Saturday, January 26, 2013

Five Rules For Becoming a Novelist

One of my Lifetime Resolutions is to become a published writer. To that end, I've decided to establish the following rules for myself:

5) Write only in LibreOffice in Liberation Sans font--the open source clone of Arial--set up under Styles and Formatting (F11) so that formatting can be set up once and for all and then forgotten. Any other setup just encourages yak shaving. And no LaTeX no matter what.

4) Save only with Version Control. There should never be multiple copies lying about. That only creates confusion.

3) Save everything to offsite backup. Never depend on any single machine or source. It will inevitably get lost or fail.

2) Never write in the first person. I cannot write in first person to save my life. Never again!

1) Write at least 1 page every day and once written, only edit--do not massively change what has been written. No matter what. Sick. Exhausted. Swamped with work. On Vacation. Trapped at the bottom of a well. I don't care. No excuses. You must write to be a writer.

Note: These are just for me. I'm not recommending them for anyone else.

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