Monday, November 07, 2005

Nano Advice from Paperback Writer

Paperback Writer is a prolific novelist with 31 published novels in five genres. I like to visit her blog for some writing inspiration.

Here is PBW's helpful list for Nanowrimo'ers. She's got plenty of other lists on her blog. If you're interested in Writing, you've got to check out the blog.

Ten Things for NaNoWriMo'ers

1. My first stop when hunting a title: Bartleby.com. I use the verse search engine to look for interesting phrases or lines from poems.

1a. My second stop: The Bonsai Story Generator.

2. Our friends to the north, the Canadian Authors Association, have a Writing Resources by Genre page.

3. When all else fails, talk to ELIZA.

4. Sami Pyörre offers the Everchanging Book of Names, a random name generator shareware program.

5. The Giallo Kit Generator offers a crash course in concise if bizarre giallo plot premises that sound like stuff a couple of writers I know would be interested in (not that I'm naming names, John, Stuart, Kate, Jon, James, Tam, Douglas . . .)

6. Dictionary.com's Grammar, Usage & Style page

7. Instant Muse Poetry Generator is supposed to help when you need a poetic line or phrase but your muse is out to lunch. All the lines start with "In the...", and I got: In the city of misery the weeds march.

8. Muse Creations offers a free trial download of Muse Names naming software that looks pretty neat, and if you scroll down you can get also some of author Vanessa Grants's writing templates for free.

9. Need a life? Download Educational Simulations' Real Lives for free.

10. For the wordless, WordGizmo (also good for those times when you have to name that vital stardrive component something but you have absolutely no idea what, i.e. "Captain, if you don't shut down the engines in thirty seconds the idübert will fail and the ship will blow up.")

Reproduced with permission. Thanks, Paperback Writer.

7 comments:

Picatho (百可度) said...

Lydia, I think en.wikipedia.org is a good source for definations.

eyeris said...

hey lydia. nice meeting you. too bad didn't have time to chat more. :)

found out later that my colleague Ling was interviewing you though. haha.

Lydia Teh said...

p3p4, yes, I myself have used it several times. But I think have to be careful and do a bit of cross referencing.

eyeris, nice to mmet you too. Next time maybe we'll chat. Hope to read Ling's article soon.

Kak Teh said...

lydia, just to say am back safe and sound - flight smooth. Am now craving for roti bakar and kaya! Help!!! and at 0229 am - Uncle Lim's is so so so far away!

Lydia Teh said...

Great! Make your own roti bakar and kaya. If you want, I can give you recipe for homemade kaya.

Bergen said...

Please do, ma'am. Let's have that recipe out.

Lydia Teh said...

Bergen, Kaya recipe coming up next. It's been a long time since I last did it, so better try out again before I make public the recipe. Just in case, hehe.