Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Torsten and I live in Germany - in Cologne, to be more specific. Here, in the hustle and bustle of this turbulent city, I found my passion for writing. My biggest motivation was THE biggest horror fiction author: Howard Phillips Lovecraft. In my youth I devoured his books, and I used every free minute I had to listen to his audiobooks. I was inspired to find authors with a similar writing style, and came across Brian Lumley. His vampire novel series Necroscope was exactly my taste, and I would often read his books on weekend fishing trips with friends. I was a bookworm. When I moved from my idyllic birthplace to the big city, I no longer had the time to immerse myself in the world of books. But something else happened; I started coming up with a story of my own. So I started writing, just letting it all pour out. I started by writing all my ideas chronologically on loose sheets of paper. At some point, I had something I would call a plot. Then I started to write bad texts on my computer in Word and quite soon a realization came to me - writing is damn hard. Of course, I didn't let this fact deter me. I wrote down the plot and the first few chapters within a year - in satisfactory quality for me. But by this point, I was no longer using paper. I quickly switched from a simple text editor to Evernote which gave my texts more order and structure. Things that I (as a German and a writer) like. I had also looked at professional writing programs for authors, but these always had more disadvantages than benefits for me. For example, they were often only available for one device (but never for smartphone, computer and web) outfitted with unnecessary features, such as a timeline or stylistic correction totally outdated extremely overloaded unnecessarily complicated and very expensive (some of them at least) First came the writing, then came the frustration. With Evernote I had found a good program to support the actual writing, but it still lacked essential functions, like the ability to export or make comments. I kept exchanging thoughts with writers over the internet, and I found most of them were on my side. Professionally, I come from the world of software development. So for a long time, I have dreamt of a project that could solve all my problems (whatever that might mean). Since I currently find myself with quite a bit of free time on my hands, I want to welcome you on my journey "procrastination of my own novel" while I create a software that (hopefully) many people will enjoy writing down their ideas on. I'll be writing an article on my blog every week to keep you up to date, share my development progress with you, discuss ideas and, by the end, convince you of my project. Check out the homepage and have a look! PS: Do not be mad at me if my English is not the yellow from the egg, as we say in Germany. Fortunately, English is the native language and college major of my girlfriend, and she is allowed to correct everything (and she did! )
Hi Torsten, and welcome from me! I look forward to seeing some of your work if you put half as much effort into it as your introductory post! Software - meh, not so much. Fiction writers are a funny bunch who live, by definition, half in reality and half out of it, I can't imagine any of us thinking we'd be the next Hemingway if only we had the right software... Do it by all means, but do it for its own reward or your own benefit, but I can't imagine the writing community beating a path to your door waving wads of cash
For me, this project is not about making cash or creating some software that improves your writing automatically. Rather, I want to create a writing platform as free of distractions as possible in order to improve the overall manageability of the writing process (something I found lacking in other programs I tried myself). My goal is to help others to better organize their texts, so that they are able to write to the best of their abilities and produce something they can really be proud of.
You owe it to yourself to try Scrivener (https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview) if you haven't already. It's popular among authors, has a free trial, and is cheap (US$45, period, for all the machines you own. No annual fees) Even if you don't like it, it'll show you what's out there and may give you some ideas on how to do better. Mac, iOS, and Windows versions available, although the Windows version of Rev. 3.0 is in beta (but quite far along in that process). I use it, I love it. I have no other connection to the maker, L&L, except that of happy user.
When I was looking for programs, Scrivener was indeed the best I found. My problems with Scrivener: - I have an Android Phone, so I can't add notes or text on the go - At the time I was trying it, there was no implementation for cloud without a workaround - Imo it is a bit overloaded, I prefer a cleaner user interface But I did find it a good inspiration for my work, nonetheless.
