Since my last Stupid Writer Tricks column about casting your characters with Hollywood actors proved so unpopular with — well, everybody, I’m hoping this one will be a little less controversial.
It’s very simple: make sure you have the right tools for the trade.
What are the right tools for the trade of writing? Well, obviously they differ from writer to writer. Some prefer to write longhand with ballpoint pens. Some prefer to bang their literary masterpieces out on a PC in their basement office. Here are a couple of items that have proven indispensible for me.
- Desktop search program. If you’re writing a novel, you know that there’s a lot to keep track of. Characters’ names, distinguishing features, personal histories. What the butler was really doing at 2:36 AM when everyone suspected he was stabbing the haughty Lord Higginbotham in the chest with a silver dagger. You need to have quick access to all of the details of your book so you don’t get bogged down trying to find them when they’re needed.The native searching tool that comes with Microsoft Windows sucks, plain and simple. You need to download one of the free desktop searching tools out there that will put all of the details you need at your fingertips. Personally I recommend the Copernic Desktop Search, which has the advantage of a search-as-you-type feature. By the time you’ve finished typing “Lord Higginbotham dagger,” you’ll have all of the documents you need at your disposal; you can even preview them with Copernic’s built-in preview window.Copernic’s only one of many similar products. There are also good desktop search programs out there from Google, Yahoo!, X1, and, believe it or not, Microsoft. (And if I hear just one of you whine about how I wouldn’t have this problem if I used Mac OSX or Linux, I’m gonna hunt you down in cold blood.)
- A CD or DVD-ROM dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia. I bought Microsoft’s Encarta all-in-one reference way back in 2000 when I first started Infoquake, and even though it’s a few years out of date, it’s still my most valuable tool. If I’m uncertain how to spell “sartorial” or need a good synonym for “cryptic” or need to know what the 42nd element is (anyone? anyone? it’s Molybdenum), it’s no more than an Alt-Tab away. I don’t even have to lift my fingers from the keyboard.Why bother with a lousy ol’ disc when you can have the latest information from Google or Wikipedia? you may ask. Because if you’ve got a DVD in hand, you don’t need to worry about connecting to the web with all its infinite distractions. Every time I go to Wikipedia, I find myself drifting off into tangential subjects and finally look up to a darkened room after having wasted hours reading about the influence of Rick Springfield on ’80s pop-rock. Keep that WiFi off and stay focused on your work.
- A cheap, dependable laser printer. I don’t care how focused you are on writing and revising online; there comes a point when you’re going to need to print out your stuff and see what it looks like in black and white. These days, a brand-spanking-new 20-pages-per-minute laser printer can be had for as little as $50 online. There’s little point messing with inkjets anymore; unless you’ve got other, non-writerly projects that require color printing, it’s just too simple and too cheap to go laser. Personally, I’ve been very pleased with my Brother HL-5140, but it goes without saying that there are a million different brands out there.
- A thumb drive. Writers used to worry about losing their work. Nikolai Gogol and Ralph Ellison are only two of the many writers who lost their only copies of major works to house fires. You don’t need to worry about that anymore; not if you buy a thumb drive. It doesn’t take much storage space to hold every Word document you’re ever likely to type. Fifty bucks will get you a 1 GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive that you can put on your keychain. Pop that sucker in at the end of your writing session, back up your shit, and off you go.Worried about security? Unless you’re J.K. Rowling or George R.R. Martin, I wouldn’t worry too much. MS Word password protection will probably do just fine in most cases, and there’s plenty of free encryption software out there if you’re paranoid. Just don’t store personal information like banking records and credit card numbers on there, and you’ll be fine.But how’s that going to prevent me from losing my work if I lose my thumb drive? you might be asking. Good point. That’s why you should also…
- Sign up for online storage. Personally I use Yahoo’s Briefcase, which gives you 30 MB of free online storage space. 30 MB might not seem like a lot of space, but considering the fact that you can store an entire draft of a novel in a zip file that’s only a few hundred kilobytes, 30 MB should be plenty. Alternatively, you could FTP files up to your web space, if you have web space.If you back up your work regularly to your thumb drive and to your online storage space — and print things out occasionally for good measure — you can put all those worries about losing your work behind you.
- A good PDA for jotting down notes. Many is the time when I’ve found myself sitting in a dull meeting when suddenly a vital story idea comes to me. If you’ve got a handy PDA — or a cell phone that’s got a good note-jotting feature — then you can be assured that these snippets of thought won’t just float away, never to be found again.
So those are the practical tools I use to help me stay focused on the writing. What do you use? Anything I’m missing?