Useful tools for writing
Also, I'm going on a break until the end of April 👋🏻
Hey there!
Every once in a while I’ll update you on my progress: it’ll help me keep myself accountable and reflect on how my projects are going, while also being a (hopefully) interesting behind-the-scenes peek for you.
🗓️ Weekly rotation
I dedicate every week to a different project, following this order:
Week 1: ✍🏼 Rewrite
Week 2: 📫 Newsletter
Week 3: ✍🏼 Rewrite
Week 4: 📚 Research/Self-study
[You can find more details about this schedule in the entry How to schedule time as a part-time writer.]
✍🏼The “rewrite”
In the last weeks I’ve been working on my “second-draft strategy”—my action plan on how to rewrite my book.
As of right now, it’s a bit of a Frankenstein-monster-type of situation: I’m taking apart my first draft and reassembling the elements at my disposal in new and different ways, discarding what doesn’t fit and adding/fleshing out concepts where needed.
I’ve written already about some of the issues of my story in my last entry, How I wrote the first draft of my novel. I’m still working on it (sigh). I had hoped that by now I’d be further along, but getting sick for a second time this year slowed down my momentum.
It sometimes feels like flailing in the middle of the ocean, tbh. I have a better idea of the trajectory of the story by now, but there is still so much to define… or so it feels like. One of the most difficult things will be to decide when my research is good enough to start writing, because, well, I could stay stuck researching forever.
Anywho, I’ve been using some tools and doing a few extremely helpful things—here they are:
Otter.ai
I’ve been using a transcription app, Otter.ai, not for writing, but for brainstorming. I got the idea after reading What happened after I got off social media, part 2 by
:As for how I fill the “empty moments” like lunch breaks, I’ve lately started hitting record on my Otter app and just stream-of-consciousness talking throughout the meal.
Typically, I talk about whatever book I’m currently working on. I might be stuck, so I’ll brainstorm. Or maybe the words are flowing well, so I’ll just talk myself through what I need to write next.
This has been so successful for helping me remain immersed in my stories that I now record almost any time I have an empty mental moment. Cooking dinner? Hit record. Driving to pick up the kid at school? Hit record.
Something about speaking helps keep my thoughts more focused than just plain thinking would.
I knew that I needed to find a way to immerse myself more in my story and this sounded such a great idea. And it works! I’ve had great breakthroughs just by talking to myself1.
Otter.ai is freemium—the paid version is too expensive for me right now, so I’m sticking to the limited amount of free transcription minutes (300 per month, max 30 minutes per recording). It’s kinda annoying but I haven’t found anything better, at least so far (please tell me if you do).
Scrivener
After recording my brainstorming session, I go through the transcription, select the juiciest ideas, and transfer them to my Scrivener project.
I love Scrivener2. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a writing software that helps you organize and write your novel with its countless features (here a little intro).
I’ve been using it in the last few months to collect and organize my notes: it allows me to link different documents within the same project, so I’m practically creating a personal wiki about my story.
PowerPoint
Yep, I made a PowerPoint presentation 😂 I planned a meetup with some of my best friends who are also into writing and presented them what I’ve been plotting in the last few months. They all read the first draft of my novel, so they could tell me which of my adjustments were improvements and which still needed fleshing out. It was a wonderful brainstorming session!
Having a deadline and going through the process of putting together a simple PowerPoint presentation with all the key ideas of my story was extremely helpful to pin down what I have figured out so far—and what I haven’t.
It’s something I can highly recommend if you have the chance, but I’m aware that it’s not that easy to find people who are willing to listen to you talking about your story for hours. From that point of view, I know I’m very lucky 🙏🏻
📫Newsletter and the fourth week📚
Last year I dedicated my “fourth week” of my weekly rotation to short fiction so that my fiction-writing skills wouldn’t atrophy while I was analysing different books (I don’t know that it worked. Still, I wrote a few things that I’m proud of).
Now that I’m approaching the rewrite of my book, I’ve decided to change it and dedicate my fourth week to research/self-study. I’ll keep it flexible: most of the time it’ll be about some writing-related stuff but I won’t restrict it to that alone.
About the newsletter: I’ve been getting sloppy! I haven’t missed any publishing date or so, but it’s been difficult to focus and get these entries written as scheduled.
I could try to force myself to double down and such, but… I thought, what if instead I go on a planned break? A family vacation is coming up and I could use the time at my disposal afterwards to give that draft strategy a good push... If I manage my time well enough, maybe I could even create a newsletter buffer 🤔
I have been publishing regularly since I started, in January of last year. I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to skip some posts, but I also don’t want this project (that I do in my free time) to turn into a chore. It should, after all, be fun.
So, yeah! Break it is.
If you have any thoughts on what I shared, let me know by simply replying to this email, writing me at ryeyoubs@gmail.com, or leaving a comment!
I’ll be back on April 30th. Until then!
Take care,
Rye Youbs
Everything on Rye & Writing is currently free—nothing is behind a paywall. But if you like what I’m doing and you’d like to support me, feel free to drop a little donation. You’ll have my eternal gratitude!
See also
On brainstorming by talking out loud — the more I experiment with this, the more I am convinced that thinking, talking, and writing truly tickle different parts of the brain.
If you’re stuck on something that you’ve been thinking about in circles for a long while (and I’m not talking only about storytelling! Real life issues will benefit from this too!) try writing about it instead. If writing isn’t your jam, try talking out loud about it—and it doesn’t have to be to someone, you can talk about it to yourself. But it has to be out loud.
Your mind will make new connections and find different perspectives that weren’t available to you as long as you were stuck in the thinking process.
On Scrivener — honestly, I find it so difficult to describe all you can do with Scrivener. It helps you keep track of your writing project(s), your notes and research, and all their different iterations.
It has a pretty steep learning curve, though: the manual takes around an hour if not longer to go through, which hyped up the nerd in me when I discovered it, but understandably may cause nightmares to others (don’t be discouraged, though! There are countless tutorials on YouTube and the Scrivener community is so on point, any question you can imagine has already an answer—you just have to Google it).
Also, it’s not a subscription: you pay 70 Euro once and it’s yours forever.
Thanks for listing some fun writing software! I create PowerPoints for my worldbuilding as well and love it (mostly because I include Pinterest photos). Best of luck with your writing as always!