Monday Musings

Vanity Fair posted a fascinating article yesterday about how The Shawshank Redemption went from a box office failure with a title no one could remember to being one of the most beloved films of all time.

Like all great stories, there are plenty of lessons to be learned from this one. Here are my takeaways:

Be True to Your Art

Frank Darabont was broke. He says in the article he was barely making enough to pay the rent. Then his screenplay adaptation of Stephen King’s novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption found its way to Castle Rock Pictures.

And they loved it.

Rob Reiner offered Darabont somewhere in the neighborhood of three million dollars for the script. But there was a catch: Reiner wanted to direct the movie himself.

It was Darabont’s dream to direct this movie. So he said no. [Read more…] about Let’s Learn from The Shawshank Redemption

A few days ago, Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited, a service that gives subscribers unlimited access to over 600,000 ebooks for $9.99 per month.

David Gaughran, one of the smartest people in indie publishing, has a nice breakdown of what the service might mean for writers, but I’ve been a reader much longer than I’ve been a writer. I’m interested in how the service meets my reading needs, too.

I’ve been a satisfied subscriber to Oyster’s similar subscription service  for the last nine months (I wrote about it here). I signed up for a thirty-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited and I’ve been taking it for a test drive this weekend. Here are my early thoughts on how the two services compare in a few key areas.

Selection

Kindle Unlimited claims over 600,000 titles. Oyster claims over 500,000. Seems like an easy choice, right?

Not so fast. [Read more…] about Kindle Unlimited vs. Oyster

I wrote my novel Regulation 19 in the cloud, In this post, I want to talk about why I did that, how I did it, and the pros and cons I found in doing so.

I’ve been an avid user or Google Drive (previously Google Docs) for a long time. I am a big fan of being able to access things like my household budget, my story notes, and drafts of my works in progress from any mobile device, tablet, or computer. I use Evernote for some of that stuff (future post idea: Evernote for writers), but when the situation calls for a document or spreadsheet, I turn to Google Drive.

Shortly before I started writing Regulation 19, my laptop died. (Don’t yell at me nerds. I know laptops never really die. By die, I mean it was broken to the point where I was unwilling to pay to have it fixed.) For some reason, I go through laptops like crazy. To be far, I was doing a lot of audio recording at the time. I was recording a weekly podcast (Six-String Bliss), and I was recording my own music. I had the laptop bogged down with a ton of audio software. But I was sick of the slow speed, the eight zillion unnecessary pre-installed programs, and the ridiculously slow boot up/boot down times.

I started researching alternatives, and I learned about the Google Chromebook. I liked the concept immediately. The idea of a machine that updates automatically and does everything in-browser was very appealing.  As was the price: $250. I did a little more research and found that I could do almost everything I needed to in the cloud, including podcasting and recording music. The Chromebook also comes 100G free storage space in Google Drive, which is plenty for me.

So I headed to the local Best Buy to buy my Chromebook. (Note to readers in the future: Best Buy was an electronics store where we purchased TVs and Blu-Rays from lackadaisical, disinterested employees. Enjoy your jetpack!)

Buying the Chromebook was an odd experience. The Best Buy salesperson actively tried to talk me out of it. He warned me that it wasn’t a real laptop. He told me that for only $50 more, I could get a real laptop pre-loaded with a ton of programs. He said, “Did you know you can’t even run Microsoft Word on his thing.”

I understand. The Chromebook is a love it or hate it type deal. If you like the concept of doing things in the cloud, you’ll dig it. If you prefer to run your programs and save your files locally, you won’t.

Finally, I told the guy, “Look, my mind is made up. Can I just buy the Chromebook, please?”

After that reluctant transaction was closed, I headed home and fired up the Chromebook. I was impressed with it then, and I am still impressed with it almost a year later. The boot-up speed is crazy fast (there are almost no programs to boot). The updates are frequent and keep things running smoothly, with the occasional cool new feature popping up. The computer is just as fast today as it was the day I bought it.

One of my favorite aspects of the Chromebook is the keyboard. It is a real pleasure to type on this bad boy. It feels more natural than most keyboards. That may not sound like a big deal, but when you are typing out 90k-plus words, it becomes a major factor.

My only complaint about writing a novel-length project in Google Drive is that the document became very slow to open once I reached about the 30k word mark. It wasn’t the end of the world, but it did take a long time to get started writing. And it kinda killed the momentum a time or  two. I intend to solve this by splitting the novel into 4-5 documents this next time.

I did end up formatting the novel on a PC. Next time, I may take a stab at doing that in Google Drive as well.

So do I recommend the Chromebook for writers? Absolutely! The keyboard, the speed of computer, and the neat and always growing feature set of Google Drive make for a great writing experience.

 

This is a confession .

I’ve come to realize that I do very little to help the authors who work so hard to write the books I love. I derive a lot of pleasure from the books I read. Long wait at the oil change place? No problem, I’ve got a book. I don’t do enough to support the writers of those boredom-repelling novels.

Okay, in the pure commerce sense I do support them. I buy the books. I trade my cash for their commodity. Fair, right? And yet… when I read something that really hits home, something that transplants me to another place, another life, I wish that I could do something extra to say thanks. When the experience is worth more than what I paid for it, I want to show my gratitude.

Here’s my confession: I’ve never once written an Amazon review. Or an iTunes review. Or a review on Barnes and Noble. [Read more…] about Late January Resolution