Thoughts

So, I've decided to do a thing.

I'm way overdue for an update here. It is both astonishing and embarrassing that my last post here was over three years ago. The obvious question is, what's going on? Or, maybe more accurately, what the heck happened?

I've still been writing, but the projects I have been working on haven't felt appropriate to share for a number of reasons.

It has been a shockingly long time since I've updated the blog, but that's not always a bad thing. Silence can be productive and I have been busy working on a number of writing projects:

Here is where things get really nerdy!

As I mentioned in previous sections writing in Markdown is pretty easy and requires very little in the way of actual coding or additional work. You're free to just write the way you normally would using Markdown style codes to create the kind of formatting you need in whatever text editor suits you. The biggest exception to that is when dealing with chapter titles and creating a table of contents. These tasks go hand-in-hand, so I'm going to talk about them together.

Okay, so we've already talked about why Plain Text files and Markdown is the way to go. I rambled on and on about the different gadgets I like to use when I'm writing. It's time to get into some specifics regarding the software I use, and if we're going to travel down that particular rabbit hole, we're going to have to talk about text editors.

I've just gone on and on about file formats and code without talking about how I physically draft my books. These are the tools I use and a little explanation as to why.

I skipped the idea part. That's usually born from a combination of insomnia, listening to far too many podcasts, and just paying attention to the people I pass on the street while going to and from work. So, we'll skip that and go straight to the writing process.

After years of fiddling with a variety of word processors, trying to find the perfect one that suits my needs, I eventually made the switch to writing in plain text using Markdown-style formatting. There are a couple of reasons for this:

November is right around the corner and while it may seem a little early, I've already started jotting down some notes and making my initial plans for this year's NaNoWriMo.