Grey, grey day. It's rainy and cold. It's not my ideal Tennessee October sky, but it's what we have today. I am wearing 2 sweaters, and I'm still cold.
Over the weekend, I added two new bits of software to my writing aresenal:
- New calendar software! I have used a paper planner for some time, but in the past couple of months, I just wasn't keeping up with it. My husband discovered the Pimlical planner for both Windows and Android a little while ago, and he really liked it. I decided to follow suit. I installed it this weekend, and it seems to be working well so far. It's really nice to be able to put in the dates for the next DragonCon without working through a pile of pages in a box! We'll see over time if it works well with my mad methods!
As a fun aside, the proceeds from this calendar are donated to wildlife preservation. The developer named it "The Planner of the Apes". Love it!
Website: http://www.pimlicosoftware.com/pimlicalpreview.htm
- Natural Reader Software - This is a screen-reading program that my husband is using to edit his own novel. This program will read text on a screen out loud. It comes with some basic voices, but you can purchase additional ones. It is amazing to hear the text out loud. So far, I have caught several errors that I missed during several rounds of silent reading. It was also fun to hear the story out loud and pick out what is really good about my story and not just the errors. It is a good text-to-speech system for a limited budget. It took a little while to install, and it can be a little tricky to use at times, but so far it has been a great tool.
A free demo version is available if you want to try it out. It works with almost any text document, from Word to Excel to pdfs.
Website: http://www.naturalreaders.com
Chapter one of "Twenty Million Leagues Over the Sea" is in good shape. I am really hammering away at chapter two now. I made some good progress yesterday. One interesting thing about writing (among many) -- you write when the iron is hot, which is often outside normal working hours. Sometimes, way outside.
