NaNoWriMo update: day 11

So, blogging every day is going well. I've been writing and I have a healthy-looking NaNoWriMo wordcount, but keeping up with the social media isn't going so well. Regular tweeting fell by the wayside, I have to make myself go on the NaNo forum and my aim of having different writing challenge every day on Arrow of Eloquence sort of stopped along with the regular blogging. I've been doing stuff, though. Like I said, my wordcount is looking pretty good. I've also installed a whole new operating system on my laptop and I'm settling in with a bunch of new writing tools.


Sadly, the new tools were necessary, because FocusWriter was the only member of my previous toolkit to survive the transition.

New system: Xubuntu 12.04

Main writing tools:

• FocusWriter for writing. No change here, which is nice.
• Zim desktop wiki for my diary, random planning notes anda bit of very basic project management. This is actually a whole new tool - project management hasn't existed before, while the diary was in yWriter and the random planning was anywhere and everywhere.
• Plume Creator for storing, reading and making notes on completed drafts. This used to be yWriter's job, but yWriter and Wine... not pretty. Plume does enough of the same jobs that I can live with it, although I may need to add a bit more use of spreadsheets to my planning process. Still, that was looking likely anyway.

Coolest thing about the new system: the fact that I now have a gorgeous light-on-dark theme called Melissa. Actually, it's called Siana because I wanted to change the font colour from white to very pale orange. Close enough. Having my own theme is fun.

This is my awesomely cool computer, complete with Plume Creator open on the right-hand side. The computer also earns bonus points for regional options: I have a RUBBISH BIN!!!

See? Much different to Windows.

I'm going to talk more about these new tools at some point in the next few days.

New OS, NaNo going okay... That's probably about it at the moment. I know it seems odd after my last few posts to hear me say NaNo is going okay, but it really is. I've settled into the idea that what I'm writing is slightly less crap than the earlier version and now it's just a matter of plugging away at until I get somewhere. Then I'll leave it alone for a while so I can spend January writing about necromancy. I have no firm plans after January, but that's all right.

Anyway, I've heard the world ends in December.