Episode: 1369
Title: HPR1369: NaNoWriMo Prep
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1369/hpr1369.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 00:21:18

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Well, it's been a few years since I've done a hacker public radio podcast, so I thought
I'd do another one here.
This is Heisenberg, and I'm going to do mine on NanoWriteModel, which is National
Novel Writing Month, which is in November, starts on November 1st, and it's where you
do a 50,000-word project, some sort of novel, and try to get that done in the month of
November.
It's kind of an interesting little project, and it's kind of fun in order to get that done,
and there's some tools and some interesting things that I do with that.
One of the things that I like to do is go to the National Novel Writing Month, the
NanoWriteModel.org website, and they've got a dashboard there.
There's some pretty cool tools that you can play around with there to learn about your
novel, to keep track of how many words you do, make sure you're on path, get the statistics
of how many words you still need to get on average per day, the total written words that
you have, words remaining, what current day it is, days remaining, and at what date you'll
finish on at what rate?
My last novel was in 2011, I skipped 2012, and I'm going to do 2013.
In 2011, I did a techno thriller on a hacker and that sort of thing, and everything was,
since I'm a software engineer, everything was true to life and true story of how this
guy kind of spiraled into a downward slope.
That one ended up being around 65,000 words, and well over the 50,000 word mark, and I'm
hoping for my new one to be up there too, which I'm planning on doing another techno thriller,
this one with a team of geeky software engineers, and it should be pretty cool.
There are really cool things on the website that I really like for the stats.
You can keep track of there, there are buddies that kind of keep you in on it, also posting
on Facebook, telling other people that you're planning to doing this, and you're planning
on getting these words done, and that sort of thing kind of gives you motivation because
you don't want to let those people down, and you're already told them there's an ego
at stake and those sorts of things.
I'm doing this with my daughter, and I did it with my daughter.
We did this back in 2011, and she finished her novel, also, and so we both successfully
got over 50,000 words in November, and it's not an easy thing to do for a month of November.
When we do it, I try to focus specifically on the task and to get the words out, I usually
don't do a lot of spell checking.
I don't go back and recheck words and that sort of thing.
I usually clean up the novel in December, and in order to get a large novel out in a short
amount of time, in order to get it just busted out, and then kind of work it on clean up
after it rough draft, I kind of tend to focus on just the basics, and in order to focus
on the basics, I have a real hard time using a normal word processor.
When I write, I don't like using Microsoft Word, and I don't like using Open Office, or
any of these type of word processors, that there's a lot of things to distract you, and I don't
like that.
I use a bit of code called Focus Writer, and I like Focus Writer because it's under
the GPL version 3, which means it's open source.
You can download the source code, it's in C++, and if you don't like any particular thing
they do, you can modify it, and then compile it yourself, and then you have your own version
of Focus Writer, which is really nice because there's some features that I kind of wanted
in there, and I put them in there.
I guess if I was a more responsible developer, I'd actually give those back to Focus Writer
and give that information back to the public, so they could also enjoy the code change of
this that I've made.
It has some really cool features in there, but one of my favorite features is the fact
that it's just blank.
It fills up the whole screen, it's gray, and you type on it.
You can change the background, you can change the colors, you can change themes, and that
sort of thing, but I like the middle-mo less approach, and I like it to be very faded
into the background.
It also has the ability to de-emphasize all of the lines, but the one you're on are the
last three lines or that sort of thing, so once you're done with a line, you can set
it so it will gray out those lines, it'll make lighter color text on those lines, and
your brain doesn't focus as much on those, you focus on going forward, and you can bust
out those words a lot easier.
You still have the visibility to them because they're light gray, but it's kind of like
one of those check-click boxes, in other words, light gray, your brain doesn't think
you can click on it, doesn't think you can use it anymore, so you don't really go back
to it as much.
There's timers and alarms, too, so if you say, well, I want to write for two hours, and
I don't want anybody to disturb me, I'm just going to go for two hours, and I really
recommend setting the alarm because when you get into this, there's nothing to distract
you.
It's a complete page that fills up your screen, and you just type words on it, so minimal
list and amazing.
Basically, you can get lost in it.
You can be doing it for hours and hours and hours, so I recommend putting some sort of
timer or alarm on there so that you'll stop, you'll actually eat, and you'll drink, and
sustain yourself.
Those timers are really nice, and then you don't have to worry about what time it is.
You're not constantly looking at the clock.
You know the alarm will go off at a certain time, and so you can just focus on writing,
which is kind of the emptying your brain part of it.
If you can empty all these minor considerations and the whole world's away and you're absorbed
in your writing, you can absorb yourself in there and you don't have those mental blocks.
It's really nice that it's not only works on Windows and Mac OS, but they also can
download Linux, and they even have separate versions for Ubuntu or Fedora, Sennos, Debian,
and those sorts of things.
You can build your own package, or they also have a Deb build that you can just pretty
much install from double-clicking.
If you go to gotcode.org slash focus writer, and it's gottcode.org slash focus writer,
you can see the project itself and what they've done with it, and you can download whatever
versions.
The default, there's a tip-with-download drop-down box, and it defaults to $5, but you
can actually click on it and go up to $0 USD and then click the download, but then it'll
just download and you won't have to pay them any money for it.
If you like it, you can obviously go back and download it again and then pay them money,
but I suggest you just try it out, like any project, and any open source project, try
it before you buy, see if you like it.
There's no limits on it, it's just, you get the whole program if you click to $0, there's
no required to tip, there's no required to pay, so it's under the GPL version three.
It has spell checking, but you can turn that off, so you don't have the red lines underneath.
You can go back and do that.
There's live statistics if you want, but you can turn those off.
It can auto-save if you want.
You can also give it typewriter sound effects if you want.
I find this quite annoying, but you can, if you like the image of a typewriter, you
can give it those effects.
You can set daily goals in order to get your writing up to whatever you want, how many
words per day, and that sort of thing, and there's fully customizable things, multiple
document support.
It does support text, basic RTF, and the ODT file support, the timers and alarms, like
I said before, and a bunch of other features and really cool things that you can do with
it.
So I would say, if you, if you try it out, I would try out a focus writer.
Now my first novel I did not write in focus writer, but I've been playing with this so
long over the last year that I really like focus writer.
My first novel I wrote in GVM, and I wrote, yeah, I wrote 65,000, somewhere 62,000 or something
like that.
I can go back and see the exact number here.
That's the cool thing about the nano-write novel page is you can go back and see the stats
of your actual, it was 65,000 and 29 words written.
I wrote that in VIM, so in GVM, and so yeah, with RAP set, and basically my GVM settings,
I really liked the minimalist approach, I didn't like open office writer and those sorts
of things.
So GVM was very minimal and I could set it up exactly how I wanted it so that I could
come back and then do all the editing later.
A lot of people also will, after you're done with focus writer, then, or whatever program
you write it in, then import it into a Google Doc.
Some people also like directly writing it on the web via Google Docs, and the good thing
about that is that it gives a nice word count, you can sort of see where you are, but it
also Google Docs is available at any location, right?
So if you work on it at home and then you worry if you work on your desktop PC and then
you grab your laptop or you grab your tablet, you want to look and do it or research it,
where an idea comes to your mind and you want to throw something in there.
That's a good place to do those sorts of things.
I suggest you, since it's starting November 1st, I suggest you know, you can't really
start on the novel, that's not the point at all, right?
The point is to start on November 1st, but you can create an outline and you have until
November 1st to come up with ideas and an outline to come up with character plans and
that sort of thing, and I really suggest researching technology.
So if you don't know your subject or if there's a particular part of the subject that
you really, really want to research to get right, I'm kind of a perfectionist myself
about technology because I'm an engineer, software engineer.
So I kind of want to make sure whatever I write is exactly true to whatever technology
it is.
And in order to get those things done, I like to research a little bit, make sure that
it's perfect.
So I get not making any assumptions based off of prior knowledge or I'm not making any
assumptions based off of antiquated knowledge.
So I like to do those sorts of things.
Anyway, I don't want to go dabble on too long about this, but I want to say my handle
on there is a little code monkey and feel free to add me as your friend and I will push
you to finish your novel and please push me to finish my novel and we'll get them done
in November.
We'll get them written at least to rough draft and it should be exciting stuff.
So thank you Hacker Public Radio.
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