Poet Ponders the Digital

MarsEdit (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Mailing posts to blogs, a practice I adopted in 2005, allows a blogger like me to store copies of draft posts within email. If Blogger , WordPress, or the blogging platform of the moment crashes or for some other reason eats my posts, at least I have the original drafts of most entries. I find having such a nicely organized archive convenient — much easier than remembering to archive posts from Blogger or WordPress to my computer. With this post, I am testing MarsEdit from Red Sweater Software based on recent reviews, including an overview on 9to5Mac . Composing posts an email offers a fast way to prepare draft blogs, but the email does not always work well if you want to include basic formatting, images, and links to online resources. Submitting to Blogger via Apple Mail often produced complex HTML with unnecessary font and paragraph formatting styles. Problems with rich text led me to convert blog entries to plaintext in Apple Mail ...

Screenplay sample, showing dialogue and action descriptions. "O.S."=off screen. Written in Final Draft. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) A lot of students and aspiring writers ask me if you "must" use Final Draft or Screenwriter to write a screenplay. No. Absolutely not, unless you are working on a production. In which case, they own or your earn enough for Final Draft or Screenwriter and whatever budget/scheduling apps the production team uses. I have to say, after trying WriterDuet I would use it in a heartbeat for a small production company and definitely for any non-profit, educational projects. No question. The only reason not to use it is that you must have the exclusive rights to a script... and I don't have those in my work. WriterDuet is probably best free or low-cost option I have tested. It is very interesting. Blows away Celtx . The Pro version with off-line editing is cheaper than Final Draft or Screenwriter. The Pro edition is a standalone, o...

Should we teach our digital composition students the "tricks of the trade" for bloggers and other new media publishers? The ancient texts on rhetoric discuss proper attire, gestures, and tone of voice to appeal to audiences. Aren't these almost as shallow as writing the best headline to drive traffic to an online post? Clearly our Greek and Roman ancestors understood that the superficial (nice robes, deep voice) was part of the persuasive art. We tell our students to focus on the quality of their arguments, while blogging, reporting, and scholarly writing fades fast on the Web of today. The great World Wide Web that was going to bring information to everyone is one giant magazine rack, thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Short headlines, ideally implying something sexual in nature, drive traffic. Shocking. Horrible. You won't believe your eyes. From the Huffington Post to old-stalwarts like The Atlantic, clickbait headlines dominate the flow of information (as op...

Speaking is composing, but is it writing? I have long used dictation software to quickly compose drafts of short stories, plays, essays, and magazine columns. The results tend to read more naturally than when I type directly into a word processor. I am pondering whether or not the dictated documents are "better" because they are more approachable for many readers. When I type, I aggressively attempt to avoid forms of "to be" and a list of "weak" words and phrases lacking precision. For this reason, I have considered my typed documents superior to dictated documents. After all, we tell our students that writing should be more refined and precise than the spoken word. Yet, when I read student papers, their attempts to sound "educated" produce jarring prose. In their eagerness to demonstrate vocabulary skills, they instead expose a lack of reading and true word comprehension. Overly complex sentences also reflect internalized models students h...

This is why I haven't been blogging a lot this summer. I've been working on several new plays…  A NEW DEATH A World Premiere By C.S. Wyatt Directed By Kaitlin Kerr Assistant Directed By Sarah McPartland Presented by Throughline Theatre Company   July 18 - July 26 The Grey Box Theatre 3595 Butler St, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15201 TICKETS: http://www.throughlinetheatre.org/tickets-and-pricing/   Featuring: Andy Coleman  Chelsea Faber Hazel Carr Leroy Eric Leslie  Tonya Lynn  Sarah McPartland Jared King Rombold  John Henry Steelman

Use the best tool for the job. It's a simple saying, and one many writers ignore. Paper and pencil, while often my preferred tools for writing, have not been the best tools for writing for at least a century. Typewriters are better, if you are concerned with speed and legibility. Typewriters with correction tape gave us another reason to prefer the mechanical to graphite sticks and wood pulp. I remember my sense of awe when I saw the earliest word processors. These were typewriters with memory, and sometimes a disk drive. Not quite computers, but certainly something more than a manual typewriter, I wanted one… but never owned one. Instead, I upgraded from a blue Smith Corona manual typewriter to a brown Brother electric. Even after receiving an early home computer, a Commodore VIC-20, the typewriter was the best device for writing quickly. My first real computer, a Tandy 1000, included a simple suite called DeskMate. I used the text editor to write stories, saving the...

As a writer, I use technology to help me navigate past the gatekeepers of scriptwriting. Few people realize that when you send a script for stage or screen to any production company, the "Readers" (a job title) tend to come from MFA and Ph.D. programs. These aspiring writers earn a living determining what scripts move to the next stage of consideration (pun intended). The "Coverage Sheet" used by film and some theater companies represents a grading rubric. If a work adheres to the formula, it has a better chance of being advanced in the process. I'm not claiming that the readers know best, but I am admitting that you need to get to the next step or your work is dead. Based on feedback from producers, I developed Word VBA and AppleScript macros to analyze my scripts and mark potential red flags. Some of the "rules" my macros mark are mistaken knowledge the readers insist is accurate. We know they are wrong, as writing instructors, but that doe...

Beat sheets, outlines, storyboard, and other tools help me organize my thoughts when writing. Too many writers stick with word processors as their sole "digital tools" when many other great applications exist — and "applications" for various applications, too. How can you use a spreadsheet to write? And why might you try this? A spreadsheet's columns and rows, a reflection of the ledger books they replaced, make an ideal way to track your pages, words, minutes, or other metrics. My writing spreadsheets range from simple checklists to complex sheets with calculations reflecting how much I need to cut or add to parts of story. (Scrivener's outline view is similar to this, so allow me to plug Scrivener yet again.) My basic story sheet resembles the chart on our website page "Plot and Story" [ http://www.tameri.com/write/plotnstory.html ]. Some plot points should be reached at specific pages, especially early in a story, while others should b...

Video games are written, before and during the coding process. They are, after all, stories — from the simple story of a hungry "Pac-Man" avoiding ghosts to the complex stories of modern massive(ly) multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Yet, some of the aspiring game developers I've met don't quite appreciate how important storytelling is to game success. Blood and guts in high-def will only carry a game so far. During my early years as a computer geek, I'd sit at my VIC-20 keyboard and create text-based adventure games in BASIC. I continued to do this well into college, because there is something about writing a text adventure that forces you to consider the storyline of a game carefully. While text adventures have declined in popularity, graphical first-person games are still constructed as stories beneath the fancy rendering. The tool I've used in the classroom to teach video game writing is Inform [ http://inform7.com ]. The Inform website...

I overuse some words and phrases in my writing. Most writers have some problem words. It isn't that the words should never be used, or that we use them incorrectly. We simply use them too frequently. The following Microsoft Word VBA macro marks words I should check for overuse. Also included are words and phrases I should avoid. Feel free to copy and modify this macro. I encourage my students to try this macro, too. Once you have the macro in Word, you can alter the word list to reflect your preferences and habits. Sub macWordsToAvoid() Dim vFindText As Variant Dim txtWord As Variant 'list the exceptions to look for in an array vFindText = Array("about", "all", "almost", "a lot", "already", "always", "along with", _ "anxiously", "absolutely", "as well", "believe", "certainly", "clearly", "definitely", _ "eagerly",...

As I was writing a post about "comments" in computer programming source code, I noted that I like comments and marginalia when I write for "human" readers. Even when writing for myself, I like to preserve my notes. One of the things we lose with the transition from paper to digital media is the marginalia and other marks readers and writers leave as they read and write. Reading and Marking My wife and I both love books. We revere books. Because of this respect for the printed page, neither of us is an active highlighter, annotator, or scribbler. When I took a class that required marking in a book, it pained me to be destroying the pages with green and orange highlights. When I buy a book, especially a textbook, I don't want someone's marks on the pages. First, the previous reader(s) might have marked the wrong passages as important. Second, it is distracting. I want to read and think about a text on my own, at least initially. I do take notes, and I...

I like comments in computer programming source code. I've never been the programmer to claim, "My code doesn't need comments." Maybe it is because I've always worked on so many projects that I need comments  to remind me what I was thinking when I entered the source code into the text editor. Most programmers end up in a similar situation. They look at a function and wonder, "Why did I do it this way?" Tangent : I also like comments in my "human" writing projects. One of the sad consequences of moving to digital media is that we might lose all the little marginalia authors and editors leave on manuscript drafts. That thought, the desire to preserve my notes, is worthy of its own blog post — so watch for a post on writing software and notes. Here are my rules for comments: Source code files should begin with identifying comments and an update log. Functions, subroutines, and blocks of code should have at least one descriptive comment. ...

The tools we use to write do affect our writing. When I moved from legal pad to typewriter, I found I wrote more. I might not have written better, but I wrote more. Then, a PC clone (a Tandy 1000) entered my life and I found I typed even more. With a basic word processor and a good keyboard, typing was almost as fast as I could think. Oh, and how I loved my Ambra PC. It shipped with an IBM/Lexmark keyboard. Computers contain less metal today than went into that keyboard. It was a metal case, with metal springs and levers inside. That keyboard was a thing of beauty. Only the Apple "tactile" matches the great IBM keyboard designs. Maybe speed isn't the best way to compose documents, but I tell my students to get the words on paper and then worry about revising. (Tangent: I do like dictation software, too, because it can type even faster than I can manually strike the keys. However, I can type on a keyboard anywhere, while dictation requires sitting in my home off...

One of my favorite writing tools is Word Counter 2.1, from Supermagnus Software. http://www.supermagnus.com/mac/Word_Counter/ The price? Free. The value? To quote a popular credit card company, "Priceless." If you're like most of my students, you're asking yourself, "Doesn't every word processor include a word count function? What's the big deal?" Yes, most editing and word processing applications do count words, sentences, and paragraphs. However, I'm more interested in two features that are either incomplete or missing from word processors and layout applications: word frequency counts and readability analyses. Again, most applications provide at least the ability to create these reports, but none of them match the speed or ease of Word Counter. There are several reason I use Word Counter: Not every text editor I use provides real-time word counts; Word counts are curiously inaccurate within some applications; Macros for Word that ...

For the last couple of days I have been reformatting and revising a Word document I created and then passed along to colleagues. Unfortunately the colleagues used "brute force" to alter the formatting of the document. This formatting method rendered the automatic table of contents, title page fields, and indices useless. Brute force formatting is when you override the style of a paragraph or word to match another style's appearance. For example, instead of changing a "Normal" paragraph to "Heading 2" for a section, the editor of the document simply increased the size of the text and applied "bold-italic" font attributes. As a result, headings created this way did not appear in the table of contents. Such formatting was applied throughout the document. In once case, a bullet list appeared in the table of contents because the style was "Heading 3" — with brute force formatting to make the text appear like the "List Paragraph...

People have asked me (okay, two people) what "Poet Ponders" is meant to be. What is my purpose? I now will attempt to clarify what makes "Poet Ponders" different from my blogs on rhetoric or writing. "Poet Ponders Pedagogy" is meant to address the role technology plays within the science and art of education. This is not a blog for general political rants, thoughts on the latest fiction, or photos of my cats. This blog is a place to explore how teaching and learning are affected by hardware and software. As a teacher, how does technology shape my experiences and those of my students? We have moved beyond the early "Digital Age" and through the "Interactive Web 2.0" trends. Now, our students occupy the "Social Media Age" and the Internet is much more than e-mail and the World Wide Web. Writing has been affected by Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and dozens of other "quick" media. These technologies enforce a brevity wit...

In college, I wrote software documentation for mainframe users, which meant I had the opportunity to use text editors and word processors on a variety of computer platforms. I composed documentation on everything from glorified typewriters (DEC VT102 and IBM 3270 terminals) to slick WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") Apple Macs. I was probably not alone in being captivated by the Mac experience. Toss in PageMaker, a few fonts, and a LaserWriter for a complete desktop publishing system, and the Mac was hard to beat. Yet, I quickly realized that I wrote better on my MS-DOS 2.1 PC running WordPerfect 4.2 from floppy disks. How could this be? The Mac was easier to use and the papers I typed looked much better on paper. Why did I type so much more, and much better, on the PC? I didn't work on the Mac; I explored. I'd play with fonts, formatting options, and the nifty features of Word or PageMaker. I'd also play Crystal Quest, Lode Runner, and Dark Castle for ...

While working on the research for my dissertation, I have read page after page on writing pedagogy asserting that the goal of a university writing course should be to teach students that knowledge is socially constructed and that "truth" is relative to culture and community. The problem with this assertion is that students with autism and similar conditions (my scrambled brain, apparently), are not relativists. Various researchers (Wellcome 2008, Frith 2001) have found that individuals with these conditions are more logical, unaffected by emotional inputs or rhetorical framing. I've found quite a bit of research on this aspect of brain trauma and autism and am including these findings in my dissertation. If a group of people are "wired" to think there is a "truth" -- that knowledge is not created but discovered and then applied creatively -- who are educational theorists to consider such people "immature" or "simple-minded" in s...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley December 2009 Issue October 22, 2009 Software to Help the Writer Within Winter tends to drive me inside. I don’t mind the occasional cold winter day, but weeks of dense morning fog and damp drizzle are best enjoyed from a window. I find I write more during the winter months, sitting at my desk with mug (after mug) of hot tea with honey. Apparently, I am not the only writer motivated by the shift in seasons. Each November is National Novel Writing Month , which celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. Known as “ NaNoWriMo ” (say it aloud, with a long “Oh” sound) by participants, what started as a challenge among friends in the Bay Area has become an international happening. The official Web site (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) includes the history and rules for this great start to the writing season. The Web is why NaNoWriMo has exploded in popularity. This is a non-profit, no entry-fee, event that allows everyone to potentially “win” — if you can...

Sometimes the technology wins. The reality of computers is that they are still machines. This means that parts wear out — hard drives certainly come to mind. We rely on fragile little boxes, in my case a MacBook Pro, to store our daily work, our family memories, and much more. Even the "non-moving" parts are technically moving on an atomic level, with heat slowly taking a toll. Memory chips start giving "exception errors" and video cards make abstract art of our virtual desktops. This is why I make lots of backups. It is why I have three external hard drives, and hope the digital demons never cause all three to die at once. One drive is a clone of the MacBook Pro's drive, so if disaster strikes my current work is ready to be revived on another system. The other two are archives, saved for those "I think I did something like that before" moments. With the preceding in mind, I now admit that even following good, defensive habits is not ...