I made passing mention of it earlier, but we’re now six days into the month and that means that Tammy and I are writing for all we’re worth. I just finished my words for the day now, and Tammy’s more than half done. She’s downstairs playing some ping pong with Ian. Miranda’s at work at Abbey’s until 10:30.
For only the third time ever (and we’ve been doing this every November since 2008), I am not using a typewriter. I got my first typewriters in 2009, and in 2014 I had an RSI that meant I needed to dictate my novel. But this year, I had another new toy that I wanted to use: my M1 MacBook Air. Yes, I use it for work 40 hours per week, and other times besides, but this thing is just amazing. Great keyboard, great screen, screaming fast, never gets hot and battery (literally) for days. I’ve got a system that I put together to ensure that things are still continuous from previous typewritten NaNoWriMos, but I’m loving the quiet and the freedom to type wherever. I still love the typewriters, but I’m enjoying this, too.
And then, what did I do today? I emailed my text file to myself, picked it up on my PowerBook G4, and pounded out my words on that.
That was fun, too. I’d put the PowerBook away for a while. I was disappointed that I couldn’t find a battery for it. But it’s too nice to stay in a drawer for ever.
And for the record, here’s my workflow. Tammy thinks I’m nuts.
Goal: simulate the typewriter model, so that there isn’t a gap in my work. That includes: a paper copy, a plain-text copy and published to the website. The typewriter creates a paper copy (duh!) and I scanned the pages to make page images and posted them to the website, and OCRed the images to generate a plain-text copy.
Using the computer, I am creating a plain-text copy (I am writing markdown code in BBEdit). I wrote a simple Perl script that I run at the start of each session to tell me how many words I need to hit. I type my words, and then preview the compiled markdown in BBEdit. I copy and paste that into a Pages document. Why? Because I want my page images to have page numbers. I export the Pages document as a PDF. Then, the pièce de resistance: an AppleScript that does the following:
- Renders the PDF as JPEG images
- Renames the files as 001.jpg, 002.jpg… etc.
- Runs a UNIX rsync command to copy the files to the web server.
The only remaining step is printing the PDF pages, which I do manually on the old laser printer when I’m downstairs.
Yeah, but it makes me happy.
