a freedom 0 writer.

[xcasex]

soon i discovered that this writing thing was true
Aaron Dembski-Bowden was the devil
Lorgar was an architect previous to his career as a prophet
all of a sudden, i found myself in love with the GrimDark
so there was only one thing that i could do
was ding a ding dang my mag into my boltgun.

nah, haha.
So, soon after my ex died, a full year after quitting my career, a full year since divorcing my wife.
I decided to start writing again, 14 years since i penned my last poem, ten years since my last spoken word rant, 7 years since my last song.

I'm aiming for the next BL "writer's wanted" announcement and am currently finishing up a contemporary book on the topic of how it was as a guy, growing up near substance abuse and other tripes in life.

Now like so many before me, the oft cited and memorable Mark Pilgrim, the Disney fetischist Corey Doctorow, I made the decision to use free software to do my bidding as a slave to the grammar.

Since most publishers demand the toxic sludge we call .doc files and to a lesser extent, pdf files which i abhorr like the biblical plague that it is, I took to using ReText on Ubuntu.
ReText supports markdown, markdown is a BFF from the days of punishing myself with Movable Type. Aside from being much like that Wendigo you wake up next to after a hard weekend of partying, its quite easy to make a conversion script that reformats the markdown text to pdf and doc.

Any other aspiring writers, ateurs or happy amateurs willing to share their experiences with writing or their favorite tools?

[sffvba[e0rt]

I haven't ever sat down and just wrote (as much as I wish I have). Years ago I used to play several PBEM free-style writing games that was able to keep the apatite in check...

Now it is simply to much other things keeping me from doing it :-/

Good luck with your undertakings.


404

[coldraven]

This must be the golden age for writers. Now you can publish to the world from your bedroom. You can find an old laptop at the dump, install some X/L/Ubuntu goodness on it, sit in a café all day for the price of one coffee and wi-fi your thoughts to all.
By comparison, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London

Keep well.

[xcasex]

not found:
To be utterly devoid of any excuse for a burduse behaviour in an explanation, oh and verbose!
Writing is a lot like being a dish washer at a pub, its a matter of manning the **** up, and get down and gritty.
Write, write, write, get it out. Then edit, edit, edit. :)

coldraven:
Agreed, but i have a different motivator, and i also do not aim at doing anything but finding a publisher, not a publisher/sales/marketing/whatevah. I aim to publish via my blog and its not something i imagine i'll be able to live off of. Being someone with a very active imagination and going off into tangents of "oh man that would be cool if(...)" I decided to be the signal, instead of being the noise.

Thanks both of you :)

[rai4shu2]

How about just good old leafpad? It's pretty close to what you were limited to a mere twenty years ago. Leave all that markup to publishers/editors/whatever.

[sffvba[e0rt]

I forget to mention that I would suggest installing Focus Writer from the software store...


404

[moodle]

I like pyroom - distraction free text editing software.

[Random_Dude]

Why not a maximized terminal with Vim running and using LaTeX?
You can write each chapter into a separate .tex file and then include all in one main file. It's distraction free and you can get a nice looking output.

Cheers