NanoNotepad and Nanowrimo environment
After reading through a thread on what technology people were using to do their writing for Nanowrimo, I was struck by a recurring theme. A lot of people were deliberately seeking out "pure" ways to do the month long trek. Many were going with paper/pen, but others were using tools that left their machine looking more like a sheet of paper than high technology. That resonated with me and fit in with my own private plans for the task. Distractions and procrastinations are one of the biggest drains on long-form writing. This page describes a setup that I think minimizes these while still using the XP laptop I intend to use without having to buy a stripped down dedicated portable word processor. Feel free to add your suggestions and I'll probably augment this as my setup evolves toward November.
Basics
The initial target environment is my Dell 700m running Windows XP Home. It's only about 4 pounds, is running the extra long battery and has a keyboard that, while I don't love things like the too-small forward slash key, I can live with. I'm up to date with patches and have things like Windows Scripting Host and the .NET Framework installed. Much of this isn't necessary, but if you want to follow along, may be relevant in some way.
If you're looking for a laptop and don't want to drop $1000-1500 for a new Dell or iBook, check out my 2 favorite places for older PC's and notebooks:
Retrobox.com - they have stuff starting at just over $100! They're not lightning fast (300Mhz or so), but as cheap as they come. They do not come with Windows, but one of the writing-specific Linux distros mentioned in the forums will turn one of those machines into a dedicated Nanowrimo toolbox. My fileserver came from these folks and was a fantastic deal.
Compgeeks.com - These are a bit higher end, but still half the price of new. Lots of stuff between $300-$600, many with Windows installed. I've been buying from them for years and have gotten lots of great stuff.
Sectioned Off
One of the most common bits of advice given to writers is to set aside a dedicated place and time to work. I think that oftentimes that is taken to mean going to the coffee shop at 8:00pm and little more. However, I think that carving out a writing-specific place on your computer can give you the same seperation in a virtual way.
Several of these techniques can be done on most modern operating systems. First and foremost is to set up a specific account and desktop for the task. Mine is called, creatively enough, "writing". Clear the desktop entirely of icons, autohide or turn off the taskbar and "Start menu" items. If you're after distraction elimination, ditch the wallpaper too. However, a nice calming or inspiring photo or image can work out well too. Now, you should have an account without much stuff starting up automatically, no notification icons checking your email, no instant messenger popping up, etc. With the taskbar hidden, even if there's other software running, you won't see it directly. The start menu is also out of immediate site. While you can still switch to the other tasks and launch new ones, you have to deliberately seek them out. This effect can be further enhanced with some of the replacement shells that take over the desktop entirely from Windows Explorer. I'm using bblean with the taskbar entirely disabled.
On your now bare desktop, put only the icons that are essential to your writing. For me, that's a link to my editor and little else. I'd SERIOUSLY think about things before adding them. Email, web browsers and other communications tools are notorious time zappers. I'd also include any plot or character tools you may have. For things like online dictionaries, an online thesaurus, etc. instead of links to the URL's (which will open the time tarpit known as a regular browser), instead use custom HTA's for each site (only Windows and I'll cover in more detail coming up). Since there's no way to leave the dictionary and go on to other sites, it will keep you on the sites that are actually moving the writing along.
Things like clocks and countdown timers placed strategically on the desktop or as "always on top" widgets can give you the ability to check these progress meters with a glance rather than stopping what you're doing. The Kapsules software is a great way to get these. Konfabulator on the Mac OS X platform performs a similar function. I've got one with a countdown to midnight Nov 30 and one with an analog clock. Note, however, that these widgets can themselves become great timewasters. Avoid any that gather news or other links to things that consume time.
NanoNotepad
For the writing itself, I have built my own editor. It's Nanowrimo specific, lightweight editor that saves in very basic HTML markup. There are no toolbars, no menus, no filenames, yet it includes automatic saves, deadline countdown, automatic word count and otherwise takes care of the obsessive-compulsive activities we tend to do when we write.
It's a simple little HTA file. You just drop it into a new directory and run it. It creates a new HTML document for your novel and saves it regularly. If you want to use it for more than one project, just copy the HTA over into another directory. The output is saved both in a "main" file, named "nanonotepad.html", which always contains your most recent file and ongoing snapshots named with the timestamp in them. The snapshots and regular saves happen every 10 minutes. As the snapshots happen automatically and there's no cleanup, either plan for hard drive space or clean them out manually. Keep in mind that it was written in an evening and much of the code was copy-pasted from sample code, so there isn't a single style to it all. Another evening's work would probably suffice to homogenize it, but it isn't a huge priority for me.
While it doesn't include menus or toolbars (how many hours have been spent tweaking fonts, etc.?) , the normal keyboard commands for formatting in MS Word do work, giving you basic control. The font is pre-selected, though if you are technical, the HTA is just a text file and you can change it if you want.
Screenshot
Download NanoNotepad - Save the file as nanonotepad.hta and run from Windows Explorer.
July 7th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
[...] Accesskey = s
J Wynia
The Pages NanoNotepad and Nanowrimo environment Web Site Screensh [...]
July 12th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
Found this via your Slashdot post on education. Looks LOVELY! Perhaps I will dive in this November….
Thanks much,
Luis
July 16th, 2005 at 5:47 pm
After seeing GTDWiki, I'm thinking of modifying it to be an auxillary tool to NanoNotepad for novel writing. Things like plot notes, character profiles, general notes, etc. The idea is that you'd have NN sitting open with your actual novel and as ideas occur to you that aren't necessarily a fit for the portion you're actually working on or would be a distraction to finish can be jotted into the Wiki instead. I'll have to see how easy it can be modified to a more special-purpose tool. Clearly they modified the original to fit a "Getting Things Done" model, so it shouldn't be too hard. The fact it can spit out printed 3×5 notecards is a real plus in my book.
August 1st, 2005 at 10:41 am
[...] ks, Downloads, Writing
Here's to a better and easier NaNoWriMo this year. The NanoNotepad… check it out.
Comments
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The UR [...]
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:48 pm
The fact that it doesn't have toolbars and all sorts of crazy options is a definite advantage. The minimalist design is focused on the task. Formatting, after all, is just a "copy and paste" stroke away. In the meantime, this tool will keep us focused on our goal. Thanks so much!
On another note, I plan to use my Palm with a wireless keyboard to crank out my work when I'm on the go. I wish I could use this in my Palm, but that's alright as I'll surely be using it on my home machine. Thanks so much for sharing and good luck with NANOWRIMO.
August 26th, 2005 at 11:07 pm
currently reading my del.icio.us links Pentix - Tricks - tricks with pens CornerHardware.com - - finding a stud in the wall STVP Educators Corner - info for entrepreneurs Glen Ellyn Public Library Setting up your writing environment How To Be Productive Working From Home Garrett Dimon / About Going Solo - resources for freelancers Django | The Web framework for perfectionists with deadlines Python Cheese Shop : Home - python software repository
October 15th, 2005 at 8:05 am
[...] NaNoNotePad [...]
October 15th, 2005 at 1:08 pm
But it's for a good reason! I found a cool NaNoWriMo tool via Google that's muchos useful-looking: NaNoNotePad I've downloaded it and am planning on using it on my desktop. *runs off to play with it pre-nano*
November 3rd, 2005 at 3:30 pm
LOVE how it displays word count and time left!
November 3rd, 2005 at 3:31 pm
This is fantastic! Will definately minimise the distraction factor and the compulsive use of MSWord's word count function.
Found it through this thread on the NaNoWriMo site:
http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14813&forum=159
November 6th, 2005 at 5:17 am
This is an excellent tool and I like it a lot. It's been very useful. The countdown timer, and the word count feature are invaluable. And the forced save? You should be canonized. My goodness.
The only suggestions I have for "Mark 2" are:make it recognize more HTML, specifically bold, italic, underline and horizontal lines. And have it STOP recognizing tags and hard returns as "words".
Also…add a "load" feature. I work on my novel from different machines sometimes and I need to be able to load it from some other media.
Still and all, an unbelievably useful tool! And I highly recommend it.
November 6th, 2005 at 9:57 am
[...] Ideas for the novel: 3 (!!) Start-overs: 1 First Try: 726 words, approximately 5 hours. Second Try: 1271 words, approximately 4 hours and 45 minutes. (!!) Estimated Finish Date: June 25th, 2006 (according to my modified Erik Benson spreadsheet. Haha!) Utilities (Writing): Microsoft Word 2000, OpenOffice.org 2.0,WordPad, Textpad, and finally, NaNoNotepad. That last one has proved itself one of the least-distracting, and the most easily customizable. At some point, I'll make it read from a style sheet and stick an appropriate image in each directory — then shit, son, it'll this writer-illustrator's new best pal. :] Much thanks to Mr. Wynia. [...]
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:25 am
Waah! It did funny things to my system for the last ten minutes, and it would not save! It looked nice enough; it was just very, very mean to me.
September 24th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
I'm sorry you had problems with it. What specifically went wrong? I ran it pretty much 16 hours a day for several weeks last November without any problems.
September 25th, 2006 at 3:38 am
It would not save for me, and kept giving me an error message whenever I opened it (I tried it more than once). It also caused my browser to freeze up (I use FireFox) and –I forget what else happened, it's too erly in the morning right now, but sluggish system + freeziness + not workingness = reboot. And yes, I tried it after rebooting, too. Heck, it's oaky. Sometimes systems jsut have little quirks. It's part of their charm.
November 4th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Thanks for the great tool! I made some modifications to it for use this year, like updating the date, changing the window size, and changing the font size. Other changes that you might consider to make the wordcount more accurate are to strip out all apostrophe characters (they get turned into spaces, so possesive names count as two words and contractions count as two words), change all entities into real spaces, and then consolidate multiple consecutive whitespace characters into a single space before splitting the string e.g. - replace(/\s+/g, " "). After making those modifications, it is perfect for my needs!
November 5th, 2006 at 12:05 pm
Can you drop me a copy of your changes (j@wynia.org)? I'll update and share the update. I'm not doing Nano this year or I probably would have made changes myself.
November 9th, 2006 at 8:24 am
I sent it in. The modified wordcount function is usually within 50 words of the NanoWriMo upload wordcount.
November 12th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Hey– this looks great but I get a script error every time I try to run it: 'cl.days' is null or not an object.
Which then keeps the countdown and word count from running. I know nothing really about script and code, but do I need to text edit the file and enter values for days, hours, mins etc?
November 18th, 2006 at 9:00 pm
Edit the file and change the date on line 149 to this year instead of last year.
November 18th, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Or, replace the line with these two to make it work every year:
var thisYear = new Date().getFullYear()
var eventdate = new Date(thisYear, 10, 30);
December 24th, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Hi!
Nice info, big thx.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:15 pm
J, wonderful little program. You've made very helpful suggestions.
Great fix, Johnny B. Thanks!