Writing

Steve’s Creative Resources 12/28/2018

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Hey all! I collect various creative resources at Seventh Sanctum’s Nexus page, and I figured it’d be worth posting them now and then as I expand them.

This round has a lot of self-publishing resources! Let me know of any other resources you’d like to see so I can keep adding them!

Art Sources

  • Free
    • Pixabay – A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There’s a lot here, and much of it is professional.
    • Unsplash – A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.
  • Royalty Free
    • Canstockphoto – A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.
    • Shutterstock – The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.

Book Covers

  • Premade
    • Go On Write – Premade covers for books – pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.
  • Services
    • Paper and Sage – A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.

Book Reviewers

  • Review Sources
    • Midwest book review – Will review books for free, but it’s a matter of choice.
    • Self Publishing Review – A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .
    • The Indie Review – A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Contact Management

  • Mailing Lists
    • Mailchimp – Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it’s the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.
  • Professional
    • LinkedIn – The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Generators

  • Generator Sites
    • Chaotic Shiniy – A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.
    • Darkest of Nights – Fantasy-oriented generators.
    • Donjon – Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!
    • Dropping-the-form – Generators for various settings.
    • Eposic – Generators – among other imaginative efforts.
    • Fantasy Name Generators – And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn’t know you needed.
    • Feath – Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.
    • Generator Blog – Links out to many other generators.
    • Generatorland – Lots of generators and generator tools.
    • Mithril and mages – Generators for a variety of genres.
    • Name Pistol – Band name generators.
    • RanGen – Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.
    • Serendipity – A generator site with some setting and name generators.
    • Seventh Sanctum – A large collection of custom-build generators.
    • Springhole.net – A site of generators and other creative tools.
    • Squid.org – Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.
    • The Force – A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

  • Graphic Tools
    • Gimp – Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).

Helpful Tools

  • Relaxing Backgrounds
    • 4 Ever Transit Authority – Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.
    • Anomolies – A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.
    • Panoramical – Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.
    • Station To Station – A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Self-Publishing

  • Audiobooks
    • ACX – Amazon’s self-publishing audio platform
    • Audible – Another amazon audiobook publishing platform
    • Findaway – A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.
  • Cards
    • Drive Thru Cards – Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.
  • eBook
    • Draft2Digital – A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.
    • Itch.io – Itch.io doesn’t just do games – it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.
    • Kobo Writing Life – Distribute your eBook via Kobo
    • Nook Press – Distribute your eBook via Nook
    • Smashwords – A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.
  • Physical And Ebook
    • Ingram Spark – Ingram’s eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.
    • KDP – Amazon’s full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.
    • Lulu.com – A print and eBook creation and distribution service.
  • RPGs
    • Drive Thru RPG – Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.
  • Video Games
    • Itch.io – Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Writing Tools

  • Ebook Creation
    • Calibre – A free ebook creation tool.
    • Jutoh – Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it’s a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.
  • Word Processing
    • LibreOffice – A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it’s fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.
  • Writing
    • Scriviner – A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.
  • Writing Checking
    • Grammarly – A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.
    • Hemmingway – A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.
    • Pro Writing Aid – A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.

Writing Plans For Next Year

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As the Holidays approach and the year ends, I wanted to round up what I’m doing writing-wise for everyone.  So let’s go – in what may be some kind of order.

First, the next Way With Worlds Minibook is up and will be out soon – it’s on Organizations!  That one really just needs formatting, so it’s definitely out in December.

Secondly, somewhere in all of this is the print copy of A Bridge To The Quiet Planet.  This is unpredictable because it’s a mix of formatting, checking, giving up and running a print, and finding out the mistakes you made.  It could be out in as early as start of January or late as February depending on how much I screw it up.

Third, there’s a world guide to the setting of the novel.  I plan to get that out around the same time as the print copy.

Fourth, there’s a new creativity guide, my guide to Brainstorm Books.  That one is in weird shape, as I found the original draft, based on my columns, was lacking.  I’ll be tackling that once I get other stuff out of the way, so expect to see it in January to February.

All of THIS clears my plate for the next round of work.

RANDOMIZED CREATIVITY BOOK: In February I’m going to begin work on my next big book, a guide to randomized creativity and procedural generation.  This will compile all of my theories into one guide to assist people making random generators, games, etc.  I’m going to try to power it out as a draft as fast as I can because I want to experiment with some writing techniques.  Note that even at the best, this thing won’t be out until August or so.

MORE WAY WITH WORLDS MINIBOOKS: I have a ton of these I want to write (try more than 20), so I’m pretty much going to do them for years at this rate.  I need to find a workable pace, but expect to see them intermittently – I’d like to do at least four a year.

So past about  May or June I will have A) caught up, and B) have the randomized creativity book in editing.  Then I’ll consider larger steps – there’s a sequel to A Bridge To The Quiet planet in my mind so I’ll almost inevitably do that, but I want to try to do it faster this time (but still even at best it won’t be out until 2020 while I do minibooks)

So there you go, lots to look forward to!

Steven Savage



A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: A Few Thoughts On The Final Run

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

All right, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet is out.  Done.  So it was a bit later than I expected, and the final run on it gave me food for thought.

WATCH SWITCHING BETWEEN SOFTWARE: I found some annoying artifacts from moving from one piece of software to another – there can be subtle differences.   I had to do some annoying search and replaces.

THINK OVER STYLISTIC CHOICES EARLY AND FOLLOW UP: You may make certain formatting choices – like bolding certain things (business cards or telepathy), certain uses of quotes, etc.  Make sure you’re consistent.  I found ONE case of not following my own formatting, and I nearly missed it.

DO A SERIOUS READ-THROUGH AND CORRECTION EARLY: I wish I did this.  Take, say, an early draft, and edit it as if it’s for print.  This will help you find your mistakes, issues, common problems, and get plenty of distracting tiny errors out of the way – so you can edit.

KEEP A LIST OF ERRORS YOU FIND OR WORRY ABOUT: This helped me a lot.  As I did my final readthroughs, I kept a list of suspicious things or choices I want to review.  This let me do some amazing fine editing easy because then I could globally search.

SEARCH AND REPLACE IS YOUR FRIEND IF YOU DO IT STEP BY STEP: Global search and replace can mess up your document (as we all know).  However going slow, reviewing EACH possible replacement (or doing it by hand for each found) let’s you avoid problems.  Also it acts as a second review!

YOU CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH: At some point you can’t edit forever.  So don’t.  Learn your limits.  In fact . . .

GO EBOOK FIRST: This is a trick I evolved from a friend.  Do an ebook first, and distribute it.  It gives you immediate feedback, then you can update the ebook quickly.  Go print a bit later (like I’m doing it 4-6 weeks later).

KEEP A “LIVE” DOCUMENT: A big advantage of going ebook first is feedback.  So I keep a “Live” document I’m always editing as a core, representative document.  That will become the print book – but if I find errors I modify all 3 documents (ebook, Print, Live) for later.

So lots of lessons to share.  I’m certain I’ll have more to share – I think I need to make a kind of writing checklist sometime!

Steven Savage