Sometimes I look back at the things I write and laugh at myself.
We started this blog in 2006. In internet time, that’s half a life ago.
In 2006 the big social networking tool was MySpace. Facebook was the new kid on the block and Twitter had just been invented. Bloggers mostly used LiveJournal or blogger.com, because only the truly keen or the truly nerdy used WordPress, especially hosting your own site.
Unpublished authors weren’t expected to have websites, although industry advisers were starting to encourage this. Industry advisers were also starting to make the web their own in our in our little writing corner of the internet. In particular, literary agents were starting to blog, dispensing lots of useful information for unpublished writers.
One such agent site was the BookEnds, LLC blog. Like many other blogs set up around the same time, it is now defunct but it was a good site while it was going, full of useful hints and tips about writing query letters, getting published and so on.
Back in November 2007 Jessica Faust wrote about websites for unpublished writers. It was good advice back then, and I even blogged about it.
Part of Jessica’s post talked about putting samples of your writing up on your site. Here’s what I said when I blogged about it.
Jessica also suggests that posting a chapter of your novel is a good idea.
Some of the people who commented on her blog thought this was a good idea, others were a little wary. I confess to being one of the wary ones … I’m not sure about posting any of the work we are currently trying to sell.
“Huh,” is all I can say now, because seriously, one of the first places I go to nowadays on any author’s website (published or unpublished) is their sample pages. When a writer is published, those pages are my major book-buying decision tipper in many cases. If I like a yet-to-be-published writer’s samples well enough I will keep an eye on their site for when they finally are published.
I’ve been using Office 365 a while now. Here are my cool and not-so-cool features.
They’re mostly simple things. It’s weird how the simple things make a big difference. Some of these features may already have existed, I just didn’t know about them.
Cool Word—how long have I been writing this novel?
Word tells you how long you have been editing a document.
Click on the File tab and you get document information. One of the tags in the Properties area is ‘total editing time’.
So far we have spent 37,595 minutes writing our latest novel—626 hours or 26 days straight. That’s a big chunk out of our life.
Document properties
I don’t know how accurate it is for us. When I’m editing I often close the laptop without exiting from the document, but it’s an interesting indicator of how much time we do spend on a book.
Uncool Word—go to page doesn’t work the way it used to
In the old versions of Word you used to be able to click on the page number at the bottom of the screen and bring up the Go To Page box. Now I have to use <ctrl><g> (<ctrl><g> was always there, I just preferred to click).
Cool Word—simple markup
I like the simple markup option. It shows you a nice clean manuscript, but also indicates where revisions have been made.
Cool Word—pick up where you left off
When you open a document it gives you the option to resume where you last left it. Very nice when you’re in the middle of editing.
Cool Word—the ability to reply to comments
We often make comments as part of the editing process. It’s great to be able to reply to a comment.
Uncool Word—all those templates
The way Microsoft displays the templates on the File > New page has changed. It now shows you a list of templates you can open. Most people will think this is a good thing.
Word templates
Me, I just want all that junk off my front screen. I’d love to be able to add my favourite templates here (normal, manuscript, blog) and get rid of the whole distracting mess of the rest. I don’t use other templates that often, and I’m happy to go look for them when I do.
While I’m on it, please, Microsoft, bring back the one-click for a new file based on Normal template. You haven’t had it for a few versions now, but I really miss it.
Uncool OneNote—sharing through the cloud
Again, one of those things that should really be an improvement, but Groove, I miss you.
I use a laptop and the desktop and write between, depending on whether I am at home or out. I add my continuity notes to OneNote. It used to be that I’d come home, plug the laptop into the network, open OneNote on the desktop and any updates I had made during the day were copied across to the desktop. Remember, too, that throughout the day I don’t have the internet on, because all I am using is the word processor.
To share OneNote in Office 365 I had to put the master file on the cloud drive. Now, I come home, plug the laptop into the home network, open OneNote on the laptop so it can copy its data up to the OneNote master, then open OneNote on the desktop so that it can update what has just been uploaded from the laptop.
It’s a lot more complex.
Uncool Outlook—lots of things
I think Microsoft needs to go back and redesign Outlook. All the good stuff that’s in Office 365 Outlook was already there in Office 2010. It wasn’t broken. They didn’t need to fix it.
I particularly hate the wasted space they force onto us by giving us the start of the mail beneath the mail heading. If I wanted a preview, I’d use the reading pane. It’s designed for people reading their email on tablets or phones. Microsoft, I have news for you. Some of us don’t.
I’d love an option to condense each mail down to its heading line.
They changed the icon from yellow to blue. Half the time I open Outlook when I think I am opening Word.
The bugs. One day I found I couldn’t open hyperlinks direct from Outlook mail. I had to go into the registry settings to fix it. (To be fair, I think Chrome has to take some of the blame for this one, but why was the issue limited to Outlook?)
In summary
There are some good things and some not-so-good with the new Office.
Most of my gripes have to do with the fact that Microsoft obviously designed this version of Office for tablets and phones. Unfortunately for me, I’m not using either. (A word processor, a spreadsheet , a presentation program and an email system. How many of these are naturally done on tablets or phones? The only one that naturally works on those systems is email, and to be honest I don’t know anyone who uses Outlook as their mail system on either of those. They use the native mail system provided with their device, or some form of webmail system.)
Otherwise, the functionality itself is sound. Microsoft puts out a good product, and so far, it’s still that.
If you write science fiction or fantasy, you end up doing a lot of world building.
If your world is part of a fantasy it may have some or all of magic, strange creatures, different plant-life, and so on. If your world is part of a science fiction then it may have some or all of new or amazing technology, strange creatures, different plant-life and space.
If you have space, then you probably have spaceships too.
If you know exactly how your space ships work and can describe the physics and technology behind them, then you are most likely writing hard science fiction. As for the rest of us, we have some idea of how our ships work but we couldn’t tell you much about the technology behind it.
But just because we don’t know every technical detail, it doesn’t mean we can forget about basic laws of physics.
Following are some of the things Sherylyn and I considered/discussed when designing our ships for Linesman.
Our ships never land on planets
They have shuttles to do that. Therefore, there are no strict aerodynamic limitations. Thus shape is not an issue.
Shuttles, however, will need aerodynamics of some sort. And they’ll need to be able to take the stresses of continual entry and re-entry to an atmosphere.
Ships will also need to be large enough to fit at least one shuttle, probably in a shuttle bay.
Our ships have artificial gravity
Given that many of our characters live on spaceships and move easily between ship, space stations (the size of cities) and planets, then our people have to physically be able to do this.
That means they can’t spend most of their time in zero gravity and only hit real gravity when they land on a planet. It would be too dangerous. Not to mention it would make our books a farce, because many of our characters are military people. They kick butt. Imagine a soldier coming onto station from months in zero gravity and taking on, and defeating, the soldiers on station.
Our ships can travel faster than light
In fact, they have a form of hyperspace. They jump through the ‘void’ from one point in space to another without having to physically move to get there. These jumps are virtually instantaneous.
This means that the ship speeds required are mostly for moving from the exit point of the jump to their destination. They don’t jump right to the edge of a planet, say. That’s too dangerous. They jump some way out and then use engines and inertia to bring them in close enough to use the shuttle.
Even so, our ships are plenty fast, and can take the stresses involved in truly fast speeds. We’re talking hours from Earth to the moon here, days from Earth to Mars.
Fuel
In our universe we assume that our ships are powered with some form of nuclear fission device, which by then is inexpensive and relatively safe (if you could ever call nuclear fission safe).
We also use hydrogen as a secondary fuel, although we never specify how it is used, or how it is stored.
Most of the fuel will be used in bursts. One initial burst to start the ship in a direction, smaller bursts to change direction or slow down.
Our ships are large
We think of our spaceships more as modern-day ships rather than like aircraft. A cargo ship has the capacity of a container ship, and works much the same, with a cabin area for the crew and the rest of the ship given over to big spaces for cargo. A passenger ship will be more like a modern-day cruise ship with bars and entertainment like a cruise ship has. Troop carriers will be like modern-day aircraft carriers.
So all up, our ships are designed for what they are meant to do—carry cargo, carry people—rather than for aerodynamics. Think a modern office block, a cargo ship or a hotel rather than an aircraft. Their limitations are function and the ability to provide artificial gravity.
I don’t know about you, but I get lots of email newsletters. Junk mail from Barnes and Noble and Amazon and some smaller booksellers I buy from, newsletters from the various writing groups I belong to, lots (and lots and lots) of junk mail from companies I purchase on-line items from.
I also subscribe to a number of author newsletters, where the author mails updates about their work to the reader. I like these, especially when they tell me close to publication date that they have a new book coming out. I’ll look for the book then.
Both the retail sellers and the authors go to some effort to make the emails look good. Adding pictures, formatting it so that it looks good, maybe even running to two columns.
I use Microsoft Outlook, and before I upgraded to Office 365 my Outlook got itself into a twist and started to resize the images. It’s a known issue, which you are supposed to be able to fix by resetting the resolution, but let me tell you, I reset everything I possibly could and nothing fixed it.
Except an upgrade to a new version of Office.
When I got emails with images in them, this was what I saw:
When what I was supposed to see was :
(Both these images were the full extent of what I saw when I opened the mail.)
The text was there, hidden beneath gigantic images that I had to scroll past to look at. After I scrolled sometimes I found the text was in one block and was readable, but other times I had to chase all over the screen to read it because of the way the mail was formatted.
If there was a link at the top of the message to view the newsletter on a webpage, then I clicked on the link.
Otherwise I simply deleted the email.
Sadly, the junk mail proponents always have an ‘if you can’t read this email click here to view in browser’ link. But I have yet to receive a single author newsletter that does.
Romance Writers of Australia (RWA) is, in my opinion, probably the most ‘professional’ of Australian writing groups. By professional here I mean profession-oriented, in a way that encourages and allows their authors to publish books and even make money from their writing.
Part of this has to be due to the genre. Romance novels account for around 50% of mass market books sold, so for authors it’s the biggest market around. Part of it seems to be that many romance writers are more practical, more business-oriented, than other writers. More career-focussed.
I’m a member of RWA. I joined on the recommendation of another writer I met at a speculative fiction workshop. She recommended them as, “Extremely professional, worth joining, and you can learn a lot.”
She was right, even for us, whose stories have romantic elements rather than being true romance.
Like other career-oriented writing organisations—Romance Writers of America (RWA), Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA)*—RWA (and from now on when I say RWA I mean Romance Writers Australia) gives published writers extras. This includes access to special forum groups, a published author newsletter, special craft and career workshops and opportunities for promotion and to present paid workshops.
That’s not to say that RWA’s unpublished authors miss out. They get access to the monthly newsletter, to competitions that help them improve their writing, access to critique partners, e-groups and so on. Many of the competitions, particularly, are only available to unpublished authors.
At present, RWA defines “published” as …
the signing of a contract for any fictional narrative work of 40,000 words or more, excluding any self-published or vanity/subsidy published works.
Right now RWA is pondering the definition of ‘published’, because a lot of their members are self-publishing. Some of those who self-publish are selling quite a few books, but are still ineligible to be considered published members.
Commander Chris Hadfield is the best thing to have happened to the western space program since the moon landing.
It’s not just in the stunning photographs he sent back from space, or the demonstrations of everything from how to eat a sandwich to what happens when you cry in space. It was the sheer accessibility of everything and the sense of wonder he brought with it. Sometimes we humans get so jaded we think there is truly nothing new under the sun. Then we see Chris Hadfield show us what it’s like to cry in space and that sense of wonder returns.
For science fiction writers, Hadfield is also a truly accessible source of research that we wouldn’t normally have access to.
For me, some of the most fascinating facts have come out of Hadfield’s interviews on his return to earth. In particular, CSA’s first interview with Canadian journalists, and Maclean’s The Wonder of Chris Hadfield, where he talks about, among other things, how long periods in weightlessness emulates the symptoms of aging.
Coming back to Earth there was dizziness. His body doesn’t remember how to get blood back to head, so he has to wear a G-suit to push it back up. He hasn’t held his head up for five months, so his neck and back are sore. He is tottering around like an old man. His blood vessels have hardened and his cardiovascular system has changed. His bones have lost calcium.
He is, in fact, displaying many of the symptoms of old age.
When he lays down on the mat to do exercises, it feels like two people are laying on top of him, that someone is squeezing him into the floor.
After Hadfield landed he could feel the weight of his lips and tongue and had to change the way he talked. He hadn’t realised he had learned to talk with a weightless tongue.
Weightlessness is a superpower. You can fly.
Right now he is trying to learn how to walk again.
He has to sit down in the shower so he doesn’t faint or fall down. He doesn’t have callouses on his feet, so it’s like walking on hot coals.
Hadfield brings these symptoms to life. He talks frankly about them and the impact they have on him.
For a science fiction writer, he’s a dream. It’s as close as you can get to being in space yourself without actually going there.
Not only that, it makes you think about how you write your own space scenes. For example, I’m really glad that in the Linesman series we chose to give our spaceships artificial gravity, because given the above symptoms there’s no way our spacers could do the things they are doing in the story if they didn’t have it.
In Linesman II our POV character rescues someone who has spent six months drifting in space in an emergency pod. Let me tell you, Griff’s symptoms are going to change.
My netbook died, almost four years to the day I bought it.
It was a great little computer, ideal for writing on my work commute and at lunchtimes, and it freed up my writing so much I will be forever grateful I bought it. I have done some of my best writing to date on that little machine.
It had been sending out warning signals for weeks. It wouldn’t even turn itself off any more when you closed the lid. I had to pull out the battery every time I closed the lid. Then one day it simply wouldn’t turn on. Or rather, it turned on because I could hear the fan working and see the lights, but nothing came up on the screen. Nor could I plug it into the network with an Ethernet cable and access the disk.
So, finally time for a new laptop.
I wanted a netbook. First, because they’re cheap and the computer I carry around really is only a word processor. I don’t even access the internet on it. Second, because netbooks are small and light. It had to pass the handbag test. Could I fit it into my handbag?
Off I went shopping.
I wanted an Acer Aspire One. I’d been more than satisfied with the one I’d had for the last four years.
“We stopped selling those in January,” the salesman said. “We don’t sell netbooks any more.”
Four years of netbooks. You’d think that the one on the left was newer, because it was smaller (well you would if you didn’t see how well-used it was) but no, the blue netbook is four years old, the green one two (another Acer Aspire One) and the monster on the right is brand new.
The first thing you notice about Office 2013/365 is that it is very, very white. Migraine-inducing white in our family.
I can see that on a smaller screen like an iPad the white would be good. Not too much clutter.
I, however, have two 24″ screens and that makes for a lot of white space. The washed-out scheme led to eye-strain and headaches.
The first thing I did was add as much colour as I could by giving the screen as much contrast as I could. There isn’t much to choose from. White (default), light grey and dark grey.
Rossi, Rossi, Rossi. What are you doing to us? You’re taking over our story.
It’s not your story.
It’s Acquard’s story. And Tommy’s story. Plus a couple of side tales about Professor Gryffdd Tan and your old boss, Leo Rickenback. You remember Rickenback, don’t you? The man who sold your contract to the enemy. You hate him. At least, you’re supposed to. And he did reputedly try to poison you, even if you yourself said he wouldn’t have the balls to do it.
I repeat. It’s not your story.
So what are you doing taking over?
It’s not even the first time you’ve tried it. You did it before, in our first book in this series.
I’ve got news for you. No-one liked you. They skipped over your parts. We kept chopping you down, again and again. In the last edit we took out nearly 10,000 of your words. By the end of that rewrite you were just a shadow of your former self.
Now you’re doing it again.
We have already chopped out 20,000 of your words in this novel, and I can see another 20,000 going, maybe more.
I say again. This is not your story.
Let me tell you some facts.
You’re arrogant and opinionated. You’re the master of the verbal put-down. You’re politically ambitious and don’t care who you trample on your way to the top. You have an extremely high opinion of yourself and your abilities. In short, you are not someone we want to spend a whole book with. And let’s be honest, you’re so full of yourself you really have nothing to say. You’re only in this book because Acquard needs a linesman and you’re the only one around.
I don’t know how you manage to weasel your way into where the action is, but you’re always there.
We definitely don’t want to hear about it from your point-of-view.
What’s the difference between Office 365 and Office 2013?
Or rephrased, should you buy or rent?
A problem I have with Microsoft is that they have great information available but half the time you don’t know it’s there, and even when you do know, you don’t understand what they’re saying until you’ve worked it out for yourself.
And that sentence is about as confusing as I find Microsoft is, but translated it means when you know what they’re talking about the information they provide is good. Before that it may as well be written in another language.
Note too that everything I say here is for the PC. There are some limitations for the Mac. I won’t go into these, as I don’t have a Mac, but be aware that you don’t get everything if you’re running things on Apple.
So, Office 365 and Office 2013?
Underneath, they’re pretty much the same product. The main differences.
Office 2013
Buy once, use forever. A flat, one-off price
Only use on your own PC
Different versions have different products—for example, Office Professional version has Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Publisher and Access, while Office Home and Student has Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. There’s a full list of versions on Microsoft’s Which Office is Best For You page. This page also shows Office 365 to compare with
Office 365
An annual fee. You pay every year. Effectively, you are renting the software
You can use it on up to five computers
You get the full Office suite (even if you only use Word)
You get some online storage – think Dropbox for Microsoft
If you’re on another computer—say an internet café—then you can still use Office (your documents have to be online for this, but it’s still a nice feature) — think GoogleDocs for Microsoft
So think of Office 2013 as your standard Microsoft Office product and Office 365 as standard Office plus the Microsoft equivalent of Google Docs and DropBox. Except that Google Docs and DropBox are free, whereas Office isn’t.
One thing that worried me when I first looked at Office 365 was whether I had to be logged on to use it?
No, and I proved this during my morning and evening train commutes, where I turn off the internet and simply use Word and the PC, and save to my c: drive. Everything worked fine.
Of course, I couldn’t access anything on my skydrive while I was offline, but I expected that.
So why isn’t everyone renting?
On the face of it, Office 365 has so many advantages why wouldn’t you choose it over a standard Office suite?
There are two big minuses.
First, you are renting the software. In 12 months time you have to pay another fee to Microsoft to use it for the next 12 months. You have no control over the price, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. Suppose you don’t have the money to upgrade. Suppose you don’t want to. Microsoft is effectively holding you to ransom here. If you are a writer who only uses Word, and you’re the only one in your household who uses it, why not simply purchase Office 2013 Home and Student. It’s less than the cost of two years’ rental of Office 365.
Also, I’m not a big fan of the cloud, which is Microsoft’s fancy name for online storage. I like to be in control of my data. I don’t like it that someone else has access to my work. Or to some of it, anyway.
Why we chose Office 365
In the end we went for Office 365. We had four PCs between us, which meant we had to buy four licenses anyway, so we factored in that even paying four years’ rental we’d still be better off.
Provided Microsoft keeps their costs down and their licensing model the same.
Plus we do want to share documents. We already do this with OneNote, synchronising across machines, and we love it. We could save something on our c: drive, and next time we joined the network OneNote would synchronise everything.
This was probably the deciding factor.
We’ll let you know how we go.
p.s. As an unexpected bonus, when we upgraded to Office 365 it didn’t delete Office 2007, so the machines with 2007 on them still have valid working versions. If we ever choose to revert back.
