Category: writing

Some Good, Some Less Good

~ Ryan

This will be a quick one, as I need to get back to packing for the trip. And writing, because of course a great idea for this screenwriting challenge hit me just as I was starting to pack my bags.

I got Ulysses set up to make blog posts yesterday. Today I shot out a test post. The Micro.blog site gave me no issues whatsoever. Posted like magic, just the way I wanted it, all from within Ulysses.

The WordPress site, however, was less successful. I spent a good part of the day tweaking settings and playing around with things, trying to get Ulysses to work with my self-hosted WordPress site. In the end, it just wasn’t going to work. I’m sure it can and will work, I just didn’t have enough time to keep playing with it today.

So I turned to the Jetpack app. WordPress (the company) pushes this app heavily, and I use it regularly to verify that posts have gone up. Well, turns out that it doesn’t like my self-hosted blog either. Everyone’s a critic! I spent more time than I wanted trying to get it to work, but it just wasn’t getting anywhere.

Where did that leave me? Well, I decided to go with my worst option. The web browser. I was able to get a post up, but man do I dislike the WordPress web editor. It’s just not great. I fought with it the entire way, and this was just to put up a silly little test post!

I started thinking about giving up on the WordPress mobile posting entirely. Then I remembered that I also have the older and less pushed WordPress app. Turns out, that was exactly what I needed. I was able to get my test post up with no issues.

So looks like I’ll be stuck with having to rely on two apps while traveling, at least for this trip. I’ll work on it more after I’m back home. But at least for now I have a way to get posts up without having to log onto a web editor. Because I really just don’t like them.

Tomorrow I’ll put these solutions to the true test. I’ll be traveling first thing in the morning, so the next post will be from the road. Hopefully.

Finding the Right Tool for the Job

~ Ryan

In keeping with the two project theme this week, I’ll cover both bases for what I’ll be attempting to accomplish while on the road.

The first project, the writing, is actually pretty simple for me while traveling. I do most of my creative writing within Ulysses. It has just enough organization to keep my various writing projects in some semblance of order. But it’s minimalistic enough to stay out of my way and just let me get to the writing.

For me, this is a huge plus. I’m a big settings guy. I’ll waste away days just tweaking settings instead of actually buckling down and doing the work. (Incidentally, this was one of the reasons why I decided to give Micro.blog a whirl. I had been using WordPress for years, but I would always get completely sidetracked by playing with settings every time I wanted to just sit down and write something. Micro.blog does not get in my way like that.)

Ulysses is great for me, also, because everything just syncs in the background, regardless of the device I’m using. So I can just work on my tablet, or even my phone, and know that the work will be synced to my laptop without issue. So I’ll be doing my drafting in Ulysses.

I will be trying to use iA Writer as well when it comes time to actually convert my story into a script. I’ve never used iA Writer’s screenwriting features, but I do believe it actually has them. That’s something I’ll be testing out this week. Worst case scenario, I’ll just follow the script guidelines and draft it by hand. But I’m hoping iA Writer fits the need here.

For the other project, though, the blogging on the road, this will involve some experimentation. As I’ve mentioned before, I use MarsEdit to do all my blog post writing. I don’t bother with drafting in Ulysses first, although I certainly could. (Really, I love Ulysses!) Since I’m posting every day, I wanted something that felt separate, something dedicated specifically to the task. And MarsEdit has been doing the job perfectly for me. I just open up a new post, type away until I like what I see, and hit the very satisfying “Send to Blog” button. Done and done.

But there is no MarsEdit for mobile. Le sigh. So what can I use? I post my daily entries on two separate websites, one using Micro.blog and one using WordPress. (I’m doing this for reasons. Maybe someday, someday soon even, I’ll stop and just pick one. But for now I’m testing to see what I like and what I don’t.) I very much don’t relish the idea of writing up my entries in the dedicated Micro.blog and WordPress apps, though. I’ve been burned in the past with WordPress specifically, having been putting the finishing touches on a long piece only to have the app crash and everything lost. I’m sure the app is better now, but trust is hard won and easily lost.

So what do I want, then? What is the goal? Really, I want MarsEdit on mobile. But since that doesn’t exist this week, I want as close as I can get to that. So I’ll be spending this week playing around with the various writing apps I already have on my phone and tablet, examining each to see what they may offer in the realm of publishing blog posts. My hope is that, by the end of the week, I’ll have found a nice solution that will allow me to write and post all from within a single app.

To give myself some guard rails, I’ll attempt for now to stick just to evaluating the apps I already have installed. Embarrassingly, that doesn’t narrow the field greatly. I’m looking at my phone right now and I have the following:
– Ulysses (because I love it)
– Drafts (another daily go-to for which I continue to find new uses)
– Scrivener
– Bear
– Ulysses (yes, somehow I have two versions of it installed, because I love it and I’ve never bothered to try and figure out why there are two of them)
– iA Writer
– Byword
– MacJournal (this has burned me before, too, though, and it’s not even in the iOS App Store anymore)
– WordPress (though I never actually write in this)
– Micro.blog (I do replies in this, but never posts)

Yeah, that list is too long. We’re not going to talk about the number of apps I have on my phone. But that’s the list. I’ll be playing around with each of them to see if I can get any of them to do the job the way I want it done.

The goal will be to find, ideally, one single app that will let me draft a post, do any necessary edits, add any applicable tags, set the title, and post to two different blogs. Bonus points if it can also handle images. And double bonus if it syncs and allows me to edit previously published posts (though that is not a must have, more a want than a need).

As always, I’m open to any suggestions. If you’ve already worked this problem and know how to make it work with any of the apps I’ve listed here, please reach out and let me know! And if you use a different app that does the job marvelously, I’m always looking for an excuse to try something new and shiny.

Screenwriting Linkdump

~ Ryan

This will be a short one. On Saturdays, I like to post links to all the resources I’ve used throughout the week to work on the current project. But there really weren’t too many I ended up relying on this week. Here they are, in no particular order:

  • IMSDb
    The Internet Movie Script Database. This was great for finding movie scripts. It’s a very low-key website, which I actually appreciated. No frills, just scripts. And they have plenty!

  • John August’s website
    If you want to learn about the work of screenwriting from a successful screenwriter, this is an excellent place to start. The site has plenty of nuggets of wisdom throughout, and August helpfully categorizes his posts, so it’s easy to search through for whatever you may be trying to find. He also has two great podcasts, Launch and Scriptnotes, worth listening to if you want to dive in further.

  • Weekend Read 2
    This is the script reading app that John August released through his company, Quote-Unquote Apps. I’ve been using it all week to read movie scripts on my phone, and it has been painless to use.

  • Also worth mentioning is John August’s writing app, Highland 2. It looks very sharp. I haven’t used it myself yet, but it’s definitely in my list of apps to try out. In the meantime, since I don’t want to add a new software learning curve to this screenwriting challenge, I’ll be sticking with iA Writer. I’ve used this before, and I’m familiar with the layout. But fear not, Highland 2, I’ll check you out soon!

  • NYC Midnight
    I’m including this for any writers out there looking for a fun challenge. They run multiple events throughout the year, so there’s likely something that will be of interest to any kind of writer. Whether you enjoy writing micro-fiction, flash fiction, short stories, screenplays, what have you, there’s something for you here. My favorite part about their challenges is that all submissions receive feedback from the judges. Whether you make it through to the next round or not, you’ll get to hear from the people who judged your entry. I’ve found this to be rare, and this alone makes these challenges worth entering, in my book.

And that’s basically it for this week. The screenwriting challenge has officially begun, and I’ve received my assigned genre, subject, and character to work with for my script entry. Fingers crossed, I’ll have submitted something decent by this time next week!