Today's Backup Reminder Brought to you by One-Care

Do you back up your computer? I'm amazed by the number of people I know who don't. I hear horror stories all the time from friends who have lost everything when their computers crashed.

Mine just did, last week, apparently caused by some One-Care glitch that screwed up the whole thing. At first, I couldn't get on the Internet. I couldn't access Control Panel. Then I couldn't log onto the computer at all except in Safe-Mode, and then only for a few minutes before the computer shut off.

The fix was relatively simple, although a little scary. My computer hard drive was wiped out and the operating system re-installed. It's working great now, and I'm breathing again thanks to the successful return of all my files. Thousands of pictures and all my articles, stories and novels-in-progress are all safe and sound.

Are yours?

Back up often. Back up now.

Quick Tip: Team Up to Reach Your Goals

The beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it not only challenges you to reach a difficult writing goal (1667 words per day), but it helps you be accountable for that goal with its forums, word counters and support. But November is over all too quickly (especially if you're behind on that word count!) and then all that great stuff is NaNo more.

The solution? Find a new support team.

InkyGirl invites you to join her in The 1000 Words/Day Challenge in 2010, or one of the lesser-word count challenges (500 or 250 words a day). Her goal is simple: to inspire writers to write.

Heather Wright at The Wright Words wants to Fill the NaNo Void too.  She has a simple way to help keep you motivated in sticking to your personal writing goal.

Quick Tip: Dialogue Tags

One thing that drives me crazy about children's books is how often they use the word "exclaimed." The other is that no one ever "says" anything. If they aren't exclaiming it, they're shouting it, or whispering it, whining it, declaring it, stating it, demanding it, groaning it or--my personal pet peeve--smiling it. (How the heck do you smile dialogue?)

The bigger problem is that we start off reading books like this, and sometimes those dialogue tags continue into our adult writing. Simple is better.

The point of dialogue tags (he said, she asked) is to make it clear who is speaking. It's not so we know how the character says something. That's what strong dialogue and actions are for. So use said and asked only, or nothing at all. Don't use a tag if you don't need one--slip in a beat (bit of action that will tell us about your character more than the dialogue tag will) instead. The dialogue should be able to stand up on its own, and if it can't, it's the dialogue and not the tag that needs editing.

When you go through your novel, give yourself $2 in quarters. Every time you come across a dialogue tag besides said or asked, or find a qualified said (said stiffly, said angrily) take away a quarter. Do you still have a few quarters left when you get to the end? If not, go back and beef up your dialogue and make sure that you can justify each of those fancy tags.

Quick Tips: Find and Edit

Find and Replace is a handy little feature in Word, one that comes in especially handy when you decide to change a character's name halfway through a novel. It's also one of my favourite editing tools, because I can use it to eliminate unnecessary adverbs, remove at least a dozen or two usages of the word "just," and find out whether somebody is right and I really do start too many sentences with the word "And." And yes, I probably do.

You'll find the Find feature on the right-hand side of the Home tab in Word 2007. Click on it, type in the word you're looking for, and click on "Find Next" if you'd like to go through each instance. You probably knew that already.

Try this though: Click on Find and then type a word. Let's use "just," because, unfortunately, it's one of my bad habits. Now click on Reading Highlight and then Highlight All. Yup, there's the bad news. Word highlighted 193 instances of the word "just" in the 44,008 words in my NaNoWriMo piece. And no, I'm  not deleting any of them yet. That would be editing, which I am not doing until at least December, plus it would lower my word count by 193. Time is short. Instead I might throw in a few more "justs" just (oops) to get my count higher.

Want to see how many times you've started a sentence with "and?" Click on Find, and then type in "And"--with the upper-case A. Now click on More, and tick the Match Case box. Click on Reading Highlight and Highlight All . . . 133 sentences for me. Wow.

You can also use the feature to find out how many "ly" adverbs you've used in a piece. Type in "ly" into the Find box. Or you can use it to find any other overly used word--really, very, etc. to see if you have a bad habit to worry about. One or two instances is probably no big deal. 747 . . . Time for some serious editing.

Now you can hit the Find Next button and decide on a case-by-case basis if you are going to keep the over-used word, of if you can use a stronger word instead.

Quick Tip: Write from Beginning to End

There are four types of writers, I think.

1. Dash Drafter dashes off a first draft of a novel in 30 days (You knew there'd be a NaNoWriMo reference in here, didn't you?), checks it over for typos, and considers it done. It's painful to read.
   
2. E.D. Itor is at the other end of the spectrum. This one writes the first scene in 30 days, stopping and rewriting till every freaking word is absolutely perfect. It's painful to watch.
   
3. Author Interruptus never makes it to the finish line. Maybe he starts off like Dash but runs out of steam, or edits himself to death and never makes it past the first scene.
4. The fourth writer, we'll call the Published Author, and that's who we all aspire to be. This author is part Dash and Part E.D. Itor--he gets to the finish line, but then realizes the work has only begun.

I was inspired a couple years ago by a blog post I read on Murderati, written by Tess Gerritsen. A smart person would have bookmarked that post; unfortunately, I did not and now I can't find it despite my strong Google skills. She wrote about how she writes: from beginning to end, no matter what changes in the storyline. If she decided to change a character's name, she made a note of it and moved on. If she decided to get rid of a character, she made a note of it and moved on. When she edited her first draft, then she worried about all those pesky details.

I'm using her technique to get to the finish line of NaNoWriMo. I'm hoping that with my natural E.D. Itor tendencies, I'll eventually be able to chisel a finished novel out of the process.

Joely Sue Burhart has some other great tips for hitting the NaNoWriMo finish line--and, of course, like Tess Gerritsen's method of writing, these tips can help you get to the end of your novel whether you're doing NaNoWriMo or not.

So what type of writer are you?

Quick Tip: Search and Highlight in Word

On Monday (okay, it was Tuesday--my Internet was down on Monday), I shared some common editing foibles, including the use of words such as "just," "usually" and "very." Here's a quick Word tip to help you see if you have a problem with overusing these types of words:

1. Click on Find. (In Word 2007, this is located at the very right of your Home tab).
2. Enter the word or phrase you're looking for. 
3. Click on "Reading Highlight" (at the bottom of the Find and Replace box) and then "Highlight All" from the drop-down box. Word will highlight all the incidences of the chosen word AND tell you how many times you've used it.
4. Now you can use the "Find Next" button to move to find and delete or replace the overused word.

This technique works well with finding adverbs too. Type LY in the Find box, and then go through your adverbs and decide which ones you can delete or replace.

Quick Tip: Brainstorming

The other day, a couple of my freelance writing friends and I got together online to brainstorm ideas and markets. I brought two ideas to the table and left with a pageful of notes, mostly spins on those same two ideas and potential markets for them.

Why not do the same with your fiction writing? Try getting together online, by phone or in person with a friend or two and brainstorm new story ideas, plot twists or solutions to problems.

Quick Tip: Do Less

I've been running on fumes lately and have had a tough time getting motivated. So, this morning, instead of trying to get anything done, I met some writing friends for breakfast, and then headed off to my daughter's school for an absolutely fabulous Thanksgiving feast. Filled with turkey, stuffing, the best potato salad I've ever tasted and a decadent eclair, I returned home to, well, do nothing. I read a bit, played Snakes & Ladders with my youngest son, knit a few rows (I picked up a knitting project again after bragging the other day that I do nothing but write. Guess I'll have to rewrite that post now!) ... In other words, I relaxed. Not something I do nearly enough of.

And now ... I feel refreshed and ready to tackle the next batch of queries, the rejection in the inbox and the rush article that's waiting on my desk, not to mention preparations for our big Thanksgiving feast, complete with the typical ridiculous assortment of desserts. Sometimes by doing less, we find the energy and motivation to do more.

Friday Quick Tip: Google Reader

The blogs I list to the right are not the only blogs I follow, they're just some of the best ones--the ones that offer good information and advice on a regular basis. Others only have new posts once in a while (but those posts are worth the wait), some only have relevant (to me) information occasionally, some are friend's blogs, and so on.

I don't have a lot of time, and I definitely don't have time to waste sifting through blogs to see if there's any new information on them. Which is where Google Reader comes in.

If you're looking for a technical explanation of what Google Reader is, well, you're in the wrong place. Basically, Google Reader provides you with a list of new posts for the blogs you subscribe to. Then you can quickly skim through the posts, label the ones you want to easily find again, and discard the rest.

You can also receive news feeds from your favourite news sites in the same fashion. Just look for the "RSS Feed" button or a "subscribe to" link. You'll then be able to choose which feeder you want to subscribe with, and you're done.

You can even add Google Reader to your iGoogle page, making it faster and simpler to keep up with your favourite blogs.

If you're not yet sold, take a tour of Google Reader and try it out. And for more information about RSS, check out the What is RSS? RSS Explained site.