Simplifying Life for Writers
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This is not necessarily Asian American related, but it’s 44’s related since we have so many aspiring and seasoned writers on this board. I know of at least five veterans here who are either working on novels or are someday hoping to do fiction. I know a few published authors on this board as well.
I saw this article yesterday in the Washington Times that talks about a word processing program that replicates the old green and black screens of WordPerfect. What a brilliant idea! You can download those WriteRoom for Mac here ($24) or Darkroom for PC here (free. Edit: I just tried Darkroom on an older computer, and it’s not working. But the idea is still good.). God, I miss those days of WordPerfect. The thinking behind these new programs is absolutely correct; it’s easier to think when you take out all the clutter and just put green letters on a black screen. I myself own a computer which I purposely leave disconnected from the web in order to reduce clutter and distractions. But the MS Word layout still hurts my eyes, so I still yearn for the days of green on black.
Anyway, I hope to check out these programs sometime soon, once I’ve reduced the non-computer clutter in my life. For any aspiring or current Asian American/Asian Canadian writers out there, this may be the key to helping your text flow.
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Dialectic
5:19 pm | Mar 21, 2008I use the white text on blue background option in Word, and I find that works quite well to reduce eyestrain.
Also, for anyone who hasn’t thought about how to properly format a manuscript for publication, this is a great site:
http://www.shunn.net/format/novel.html
nightshade
5:26 pm | Mar 21, 2008Last time I tried to use Darkroom, it nearly killed my computer. Though I guess maybe I shouldn’t have been running Darkroom on a Mac.
Re: formatting manuscript. I don’t know if putting the running heads in is helpful if the manuscript is going in for copyediting. That’s the sort of thing that used to drive me crazy when I worked in publishing–I had to manually mark each one of those author/title heads on every page for deletion. I think it’s OK for submission to agents, but not for final manuscript that’s going to production.
jaehwan
1:41 am | Mar 22, 2008Formatting a manuscript? Man, you guys are WAY ahead of anything I’m doing these days. Guess I have some catching up to do.
I’m going to try that white on blue thing. The black Word background isn’t the same as the black Wordperfect background; I think the black Word background actually glows. So maybe the blue will be easier on the eyes.