Using Livescribe for a Year

The Livescribe 3 has its annoyances but overall I'm still happier to use it than not. But if I were buying a new smartpen now, I'd probably buy a Neo N2.

A year ago, I bought a Livescribe 3. It costs $150 and requires special paper (which you can print yourself, if you don't want to buy a pretty Moleskine or other notebook), so it's not just a simple impulse buy sort of gadget.

Several folks have asked me what I think of it. It's a little complicated, so I've decided to write up my thoughts in one place, here on my blog.

Cons

First off, you should be warned that there are several MAJOR caveats in my Livescribe recommendation:

• The older, non-smartphone-only pens, have a little LCD screen that dies every 2 years, according to user reports on their support site. (Despite this, some of those users say they just buy a new one every 2 years. Crazy.)
• Speaking of their support site, no one has replied to posts their in 7 months (as of today).
• Two things the OCR does not handle well: separating paragraphs, respecting indents, and crossing out mistakes. (Three things. I'll come in again.)
• Their software looks like it was designed by Big Corp. Meaning, it works, mostly, but its usability is not that slick. Some tasks have more steps than they really need to have. Sometimes you have to "turn it off and back on again" before it actually works.
• Every once in a blue moon (ie, months will go by just fine), the software just flat out refuses to do its OCR magic on a paragraph or two. Tech support is stumped as to why this is, so I just had to manually transcribe those couple paragraphs.
• It's a tad bit bulky, although just this side of doesn't-get-in-my-way.
• Its ink cartridges, while not totally proprietary, are a little hard to find. I've ended up ordering mine (including red, green, and blue inks!) off Amazon and it shipped from Japan in a couple days. :P

Pros

Now, why do I like it so much if it's got these significant drawbacks?

• It's a fun tech toy. ;)
• The OCR works amazingly well, maybe 90-95% accurate. (It even understood most of my husband's messy handwriting!) I always proofread what it generates, but usually I only have to clean up the equivalent of a typo here, a typo there.
• Because its output is "just text", I can email that output to a computer script that then does all sorts of magic to it. (Eg, I wrote a program that guesses where paragraph breaks are, turns *asterisks* into italics, looks for custom syntax like "#Flickr: foo" and inserts HTML that displays & links to my Flickr photos, etc. Or, if the text starts with #NaNoWriMo, it processes it slightly differently, then hands it off to a different program that sticks the text in my Google Docs while updating a Google Spreadsheet & the official NaNoWriMo word counts.)
• I really, really hate transcribing. I don't mind proofing, but I hate transcribing.
• I love, love, love how it enables writing in the dark. When I'm working on a piece of fiction, it seems that my brain always comes up with an extra scene or two while I'm trying to fall asleep. I used to lose these scenes, or scribble notes that I'd then dread to transcribe the next morning. With the Livescribe's OCR, it's just as easy to transcribe neat daytime writing as messy nighttime scribbling. For example, the last short story that I wrote, 80% of it was done in the dark when I should have been sleeping. Because of my aforementioned scripts, I was even able to know what my updated word count was while still lying in bed. :)
• When I do have problems every so often, their email-based support staff has always gotten back to me within a couple business days.

Alternatives

Livescribe isn't the only "smartpen" on the market. It's the only one I've used, but I did do a little bit of searching around to see what the competition was like:

• The Neo Smartpen, which sounds like a direct competitor to Livescribe. It's $170, so right around the same price point. It looks slimmer, thus less crampy to write with. It also lets you print your own paper. And several Amazon reviews by previous Livescribe 3 owners unanimously prefer the Neo N2. If I'd known about it (and/or if it had been out when I was looking), I would have strongly considered it instead.
• There is an entirely different design of smartpen, which lets you write on any paper you want, but requires you to clip a sensor to the top of the paper. But my research turned up lots of users complaining that if anything got in between the sensor and the pen, it could get distorted and confused. So I wouldn't recommend that other design, although feel free to do your own research. ;)

If you're still interested in getting a Livescribe after all that, here's my referral link: http://mbsy.co/livescribe/18611326 ;)

No More NaNoWriMo

I've done NaNoWriMo for six years now. Unfortunately, I think this year's now-aborted attempt will be my last.

First, I am never into my stories enough to see them through. That's a major contributor.

Worse, though, is the toll that NaNo takes on my relationship with my husband. Even though I'm a fast typist, I am a super slow writer, so I use every non-work moment to write during November. That means I stay out writing until midnight, come home and crash, and repeat 30 times. Or else I go straight home after work but hide out away from him, writing by myself. Either way, we don't really interact when I'm doing NaNo.

It would be different if I had six novels to show for it. But I don't. I have one zeroth-draft from the single time I "won" NaNo, five drafts at various stages of "completion," and no real desire to go back and spent the time and effort to work on any of them.

This doesn't mean I'll never try writing novels again. I look longingly enough at published books and have story ideas wander into my brain often enough that I'll try it again, under less time-crunch-iness. But I don't think that the format of NaNo is working for me — no matter how much fun the community spirit is, unfortunately. I'll miss the camaraderie and the zaniness, but overall it's just fitting into my life anymore. :(

Honeymoon Posts on Hold Until December

Your (not-so-)regularly scheduled honeymoon roadtrip entries have been put on hold for the month of November due to my annual participation in NaNoWriMo. If you want, you can follow my word count progress on the official site.

See y'all in December! ;)

Mid-Month NaNoWriMo Update

I should be writing my NaNoWriMo story right now, but I need to take a little break.

I was sick on Thursday and Friday. That could have been a perfect time to get some extra words in, but instead all I did was lie in bed, alternately sleeping and watching movies. Many movies: Notting Hill, The Ugly Truth, Proof of Life, Greenfingers, Robin Hood (2010), half of Australia (skipped the beginning), and When Harry Met Sally. Stay away from The Beguiled and Mr Fix It, both of which I abandoned after the first 10-20 minutes.

Yesterday was the "halfway" NaNoWriMo party at the Hugo House in Seattle, where ~50 of us gathered to write and chat for most of the day. I got up to 18k words by the end of the day.

Today, I'm currently at 20k. I still need another 3k to be on track, so I'll probably go to bed tonight a little behind, but that's much better than the 6k I was behind for a while. I'm taking a break now, despite needing more worlds, because I rewarded myself at 20k with a lemon bar and a hot chocolate and now I have a food coma. :)

In my story, I keep forgetting about one minor character or another, so they jump back into the story at random points after having been out of the story for many scenes. Oops. That's what December is for, right?

My characters have decided to take the king's second son -- still a baby -- to another kingdom. Unexpected, but it makes a certain amount of sense within the story. And now the goddess of life is going to claim the baby as one of her Chosen: also very unexpected. That's going to put a kink in their plans, for sure. Not to mention when the assassin gets captured, (mistakenly) thinks the clairvoyant betrayed him, and intends to kill her when he espaces; meanwhile, the clairvoyant will have to take care of herself and the royal baby while attempting to rescue the assassin. Good times ahead.

I still have no idea how the story will end, especially not with these sudden plot points that have appeared unexpectedly. But that's actually one of my favorite parts of NaNo: the story and characters go off on their own, and the writer has to chase along behind them. Sometimes shouting, "What the hell do you mean by that??" :)

Alright, enough of a break. None of these words are counting toward my 23k that I need tonight. Back to the salt mines of NaNo I go!

Throwing in the NaNo Towel

You'd think that getting laid off would give me ample time to catch up on my NaNo writing. Alas, I've been focusing instead of hunting down lots of job leads. When I need a break from that, I really just need to get away from the computer entirely... so I join my friends playing Left4Dead 2 (which just came out).

I'm really rather bummed about it, but it no longer looks realistic that I'll make 50k by the end of the month. I can feel inspired about the underdog fight for word count, but not the impossible fight. *sigh*

I hope Steve and Pavel make it!

Negative Words Per Hour

Oh noes, I just discovered that I had typed some notes into my story document rather than my notes document. I moved the words to where they belonged, but that means I just lost 300 words in the last hour of writing. Sad panda!

Racing Against Other Seattle Wrimos

I didn't make the substantial word count progress I was hoping for this weekend, so now I'm finally starting to worry about "winning" NaNo this year. :( I'm not giving up, though!

For short-term motivation, I'm using the list of Seattle participants, sorted by word count. I'm on the 14th page and steadily working my way up the list. Every couple minutes of writing, my word count becomes higher than the next person on the list and I'm a little bit closer to my goal.

The Five Isles

My island nation is becoming less and less Victorian all the time. It was the starting point of how I imagined the setting, but it's becoming its own society. I should probably stop referring to it as "Victorian" in any sense, since at this point the label is more misleading that helpful.

Let me demonstrate with the names of my islands. There are five:

1. Isle of Esperion
   • people are referred to as Esperi
   • furthest away from the rest of the isles and closest to whale migration paths; only island to have sea-worthy boats (the rest of the isles only sail the shallow water between them)
   • first settled; oldest ruling family but also least powerful; considered more "salt of the earth," at least in comparison with the other noble families
2. Isle of Cadhemar
   • people are referred to as Cadhemarians
   • abundant bogs (peat for fuel and fertilizer; bog iron) and clay (bricks, ceramics)
   • family has a reputation of being "snooty" compared to the other noble families; Here There Be Grammarians :P
3. Isle of Veranez
   • people are referred to as Veranese
   • peals (used as currency)
   • the king historically came from this family; especially bitter toward Moreinya's "recent" rise to power
4. Isle of Azerít
   • people are referred to as Azerians
   • education; this is where the best advisers, economists, administrators, architects, intellectuals, and artists come from
   • second sons often end up here for higher learning then bring knowledge back to their families
   • acute accent mark subject to change
5. Isle of Moreinya
   • people are referred to as Moreinyans
   • artificial island built over an especially volcanically active region; surplus geothermal energy makes this family very powerful (no pun intendend ;))
   • newest island and youngest noble family to gain control of an "island," such as it is; the king often comes from the Moreinya family

Name My Island Nation

I need some naming help now. In my setting, I have a collection of extremely isolated islands, subdivided into clusters. Each cluster is owned/ruled by one family and has been such for generations. Each cluster has one large island, where the capital city is, and a varying number of smaller islands, where the agriculture and other supporting industries happen.

Each cluster of islands, being ruled by one family, is named for that family. Right now, I have named the island cluster where my main character lives: Moreinya. (I'm intending that to be pronounced [moˈɹeinjə], for you folk who can read IPA.)

What I'd like is suggestions for the other island names. (And maybe a suggestion for a better term than "cluster," too. ;)) I'm thinking there are between 4 and 11 clusters, so the more name suggestions, the better.

I'm going with a vaguely Victorian flavor, so here are the first and last names I've used so far in the story: Miley, Claire, Annabel, Irene, Edith, Abigale, Lenore, Sarah; Miles, Isaac, Robert, Nicholas, Simon, Henry; Moreinya, Wessin, Feingeld.

Also cross-posted to the NaNoWriMo forums.

Kingly Rewards

A snippet of a scene near the end wanted itself written. It appears that Miley attracts the attention of the king, who grants her independent "personhood" after having lived years as property. But Miley is going to have a separate, much lower-ranking love interest. So the king is rewarding Miley for some service she did, rather than because he wants her.

The question is, what did Miley do to be A) noticed by the king and B) rewarded with the rare honor of personhood to an "unfamilied" individual, which is done through adoption into the king's own family?

Perhaps the man she was sold to, a lesser noble, was plotting something against the king and Miley was able to disrupt the plot? (How was she able to "defeat" a noble with far more resources than she?) Perhaps she saved the life of someone dear to the king? (How would she be in a position to do that? Was it the abused girl that she rescues? Why could Miley save this person but the king could not?) Any other ideas out there?

Update, 1 AM: I'm going with the "foils a plot against the king" route after talking it through with Jerry.

DIY Rubber Ducky... Sorta

Ducky Post-Its

The NaNoWriMo Seattle region's mascot is the duck. We identify each other in random cafés by rubby duckies on the tables. I brought mine with me to a write-in last night, but in my rush to catch my ride when I left, I forgot to put my ducky back in my bag!

I've sent a message to the guy who organized the write-in, hoping that he has my ducky. In the meantime, I've made myself some rubber ducky Post-It Notes (sticky side is the base of the ducky) so I can still be known to my fellow WriMos. :)

Momentum at Last

The Gauntlet. Down With Which I Have Thrown.

Gauntlet-Throwing

My word-count-behind-ness will not keep me down! I've written 800 words today, and that's on a lunch break. I have not even begun to write today! I'm going to a café after work, where I shall lay the smack-down on my word count. (Not catch up completely yet, though; I'm determined, not crazy.)

You heard me, sporadically-working progress bar! I'm throwing down the gauntlet!

This is like Week 1 for me, with a new story itching to get written. I'll probably lag behind in the typical Week 2 doldrums that have started afflicting my fellow WriMos. But if I can ride this momentum and hit, say, 3000 words for the next few days, I can be back on target by the Night of Writing Dangerously (aka the halfway point of NaNo).

Sanctuary Synopsis

For the first week of NaNo, I was coming up with some new angle, some new story, pretty much every day. I changed the title of my document more than once a day. When I finally came up with my current story idea, a title just came to me: Sanctuary. My document has kept this title since acquiring it on Sunday. It's clearly Meant To Be™.

So my main character is Miley, named such because her father wanted her to be a boy. When her baby brother Miles is born, her world is turned upside down. In a world where only 2 children are permitted per family, any "extra" children become property rather than people. Miley is "unfamilied" and sold to a brothel to repay a debt her father owes. She is strong-willed and disobedient, and will spend the rest of the story fighting back against those who believe that owning her means controlling her. She will carve out her own place in the world and find a way to become her own person again.

At least that's the planned story. Stay tuned; characters have a way of determining their own destiny if you let them get away with it. ;)

I Had a Dream

So what I'd written about NaNo so far? Throw it all out. I have a dream.

Or rather, I had a dream. Last night. Usually my dreams jump around in illogical ways and are rather odd. Last night, I dreamed consecutive scenes with plot, characters, conflict, the works. No ending, but that gives me room to explore. It feels almost like cheating, but I'm only stealing from myself.

I'm days behind from all the floundering and lost momentum. But I finally feel like I have something to write. Yay! :)

Maybe Like Groundhog Day

I still don't know what my NaNo story is about, 4000 words in. It currently wants to do a Groundhog Day thing, but without the narrator being consciously aware of the repeats and with there being some (sometimes significant) variation between the repeats. Again, I don't know if that's what this story really wants to be, but I'm trying to go with the flow here.

The narrator was going to be boring and just get out of bed, get ready for work, and head out. I was even about to type those words. Instead, the cat jumped underfoot as she was walking to the bathroom. She falls and breaks a wrist trying to catch herself. Now her whole day will be different. That's what she gets for planning a boring day in my story. ;)

NaNoWriMo Without a Plan

No plot no problem indeed. I had been intending on writing the sequel to last year's (as yet unrevised) NaNo fantasy story. But 3 days before NaNo, I threw that idea out the window in favor of following a crazy gimmick of an idea that has no characters, plot, or purpose yet. Such is the spirit of NaNo. :)

I want to try writing in second person. Well, it's really narrated in first person, but the narrator is addressing the story to the second person. So the two main characters' names are "I" and "you." But it's not like a Choose Your Own Adventure story. It's more like if you were reading someone's journal entries, but in present tense, as the events are happening. I may decide to abandon this unconventional format in a few days, but I'm curious enough that I want to see how it looks.

As I said, I have no characters, plot, goals, antagonists, obstacles, or anything. November 1st, I had this image in my head that "you and I" had just been left alone with an isolated mountain cabin, going on an off-grid vacation of sorts. "We" spent the day's word count unpacking, mostly.

On November 2nd (aka today), "we" jumped settings entirely and are disembarking from a plane in Mexico City. Maybe that cabin from yesterday is in the mountains of Mexico, not California? "We" could take the train there, perhaps.

But for now, I'm just letting "us" wander around and see where "we" end up. That's actually how last year's NaNo story wrote itself, and I was fairly happy with it. So it's not a guaranteed disaster, in any case. :P

Can I apply this post's 295 words toward today's word count? Pretty please?

Forrest, Interviews, & LoCoWriMo

Forrest is Back!

Well, back in cell phone contact with the rest of the world, anyway. I pick him up tomorrow at the airport; so excited! I haven't seen him in nearly a month now. He says he had a good time, but I haven't heard all the interesting details of his trip yet.

Interviews

Last week, I did an in-person interview with Jerry's team at Amazon, another in-person interview with a startup in Seattle, and a phone screen with Google. I never know how to judge whether the interviews went well; my feelings about them don't seem to correlate well with offer vs no-offer. So I'm hoping for the best but expecting the worst.

Amazon is having its team debrief meeting late this afternoon, so I should hear back from them by end of week. The startup is finishing up its interviews of all its scheduled candidate interviews today as well — two days ago I was still on their "short list" of picks. I should hear back from them, one way or another, soon too.

And I finally passed Google's phone screen! (I had done a phone interview just before graduating college, and they weren't interesting in moving forward then.) I have an in-person interview with Google this Friday. I should probably get over my "not good enough for Google" feelings if I want to do well on their interview, eh? ;)

LoCoWriMo

Finally, you may have noticed a new progress bar in my blog's sidebar, just above my "NaNoWriMo participant" badge.

In addition to November's NaNoWriMo, where a bunch of ambitious/crazy internet folk try to write a 50,000-word novel(la) in a month, I'm also doing LoCoWriMo, where a bunch of ambitious/crazy conlanger folk try to write an original story completely in their respective conlangs in a month.

Because each person's conlang is at different levels of development and completeness, we each have a personalized word count goal. I timed myself at around 100 words per hours in Asha'ille, so my goal for October is 6000 words. If it turns out that, with practice, I start writing significantly faster, then I'll increase my word count goal.

At the stroke of midnight, I'm going to write as much as I can. That should give me some "buffer" slack-off time for the first couple days that Forrest is back in town.

Track my progress with the progress bar! :)

Plan for Finishing My Novel

Write Missing Scenes

1. Make a list of missing scenes. (Luckily, I already have easy-to-spot placeholders throughout the document, so this step should be pretty mechanical.)
2. Calculate how long it should take me to write these scenes. Set goals.
3. Write the scenes! Same "quality" bar as for NaNo; just get the remaining scenes written.

Track Characters

4. Annotate the document with where characters appear in the scenes.
5. Evaluate this character-appearances list: Who just disappears after chapter 4? Who randomly appears in chapter 8 as a major character (eg, the real antagonist; oops!) Decide whether to cut a character, combine multiple characters, or give a character a larger role so that their removal is unnecessary.
6. Make a list of "missed opportunities" that I might want to work into the story. (For example, no one important ever wrestles with whether to Sacrifice themselves. There's potential for good conflict/drama there, but the plot would have to be altered for it to be necessary.)
7. Make a list of scenes to add, modify, cut, or move.

Let both lists stew while going through the next two phases...

Research and World-Building

8. Read books about relevant Earth history: guilds, non-monarchy governments, coups (successful or not), dictators (especially their motivations), etc. Take notes.
9. Outline my territory's history, based on research. (How did they end up with their semi-representative High Council system of government? What have flesh/spirit relations been like before the current Guild system? What are the neighboring territories, and how have they influenced this territory's history and culture? Etc.)
10. Write character bios (including basic ones for "scenery" characters).

Practice Writing

(done concurrently with the researching step above)

11. Read books on writing. Take notes.
12. Do writing exercises (not on my NaNo story, though).
13. Critique other people's writing to practice what to look for in my own writing.
14. Read other authors. Note how they handle characterization, magic (especially mental battles, which I had trouble writing), government-taking-over intrigue, romantic subplots that aren't lame...

Refine Plot and Characters

15. While referring to the world-building notes and character bios, re-read the story and take notes about scenes and subplots to add or modify.
16. Write the scenes! At the end of the next step, I should feel ready for beta readers...

Revise Draft

Here there be beta readers! By the time I get to here, the plot and characters should actually be fleshed out the way I like. From this point on, I'll be working on the smaller parts of the story: word choice, tone, etc. I'll figure out in more detail what needs to be worked on once I get to here.

First Drafts

During November, "pep talk" emails are periodically sent out to Wrimos. Published authors wrote these pep talks, which was pretty cool. The post-NaNo one was written by Kelley Armstrong (whom, I must admit, I hadn't heard of), author of several fantasy novels. She had this to say to us unpublishing Wrimo winners:

What NaNoWriMo gave me was a quick and dirty first draft, and by the end of it, I could see that my book had some good stuff... and it had some serious problems and missed opportunities. ... If a multi-published author can’t expect to turn out a publishable first draft during NaNoWriMo, then neither should you. ... It’s a rare writer who publishes the first book they wrote — I didn’t — so practice is invaluable.

The "missed opportunities" part is so true! I am braving the waters of letting other Wrimos critique my steaming pile of— er, I mean, my rough draft. Just writing the synopsis for my story, I realized "omg, I should have done that to the character!" or "d'oh, of course I need to include this!" That's what revising is for, eh?

Finishing NaNo Today

I won!

Writing to you from the NaNo trenches: I have 47,285 words written right now. The 50,000 word finish line is in sight! I will be holed up at Peet's Coffee today until I cross it. I am going to win this year. Woohoo! :)

Update, 1:13 PM: I'm now at 48,325 words. 1.7k left to go!

Update, 5:37 PM: I did it! 50,000 words! I win! :D

Halfway Done with NaNo

I hit the halfway mark — 25,000 words — just one day behind schedule. Wootles! This is the most I've ever written for one story, so this is rather exciting for me. :)