Hello,

Welcome to The Newb Files, Issue XIII. My apologies for the late arrival of my newsletter.

And, a special thank you to the newly (and recently) subscribed. ...

Zombies, a Novel is making. ... progress, in the wrong direction. 5918 words. ... refer to M.N.M. below.

This is a common piece of advice. I wish I could give credit. ...

I am still struggling with the beginning of Zombies, a novel. I was thinking about it and remembering all the good scenes I have written so far. It's silly to not write because I can't seem to write a couple of chapters how I prefer.

Is this the oft heard of "writers' block"? Maybe. I have, in my almost two years as a writer, always worked on more than one piece at a time. If I wanted to think about something on one story, I would work on another piece that was in progress.

I have my first short story (Scream and Leapt) to polish and send to Beta readers. Yet, I wanted some time away from it before working on it again. So I worked on my novel only and accomplished little new writing.

So, I am going to read the whole thing again. Then, I will prioritize the early scenes (as in, simplify) and start writing it. The output may not match the current quality of my other scenes, but it will get me going. It will let me continue to write the chapters in between the beginning and the end. If I re-write the beginning later, well, that's a writer's life.

I probably won't go into detail about how it went. The updated word count will tell the tale. ...

Does it ever tell the tale. I am down to 5918 words, and so. ...

The Scrivener (Zombies, a Novel) file has been buggy for a while. I know not why; it could be several things. Apparently this is common with the windows version, although I had never had any problems with Scrivener on windows until recently.

To fix it, I started a new Scrivener project, and I was painstakingly copying and pasting everything into the new file from the old.

This will, by default, as well as on purpose, simplify things. Again.

Refer to M.N.M. above.

The Experiment. ...

So. I bought a Mac mini and a KVM switch. The switch allows me to use one monitor, keyboard and mouse on the two computers. Cool.

Scrivener on a Mac, here I come. Yes, you read that right. I am a computer nerd. When I explained how pissed I was at having to recreate the file for my novel, I told my wife I had actually looked into the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. But I don't need a laptop, it would just cause problems. So I looked into a desktop, a Mac Mini. Before I finished explaining she said "buy it!"

I have most of my writing software transferred to the Mac, including Scrivener, after purchasing a new license for a Mac. Oops. ProWritingAid shared the license to the Mac. Nice.

Any difference in the newsletter is because I started it on my PC, moved it to the Mac, and now is now back on the PC, and it. ... changed things. Even though ConverKit is browser-based software.

This could be an expensive experiment, with no real advantage, but we will see. I'll let you know how it goes.

Good thing my wife is a computer nerd as well.

Below are links to a few short stories I wrote. The first three are the results from an exercise in 'voice' for the diymfa.com> writing course I took in the spring of 2020. The fourth is the second short story I ever wrote, which I wrote as an entry for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize.

Clicking a button will take you to my author website.