Monday, October 13th, 2008 |
As some of you may know, I have spent the last 9 months revising the novel I entered in the “Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award” competition (where it was nominated as a semifinalist). I finished up my latest draft on the morning of the 12th, and spent the rest of the day formatting the book for Amazon’s CreateSpace service.
(One of the awards for being a semifinalist is being able to receive a free proof copy of your novel from Amazon’s CreateSpace self-publishing service.)
For this complex formatting task, I used OpenOffice 2.4. I know, I know - v3 came out this week, but I generally have a policy against downloading new software for the first 30 days after its release. I like to make sure that any grievous bugs and security errors are given time to show themselves before I jump on a new version bandwagon.
All-in-all, OO’s Writer performed remarkably well. Adjusting page margins, layout, complex font issues, kerning, and spacing was all a breeze, and OO’s repagination was surprisingly fast and accurate (for a book looking to end up somewhere between 300 and 400 pages).
However, I have one major complaint. There is no easy way to suppress footers and headers for any page except the first. In fact, the only legitimate way to do it is to use a complex array of page styles, and even then I had major issues.
This is compounded by the fact that I consider myself a grade-A problem solver when it comes to software use. As a programmer, I have no problem spending hours debugging problems like this - but I simply could not generate a simple, useful solution to this problem after an entire evening of research. I debated saving my novel as a .DOC and trying to remedy the problem in Microsoft Word - but lo and behold, they also can’t suppress headers and footers on select pages without major hacking.
How is this possible?! Has no one ever noticed this problem? In my mind, this problem is fairly trivial to fix - especially in OO. On the page properties dialog, simply add an option to SUPPRESS A HEADER OR FOOTER FOR THIS PAGE ONLY.
How hard is that? Not hard at all.
Anyway, I am now in the process of discovering a good way to submit my request to the OO development team. With this change, I can honestly say that I could write an entire novel - happily - in OO. No small feat for an open source competitor to the all-but-ubiquitous MS Word.
OpenOffice.org can be downloaded for free at http://www.openoffice.org/. They have been a bit overwhelmed by download requests for version 3, so don’t be alarmed if you get a plain-text page instead of their full site!
Posted in Ideas | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 |
Several months ago I had the enjoyable - and enlightening - experience of reading through some 20+ excerpts at the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest (ABNA). It was very interesting to see firsthand the vast difference in raw talent among aspiring writers. Some of these people make you wonder why they’re not published already while others make you wonder why they’re writing at all.
Anyway, after returning and glancing through several particularly boring entries, I’ve decided that many aspiring authors could stand to listen to a bit of music while they work.
So as a courtesy, here’s some recommended listening for your genre of choice:
Science Fiction Music
Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness
by Coheed and Cambria
While every Coheed and Cambria album is worthy of your listening, I found IV a particularly good album for writers. For those who don’t know, Claudio Sanchez (the band’s lead singer) is also a comic book author. C&C’s music tells the story of Claudio’s comic book series The Amory Wars, an epic space opera. Each album covers a wide array of styles; some songs are almost pop, others punk, some are really pretty acoustic numbers, and C&C’s classic metal sound is hard to beat. Even cooler is the band’s near-use of leitmotifs, as recurring themes throughout each album appear depending on the events and speakers.
Every C&C album is brilliant. Do check them out.
Fantasy Music
Final Fantasy S Generation
Anything Nobuo Uematsu, but I especially like Final Fantasy: S Generation
If you’ve lived this long and never heard of Final Fantasy, you’re lame. No really - you’re totally missing out on some of the most original music to come out of Japan in the last twenty years. Uematsu (the series’ long-time composer) was named as one of Time Magazine’s “Innovators,” and the recognition was well-warranted. Uematsu’s scores draw from a wide variety of styles and he’s done more to make video game music legitimate than perhaps anyone else in his field.
S Generation is a fantastic orchestral remix of songs from Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 - the games for the original PlayStation. I’m particularly fond of the beautiful orchestral arrangement of Aeris’ Theme, and the piano remix of Eyes on Me is second-to-none.
The otherworldly nature of fantasy writing could draw a lot of inspiration from the mystic beauty of Uematsu’s work.
Action/Adventure Music
Phobia
by Breaking Benjamin
This is perhaps the most epic rock album you’ll ever own. If you enjoy bands like Foo Fighters, Fuel, Evanescence, and 3 Doors Down, this album is especially likely to impress you.
Phobia is one of those rare albums where you can actually listen to the entire album start-to-finish without skipping a single track. Even stranger, the headline tracks from this album (Diary of Jane and Breath) aren’t even the best songs BB has to offer - Dance with the Devil and Evil Angel are both masterpieces, and the acoustic version of Diary of Jane almost eclipses the original.
This is perhaps my favorite hard rock album of all-time, and I wrote every action scene in The Zargansk Wars while listening to this killer CD.
More genres to follow in the future.
Posted in Essays, Ideas, Music, Writing | No Comments »
