t know about it till it’s too late. Decisions, decisions … :p

Not on the right track …

I’ve been working on WriteTrack whenever I have a spare moment. In case you’re wondering, WriteTrack is this submission tracking program that I’ve been working on. When I first started submitting my novel to agents, I didn’t keep track of submissions at all. Then, when I started seeing the same agent listed on another website and couldn’t remember if I’d queried them or not, I began keeping track in an Excel spreadsheet. I wanted to write WriteTrack at that point but I was too busy with other stuff to actually get around to it.

Now that I’m becalmed again, waiting for an agent to get back to me, I thought I might as well get started on the project. Especially since this agent is really taking their time and it probably will end up in me looking for another agent after I finally hear back from them :p I’d looked at a few other submission tracking applications out there and while I liked some of them, none of them had all the features I wanted. I didn’t simply want a tool to track submissions I’d already made, I wanted a tool which would actually do the submissions for me as well. Doing the first part, tracking submissions that I’d already made, turned out to be rather easy and so I got that done and put the first beta of WriteTrack up for download – go on over to the Bits & Bytes page and get your copy if you’re interested 🙂

The next part, the one I really wanted, proved to be a bit tougher. Not only did I need a mail merge facility so that I can have a template which could be filled in with random bits of data such a agent details, book title, synopsis etc., I also needed a way for the user to select multiple contacts/agents from a list and then either mail them or e-mail them enmass. I haven’t even gotten around to the e-mail part though I’m hoping to use the default mailing app on the user computer and simply send all the information over to the mailing app via MAPI or something. What I’m stuck on at the moment is setting up a user-friendly mechanism to select multiple contacts :p Sure, you can do the whole CTRL+click or SHIFT+click thing but that is not intuitive. It would be much easier if the user had a list of contacts and they could check a box to indicate that they wanted to mail such and such a contact – but that’s proving to be harder than I thought with the approach I’m taking. Oh well, sooner or later I’ll crack it I guess …

The right time to write …

I’ve been meaning to write here again since my last entry … but never seem to find the time :p But then again, that seems to be a common complaint of mine recently. I’ve been thinking of getting to work on the novel that I started a while back thanks to Laurie but even that has been progressing in fits and starts. I’d never really thought of writing a novel before I met Laurie – all I really wanted to do were short stories because I didn’t think I could sustain the effort needed to produce a novel … mostly because I’m really impatient and want everything done now but also because my writing style changes from day to day and depending on what my mood is. But somewhere along the way (probably because I heard her talk about writing novels day in day out :p) I got started on a novel and suddenly I realized that by Jove, I could actually do it 🙂

Another incentive of course was the program that I’d started on for Laurie. She’d mentioned the need for a good writer’s text editor and I scoured the net for something which had all the features that both she and I needed and couldn’t find anything that had every feature we wanted. In fact, in most cases, we didn’t even come close. So I decided that I might as well go ahead and write my own :p So was born Amanuensis – which is still very much a work in progress – and I needed something to test Amanuensis with and since I tend to hate using junky test data, I actually decided to use the novel that I wanted to do as the test data 🙂

Anyway, the first rush of work (and testing on Amanuensis) got me up to around 20,000 words and I am pretty happy with that since I don’t think I’ve ever written that long a story before. But then I got stuck – as usual, I got sidetracked, Amanuensis was put aside and I went on to other things. Since then, I’ve come back to Amanuensis several times and made some major changes to the program for Laurie but I haven’t actually gotten back to writing on a daily (or even extended time period) basis. I do think about the story and add to the characters, dialog, events and so on but haven’t actually sat down to do any extensive writing. I feel that it’s time to do so … but have been finding that time is always the issue. Of course, if one wants to write, and I mean really write, I don’t think anything would stop you. So, I’m still probably making excuses for myself since I’m a lazy git :p But I’m closer to actually putting down words on paper again … so let’s see where it goes 🙂

Backtracking on those trackbacks …

No sooner had I converted my site over to use WP 1.5 (after making the earlier entry about planning to do so), I got hit by one of those bits of new trackback spam – ugh! My first reaction was that perhaps the new trackback and pingback blacklisting features that I’d added to WPBlacklist weren’t working anymore due to some change in WP 1.5 (I had actually done the work before WP 1.5 was released …). I had almost gotten my development stuff ready to debug the code when I thought to go back and check on the trackback spam I’d received. Turned out that they’d come up with yet another variation on "texas holdem" – in their case, it was texas hold’em -. My initial reaction was to simply add an entry to the blacklist for the new variation and go on but then I decided to check how many entries I had in the blacklist for just the word texas and I was amazed to discover that I had over 300 entries! So I decided to come up with a regular expression which would catch all variations of texas holdem and after a little mucking around, the final masterpiece was "texas.*?hold.*?em" :p

Of course, the above may identify some benign stuff as spam as well but for the moment, I don’t care – I will deal with it when it happens :p (Oh if anybody is going to comment on this entry, you’d better not use the words texas holdem :p) I then set about deleting all the individual blacklist items which would be replaced by the regular expression and discovered that I could remove 316 items! Of course, I don’t know how many (probably all) would come back when I next update from Jay Allen’s central list but for the moment, I am happy the way things are 🙂 And the icing on the cake was just as I got done deleting all those 316 items, a new e-mail comes in saying that a comment was automatically deleted by WPBlacklist. The offender? The self-same guy with that new variation on the dreaded texas poker theme – gotcha sucker!! :p If anybody is eagerly awaiting the new WPBlacklist, I am happy enough with the way it is working at the moment (and what better way to test than in a production environment? :p) and so just have to make the necessary documentation changes, pack it all up, update the WPBlacklist page and then upload it. I promise that I’ll do that sometime tonight 🙂

Pressing Updates

The next big release of WordPress, WP 1.5 code name Strayhorn, was released last week and unfortunately, they broke some of the stuff as far as plugins went 🙁 Since I use my own WPBlacklist plugin to safeguard against comment spam on this site, that meant that I couldn’t upgrade to WP 1.5 just yet. Of course, in the meantime, I’ve been getting inquiries about when I would fix WPBlacklist so that it would actually work with WP 1.5. I was planning to do all of this over the wekend but unfortunately, I got caught up in a different coding project – one involving C code and mingw32 … so lots of fun there :p – and so couldn’t do what I had originally planned to do – which was install WP 1.5 and get WPBlacklist working with it.

Yesterday, I finally decided to take the plunge and do the work even if I didn’t have enough time to work at it as I would have over a weekend. Of course, I didn’t install WP 1.5 on this site since I didn’t want to have to do without WPBlacklist in case I couldn’t get things working immediately – instead, I installed it on my development machine and I should say that the upgrade process went very smoothly. It wasn’t as painful as I’d thought it would be since they’d added a new template feature to WP in 1.5 and I had thought that I might have to redo the template for my site all over again. Actually, it wasn’t that hard at all. All I had to do was remove a few lines from my old template, replace a few lines and move it to a new location and I was done 🙂 The WPBlacklist changes weren’t that smooth though :p

Initially I was stumped because I wasn’t seeing errors where I was supposed to see errors – or at least, was expecting errors. So I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why I wasn’t seeing errors. Finally it turned out that the errors weren’t where I thought they would be :p In short, I spent a good hour running around in circles. Finally, once I got past that bit, I was able to make the code changes in a very short time and get things working. However, I am not too confident that I’ve caught all the little things that need to be fixed and so am taking another day to go through it all and to fix up the code, spruce up the documentation and so on. Then I’ll probably upgrade the site, install WPBlacklist here and see how it goes. If all goes well, then you should see the new plugin available for download in a couple of days – I promise 🙂