As I’ve mentioned before, my main tool for writing is my iMac. I switched to an Apple computer, after many years of using Windows, in January 2013 and I haven’t looked back. I love my iMac. I’ve had fewer problems with it in the year and a half I’ve had it than I typically had with Windows machines in any given month. Before I got my iMac, I was already a lover of iPhones and iPads.

This past April, when Apple lowered the price and upgraded the processor on the MacBook Air, I got one. Of course my plan was to be able to write on both my iMac and my Macbook and seamlessly synch between the two. I also wanted to synch with my iDevices. Though I don’t write on them, I do look at files sometimes and read through drafts.

I had been using Microsoft Word/Office, but would have to buy another license for my notebook if I wanted to use it. But with the purchase of my latest iPhone and now my Macbook I had Apple’s Pages word processor on all of my devices for free. Since Pages synchs up using iCloud, my problem was solved.

I really wanted to like Pages and it’s not awful. If I were writing for any other purpose than publication, it would be great. Sadly, it just wasn’t a good fit for me. All the publishers require Word documents. While pages exports to Word files, there are almost always errors. They are usually minor—maybe an extra line or something, but they are there. That meant I had to write in Pages and then fix any formatting errors in Word. If I then found an editing error, I had to make the change in Pages, export to Word, and then fix the formatting errors again. If I didn’t, I ended up with multiple versions of documents, all with slightly different errors. That’s what happened.

I wrote three books using Pages, but finally I have had to buy another license for Office to use on my notebook. I thought about Office365, but Microsoft in their wisdom offers a license for 1 computer or a license for 5 computers. I can’t be the only one that uses a desktop/laptop combo and needs two!

So, I have two copies of Office now. How do I synch them? iCloud works pretty well, but until the next version of OSX, it’s difficult to use it with anything other than Apple’s own applications. Microsoft offers One Drive for Mac, but the interface is not smooth and using One Note, I have found that their synching isn’t the quickest. Finally there is Dropbox. Not only does it work faster than either iCloud or One Drive, but the Dropbox app for the iPad and iPhone allows you to view and print Office Files (and not Pages).

So as of today, I’ve got my writing arrangement all configured. Word on both computers. Dropbox to synch my files and view them on phone or tablet. And all my most up-to-date files organized and ready to go.

I’ve been reading a great deal of Indy books lately. Being an Indy author myself, I feel like I should help support others like me. I’ve read some very good work. I’ve also read some work that needs some help. Since I’m a teacher and taught English for some 15 of my 21 teaching years, I thought I would write a series of posts about some fundamentals of writing.

Now I’m not talking about typos. We see those all the time and it sucks when they pop up, but they do. I know the difference between there, they’re, and their, but sometimes in the heat of plotting out a story, I type the wrong one. Sometimes I write the same word twice, especially if I’ve stopped and then started writing later. Sometimes I simply misspell a word. The answer of course is proofreading. By the time I publish a book I’ve proofread it myself at least a dozen times. I also have at least one proofreader besides myself read through it for errors. Even so, some creep in. I try to read through my already published books at least once a year. Sometimes I find a typo that has persisted for a dozen passes. I also have a handful of loyal readers who let me know when they catch an error. I feel embarrassed, but grateful. And don’t even get me started about typos created during the editing process.  Sometimes I want to pull out my hair.  It’s not even that unusual to find a typo in a professionally edited, big publisher edition of a well-known author’s book. I see it all the time. So I’m not writing about those.

What I am going to write about is some general fundamental basics of writing. Upcoming posts will be about tense, point of view, figures of speech, characters, pacing, and whatever else I can think up. These posts will all be titled Writing Fundamentals, so watch for them in the coming days.

I missed it!  August 12th was the 6th anniversary of City of Amathar Blog.  I’ve been posting daily for the past six years, and I think I missed 2 days in that time.  Well, I’m onto my seventh year.  It’s been a blast so far.

I was looking at my writing log this morning and I declare a victory.  Since Jun 9, which was the first Monday of summer vacation, I have met my writing quota every day except one– the infamous Game Developer Tycoon episode.  I’m feeling pretty good about it too.

I don’t know about anyone else, but it’s hard to stay focused on writing for a long time, especially in the first half of a novel.  Once you reach that tipping point when you can see the downward slope to the end, it’s not so bad.  Still, writing 50,000 words or 125,000 words and trying to make it all fit into one continuous narration that makes some kind of point.  It’s pretty daunting.

So you take a victory when you can, and today I declare a victory.  I haven’t finished anything except about a month (minus one day) of meeting my goals.  Hooray for me.