I love Scrivener. Despite an uneasy start to our relationship, its development of the last year or two transformed it into the mostly go-to, the slightly sticky bees-knees, and the stubbly dog’s bollocks. What’s that you say? I’m not 100% Scrivener?

Scrivener’s full-screen – or “Compose as it is now called following the release of OSX Lion’s system-wide full-screen – is indeed splendid, slick, and functions according to expectations… (you know there’s a but coming, right?) But something has never quite felt entirely comfortable.

I tweaked paper colours, transparencies, textures, fonts, even worn different trousers, but I wanted more, despite not being able to pinpoint exactly what I wanted.

From one to the other and back again

I purchased and used Writeroom some time ago, but for the bulk of writing, I stuck it out with Scrivener’s full-screen – right up until Writeroom 3.

Since the superb latest release, I’ve been copying-pasting between the two so I can gain the benefits of Scrivener’s brilliant organisational powers, plus the glory of Writeroom’s minimalist, hyper-focusing non-interface. Having and eating the cake.

However, copying and pasting is a real pain. I am always worried I’ll not select everything, or some other technical buggery will happen while my text is in pasteboard limbo. Unless I had long passages to write, I found myself hanging out in Scrivener – because it was easier.

QuickCursor

The name doesn’t quite fit the most useful aspect of this lovely little app.

QuickCursor provides a rapid means to grab any text you are working on and bung it over to your favourite text editor. Then, when you’re done there, return with the new version. All with the simple selection from a menu bar drop-down, or a user defined keystroke.

Quicker than you can say Rob Jackinson – barely longer than switching Scrivener to full-screen mode, as it turns out – I switch to Writeroom, do the writerly thing, close the document, thus automatically switches me back to Scrivener, new work transferred intact. Gorgeous.

The other text editor I use like it’s attached to the ends of my fingers is BBEdit. That, too, works with QuickCursor, so I can send text there, mess with the words, then send them back.

A couple of points

1. Don’t be too quick with your keystrokes. Quickcursor automates the copy-paste operations between your editing applications, so you could, with the wrong timing, change some text just as it is being selected. Wait until the work is done before continuing to do stuff.
2. I have used this only on individual Scrivener scenes thus far, not with entire multi-scene chunks of text.

Grab QuickCursor from the Mac App Store or HogBay Software’s site.

The worst job in the world is designing stuff for yourself. The brief is a quagmire of confused notions and the client is always an arse. But I think I may have finally pinned-down the ideal font for my name (above).

I have been searching for one type style that I can use across the board: for this blog, for books and stories (without being overtly genre-specific), for almost everything. Why? I understand the importance of basic, consistent visual branding. I also understand the importance of versatility.

Thanks to Chank

It is with utter delight that I found the perfect font amongst the outpourings of the veritable font-machine that is Chank Diesel.

The chosen font is Millesime, which leapt at me as ideal the moment I hit that page. Once I started messing with it, there was no doubt.

It is the balance of elegance with just the right level of noise & grunge that appeals to me. In all caps it has a strong formality. In lowercase, it has the cheeky wink of a saucy French tart.

For most of my writing, it will prove ideal. I am as yet not sure whether it will be a good fit for my planned sci-fi works, but we will just have to see. They are still some way off yet.

Now all I want is Millesime available as a web font so I can use it for the post headers here.

So if you do not want to look like you’ve picked your name-brand from some pre-packaged, template site, get over and grab yourself some of the glorious fonts from Chank.

Apple recently announced a book creation tall called iBooks Author. It’s free, entirely so for non-commercial use, but comes with restrictions when you want to earn money using it.

Create a book with iBooks Author and you can distribute that book as you wish for free. To charge for the book, you must, according to their EULA (End User Licence Agreement), distribute exclusively through Apple’s iBookstore. Apple therefore takes a 30% cut of sales.

There’s plenty of talk about the “vague EULA”, but let’s set that aside because, really, that’s not the issue. The principle Apple is following with this is simple: non-commercial use is free, commercial use is not. In the land of graphics, photography, music, software, etc., where might I have heard that kind of agreement before..? Personally, I think it is absolutely fair enough.

Oh what a hoo-ha this has caused around the web. Self-riteous wannabe authors are exclaiming all kinds of evildoing on the part of Apple. Don’t like the EULA? Don’t use it. Use, instead, one (or more) of the dozens upon dozens of options available to you to help create your book. Better still, respect your readership enough to put your ego and beer money aside and pay a professional to do it properly.

There is no obligation to use their free – and rather good – tool. And that’s the problem. iBooks Author appears to generate excellent results and will give amateur writers the opportunity to create books that are laid-out like a real designer produced them (well, almost). The world of wannabies, of course, insists on free tools, that create professional results, with absolutely no restrictions whatsoever. Welcome to cloud-cuckoo land.

I would never use it. Books will follow fixed templates (they’re good, but templates are templates) and quite soon you are immediately going to recognise iBooks Author’ed releases. I would not want my work looking so obviously like many others.

Social discussions about reading seem to follow a predictable pattern: “I have lots of books. I used to read a great deal, but now I just do not have the time. I wish I read more. etc.”

“Short stories?” I say, ” if you are short on time, maybe that’s the answer.”

I then see the the kind of expression that suggests someone in the room has scented the air with an the remnants of last night’s curry.

In our ever tightening lifestyles, one might consider short stories to be the ideal reading matter. A complete story, start to finish, could be consumed on a single train journey to work. One could eat-up a story over lunch, or even during a coffee break. Sounds ideal, yet the popularity of short stories is reportedly in decline.

Temporary immersion

The most consistent reaction I receive from my short stories is how the reader wants more. More about the location they have just discovered, or about the characters they have just been introduced to. They want more back-story, they want to understand why and how the story, the characters, the situation came to be.

Did I fail to provide enough information within those limited words? More questioning reveals not. Readers talk of developing an attachment to a character and wanting to spend more time with them than the short story allows. They want to explore the environment further, learn more, discover more. They have engaged with the story enough that they remain hungry.

Despite this being, I believe, a compliment on the writing, it still leaves the reader with a sense of dissatisfaction.

The explosion of the series

This dissatisfaction goes some way to explain the surge in popularity of series works. Despite spare time becoming as rare as a banana in a trench-coat, readers flock to series novels where their emotional investment in the world and characters can be supported over several books, several months, even years of reading.

Any sense of dissatisfaction at the end of a series work will soon be resolved by the next instalment. Readers experience the tension of a cliff-hanger, in the sure knowledge they can soon read the continuing story. (I wonder if this is a control-instinct, a subconscious thirst to feel in control by knowing where to find the story’s resolution..?)

Series works provide a safe haven for their attention, where familiarity breeds comfort and trust. Readers trust the characters, and trust the author. This is low risk escapism, and in a world where each day hurls boulders of obstacles in one’s path, such trust might prove the key to a reader’s investment in both time and money.

Or might this be nothing more than a the structure of television series and soaps becoming so ingrained into our psyche that we struggle with one-off, isolated tales?

The best of both

When I developed the TableRappers series of stories, I had no direct knowledge of this diminishing interest in individual short stories. I did, however, have a sense that the combination of short and longer pieces might prove the ideal vehicle to thoroughly explore my characters, while giving readers both preference and variety.

The series of novels are interspersed with a series of shorter stories – some independent and stand-alone, others with threads amongst the novels, other short stories, and even genuine history. The short stories will help maintain interest in the inevitable spaces between the novels. As a writer, they allow me to explore ideas that are simply not expansive enough for a full novel.

I am interested to see, over the coming years, whether one format might prove to be more popular: the novels or the short stories.

After a few weeks with little more than a landing page, I am delighted to announce the arrival of a fully dressed TableRappers.com.

The most exciting part of this release is a free ebook download of the open chapters of Persistent Spirit – the first novel in the series. With the complete version to be released early in 2012, you have a perfect opportunity to grab a taster of the adventures to come.

Don’t forget to sign-up for the email newsletter. Subscribers will soon receive an exclusive, pre-release, once-only offer before Persistent Spirit finds its way into the rest of the world.