2000ish words today. It’s lower than I would have liked, but I’m still in the “beginning” phase of starting this book, and it’s taking a while to get its legs under it. I still haven’t settled on a proper format, and the chapters, while written how I want them, will need a formatting pass to be consistent.
Most of my words came from dictation today. I almost did a dictation session while doing dishes, but I got a phone call…
The book is currently at 4500 words currently. The first major section is done. We’ll see where it ends up.
The count is also lower because I’ve got family coming into town this weekend and I spent a great deal of time preparing for that. But regardless, Beast Mode is still in effect. This challenge is about consistency in hitting solid word counts for as many days as possible, not so much the word counts themselves.
If I wrote 2000 words 80% of the days for the 90 day challenge (which is 72 days), that would be 72 x 2000 = 144,000 words, which is 2.88, or around 3 novels, so one per month. And that’s not even writing every day. Math is our friend during this challenge, especially when I have 4K or 5K days.
I also had a call with my developer and got her requirements. Contract is signed and she’s going to start working on a writing app database on Monday, with a delivery of the first draft sometime by end of next week. Naturally, I had to prepare for that call and I had to get her access to my site and do some paperwork, etc. That eroded my word count too. But if this works, it’ll be worth it because it’ll be a tool that everyone in the community can use.
I also chose a writing app to play with today: Papyrus Author. A few of you have recommended it to me in the past, and wow, I’m really impressed. Such a thoughtfully designed app that frankly rivals Scrivener in a big way. It launched in 2020 I believe which is probably why it’s lesser known still.
Some of the impressive features that jumped out at me:
- Nuanced backups (say you’re writing a book and you write a really important chapter. You can name your backup and even describe what you’re backing up.)
- TRUE Tracked changes (my head almost exploded when I saw this. I’ve not seen a single writing app with this other than Word and I always thought it was because it was too difficult to do, or because Microsoft had some kind of proprietary advantage. Maybe someone can educate me on this or point out other apps that have it. I suspect Papyrus is the only one.)
- Paperback formatting. Not perfect, but from what I can tell, it’s a little bit better than Scrivener in this area. Not Vellum by any means, but something.
The design could use some work (it reminds me of Calibre, in a bad way), but most writing apps never get the design right in the beginning. They’ve got plenty of time to work on that. I’d also like to see some sort of flat fee for a service like this, as $14.99/month is steep for new authors. I still think that Dabble Writer had the best answer to this—they offer a lifetime license if you pay a multiple of the subscription fee. I love that. Sure, it’s expensive, but it gets you around the fundamental problem of subscriptions…and I know many of you hate hate hate subscriptions. I’m not crazy about them either but I understand the developers’ point of view.
Anyway, I am not an affiliate for Papyrus. I’m just calling out good work when I see it. I look forward to delving into it more.
Also, I wanted to pass along a cool tool developed by Kenney Myers of Ebook Fairs. I can’t speak to Ebook Fairs or whether his service is worth using, but he developed a tool called the Book Cover Checker. It scans your book cover to verify if your contrast is appropriate, and if the cover violates any terms of service for places like Amazon (things like guns on the cover in the wrong way will get your book flagged). The tool helps with that.
It uses computer vision, which is a type of artificial intelligence. Could be useful for folks doing their own covers.
Check it out here: https://ebookfairs.com/Home/Quality
(And yes, I know some people are going to mention this in the comments—I’m not crazy about having to require your email address to use, so if that’s not your thing, don’t use the tool. I’m just passing it along because it’s an interesting use of AI to help with publishing. I’m not endorsing Ebook Fairs.)
