Comments on: Writing Files

By: The Little Things · So Hard to Let Go

The Little Things · So Hard to Let Go — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:41:47 +0000

[...] think I might have to let go of the major plot element I had planned to use in my book. I did the research I mentioned in an earlier post, and learned some facts that would make it difficult to construct the plot I had intended. [...]

By: Amy

Amy — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:24:39 +0000

Travis, so far I’ve never written any non-fiction that was similar to this process, but I’ve never done anything as ambitious as your textbook. Interesting. Bill, thanks. I’ll check those out right now, including whatever NaNoWriMo is.

By: Bill Brown

Bill Brown — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:18:34 +0000

I'm a Mac guy and I could rattle off ten suitable apps for you on that platform. For Windows, I don't know so much so I went to the NaNoWriMo forums as a good start. I found StoryBox a virtual clone of Scrivener for the Mac, which I like. Someone else recommended WriteWay Pro also.

By: Travis N

Travis N — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:11:07 +0000

It’s interesting how similar the process you describe for your fiction-writing (in particular the kinds of challenges you confront and how it feels like a mystery that you have to solve, to figure out a perfect way for everything to fit together) is to the process I’m constantly going through when working on a non-fiction paper or book/chapter. One of my big recent projects has been creating a physics textbook that presents material in a more historically-grounded way, and the idea all along has been to give the material the kind of coherence and drama that a good mystery story would have. So maybe that’s part of the reason your descriptions resonate so much. Or maybe it’s just that there really isn’t such a big difference between the *writing* of fiction and non-fiction (though obviously there are other differences).