To use or not to use, that is the question? Can anyone recommend a writing software program?

With NaNo moving along at a cracking pace - is it Day Four already? - my thoughts turn again to whether I should be using a specialist software writing program. At the beginning of NaNo last year, my NaNo group suggested we should use a dedicated program and recommended some free programs to try, like YWriter. I downloaded it but after a bit of fooling around, decided it was too complicated and just plugged on with Word which I'm very familiar with.

So in the lead up to NaNo this year I read different recommendations again, and found Scrivener highly recommended by NaNo writers (you get it 50% off if you are a NaNo winner). I downloaded the beta version (you have to pay up on Dec 12) to try. I even worked through the tutorial, but have not used it for my new novel. Back to good ole Word and comfort.

I must admit, editing my first novel in Word is a bit of a nightmare, with the need to keep everything in different files, blah, blah, it can get a tad confusing and I know there must be a better way.

So, out there in the blogosphere, all you dedicated writers, I'm asking you what program do you use to write your novels? YWriter, Scrivener, Dramatica Pro, Storybase, Contour, Power Structure, Power Writer, The Writer's Software Companion, Writer's Blocks, Master Storyteller, Story Weaver - no wonder I'm confused.? Or are you a Word afficianado?

Please let me know before NaNo gets too far along...please, please...

The Perfect Silence of the Night - Episode 4 #fridayflash

To those lovelies who have been following my vampire series, the story of Vipunin and Chuchulain, the next episode is up .here...In this episode, the mystery is building...

Writing Space/Place - for the Share Your Space Blogfest to celebrate NaNoWriMo.

You'd think only a masochist would enter a blogfest on the first day of NaNo, but hey, you've gotta be a masochist to enter so it's right up my alley. Thanks to Summer at 'and this time...concentrate, I am writing a picture essay about my writing space.

 Just before NaNo begins is a good time to write about where I'll be writing during this crazy month devoted to pen, paper, laptops, netbooks, too much caffeine in the form of chocolate and coffee, too many quick snacks like the giant muffins at my favourite coffee shop, too many...oh, too many to mention...read on...

Trouble with this scenario, my battery always runs out - even though it's supposedly 10 hours!

I've travelled the world, but have never tasted a better muffin than at the Brisbane State Libray coffee shop.

At times we can get a bit antsy about our private writing space. When you have toddlers the writing world is usually around the dining room table, where a few words snatched here and there are better than not writing at all! Many lug laptops or netbooks with them on trains and boats and planes, while others scribble the olde worlde way with parchment and quill in a favourite chair by a roaring fire (must be a few left!)

I'm sure many of you have writing palaces to die for,  but I'm pretty sure it is a truth universally acknowledged (sorry Jane) that some of our writing spaces leave a lot to be desired. But no matter what your situation, writers write!

Oh botheration, what was that word again? Methinks a little nap is in order.

I've been a bit disgruntled with my writing space since I moved from a large beach house to a city apartment. I often go to a coffee shop at the wonderful state-of-the-art city Library a few minutes away and write, surrounded by the sounds and the wonderful smells of coffee, rather than in my tiny space. The problem with this is there is just too much stimulation - there might even be a ridgy-dige digeridoo player to serenade you - distracting.

Getting serenaded while I work.

At the moment my writing place in the apartment is in an open study/cum spare bedroom/cum office/cum husband's ebay buying frenzy space. Eeek! So I only get my writing done in spurts.


I don't feel so bad about my lack of space/place after reading Barbara Kinsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible and recently The Lucuna), and her comments in Small Wonder. To quote: 'It is widely rumored, and also true, that I wrote my first novel in a closet. Before I get all rapturous and carried away here, I had better admit to that. The house was tiny; I was up late at night typing while another person slept, and there just wasn't any other place for me to go but that closet. The circumstances were extreme. And if I have to -- if the Furies should take my freedom or my sight -- I'll go back to writing in the dark. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, writers will go to stupefying lengths to get the infernal roar of words out of their skulls and onto paper.'

Really, I'm just spoilt! I have acres of room!


For NaNoWriMo this year I have booked my own private room where I will write for 2 hours every morning at abovementioned library. This will be good discipline. Every afternoon I teach in the same library, so I will be living half my life there for the whole 30 days.

My writing space for November - a meeting room at the library.

Inside Brisbane Square LIbrary - I teach on the right and write in a meeting room on the left.

STOP PRESS! We moved the tenants out of our beach house and yesterday we began the big task of moving back in - just for weekends at this stage and of course for the Christmas week. It'll be great knowing I have my beach house overlooking the Pacific Ocean waiting for me to escape to when I'm not teaching.

My beach house writing place - just gotta get the table cleared first! I'm making a study this time, but I'm sure I'll still sit at the end of this table as it overlooks the Pacific Ocean...

 ...with a view like this...

So let's go NaNo, let's go...now what where did I put that story outline then?

A Tall Tale from the Queensland Bush - Writer's Platform-Building Crusade entry

Today I'm Guest Blogger over at Jeffrey Beesler's World of the Scribe - a scary tale for Halloween...eeoowww...Read my story here here.

Now...here's my latest challenge. Over at Rach Writes she's cooked up her evil plot to get all of us who signed up for the Writer's Platform-Building Crusade to do whatever they like with the following guidelines:


Write something beginning with 'You may not know this about me...', include the words 'skeleton', 'umbrella' and 'kartoffelpuffer'. Hmm. Made me think for quite awhile. I always knew I was going to write a short short story, so here's what I came up with...I hope you enjoy it while learning something about the Australian bush in the pioneering/Colonial days.

A Tall Tale from the Queensland Bush

You may not know this about me but when I was a child I lived in the bush in a shack built of stringy-bark slabs with a rough timber floor. A big bark kitchen lean-to stood at one end of the house and it was larger than the house itself. Yep, mum liked to cook – damper, delicious cakes and biscuits, kangaroo.

There was bush all around us. No ranges in the distance. Our view consisted of a few stunted trees and spinifex. No undergrowth, no scrub. Just a few young she-oaks struggling for life above the dry creek bed. Civilisation was ninety miles away – some dusty little town whose name I forget.

My father was a Queensland drover, away with his cattle. My mother and her raggedy band of children were left here alone for months at a time.

We didn’t mind. We were nut-brown children running wild in the bush, as free as birds. Once school-of-the-air was over, we were free to roam.

One day my brother Clem and I were running back to the shack for lunch when Clem suddenly yelled: “Snake! Mum, a snake! Looks like a king brown!”

Mum dashed from the kitchen, grabbed my baby brother from the dirt and snatched her kartoffelpuffer off the tank stand.

“Where? Where?”

“In the wood-heap!” yelled my big brother. “You stay where you are, mum! I’ll get him! I’ve got your big umbrella to jab him with!”

Clem liked to act the man-of-the-house when Dad was off droving.

“Clem, no! You might get bitten!”

Clem scowled. Then he yelled:

“There it goes – quick, under the house! Go get him Mum!’

Mum was too slow. She was clutching the baby and trying to jiggle her kartoffelpuffer. Even our mangy dog was too late. Snakes are shifty things – poor Rover reached the crack in the slabs just as the snake’s tail disappeared – into our shack.

Mum made us all stand behind her while she watched for the snake. She dumped the squalling baby in my arms then got a dish of milk and set it down near the wall to tempt the snake. Time passed. No sign of it.

Sundown, and a thunderstorm was brewing. We could feel the electricity in the dry air. We couldn’t go into the house because Mum knew the snake was there, just waiting to come up through a crack in the rough slab floor. We set up in the kitchen.

The kitchen had only a dirt floor. Dad’d made a large table for the centre of the room. Mum brought us in and gave us some damper and treacle, and before it got dark, she snatched up some bedding from the house – terrified of the snake biting her. We slept on the kitchen table while Mum sat down beside us to watch all night.

She had her kartoffelpuffer ready on the old sideboard; she had her sewing basket and a ragged copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal from the pile Dad brought her each time he returned from droving. The dog sat at her feet, watching.

It must have been nearly midnight. Mum thought all of us were asleep but I lay there watching her sit so still, sewing and reading and patting the dog. Every so often she would glance around the floor and walls and whenever she heard a noise, she would reach for her kartoffelpuffer.

A thunderstorm hit the shack. The wind rushed through the cracks in the flimsy wall, nearly blowing out mum’s candle. The thunder rolled across the sky, shaking the dry earth, and the much-needed rain came down in torrents.

We never saw that snake again. Its skeleton will be lying somewhere out in the Queensland bush.

Aussie king brown (mulga snake) - venomous) OOOeeeeaaaaahhhh!

Please don't let snaky scare you. Jeez it does give you the creeps doesn't it?  Please don't run away. Leave a comment first, ha ha...then run for it eeoow..

©DeniseCovey2010

images- redbubble.com (hut)

talismancoins.com (snake)

Never-ending scene Blogfest - Dancing upon the mountains like black rain

Thank you Brenda Drake for hosting this blogfest. My entry in the cliffhanger blogfest is an extract from a short story I wrote after the horrendous Victorian bushfires over twelve months ago. Many people who’d had a tree change move to the serene wooded hill towns outside Melbourne perished as fire swept through, virtually unstoppable, destroying all in its path.

I begin my short extract when the MC, Jilly, had just spoken to the fire authority and alerted them to a fire in her area. One of the problems with the Victorian fires was the lack of responsiveness/resources of the fire-fighting authorities. Many perished because of this. Read on…

Dancing upon the Mountains like Black Rain

Her Fire Plan? 

Jilly slammed the phone down. Oh, God! She was horrified to see the smoke on the ridge had grown from a wisp to a red twister. The red-orange-black flames were skittering along the ground gobbling the brown grasses and spitting out black stubble. A stiff breeze whipped the flames higher and higher. It was heading right for her.The gigantic wall of flame was growing before her eyes like a giant genie free from its bottle. She felt an icy creepiness throughout her body even though the temperature was at boiling point.

Where are the fire trucks?

Her knowledge of fires wouldn’t fill a water glass. She’d only just arrived from the city seeking peace and serenity. But even the rawest city slicker knew that water meant salvation. Thankfully the dam just down the hill was still half full from the previous season’s rains, the pump was primed, ready. C’mon. She dashed to the dam and checked the possibilities—did she have enough hose to saturate the house and fill the gutters? Running back up the hill, she clipped a hose to the back outdoor tap and tested it with a few squirts. Fine.

Okay, I have water.

Where…are…the fire trucks?

Running to the front of the house, she was mesmerised by smoke whirling up the hill in her direction. Oh my Lord! The wind had changed, the fire was coming. A wall of flame was heading her way, galloping across the paddocks like a terrified pack of brumbies. Eucalyptus trees exploding. Animals screaming. Fireballs searing the sky. She was in Dante’s Inferno.

How could fire change so quickly?

She knew she was supposed to go or stay, but she hadn’t thought the fire was going to threaten her. There’d been no warnings. But now it was heading straight for her. The power lines were on fire, the wires swinging. Flying cinders whirling through the sky. It was too late to make a choice—the fire had made it for her. The ferocious blaze was already leap-frogging the valley road and licking its way up the final hill. Escape was impossible.

I’m a survivor. A fire can’t beat me.

Fear got her adrenaline pumping. She ran to the hose. She had to wet everything before the fire reached the dam and wrecked the pump. It was nearly there.

She wet a towel and wrapped it around her face. The water pressure was low, but Jilly managed to coax enough out to do the job. The flames continued their destructive path uphill, well-fuelled by the dry summer grasses, dead trees and undergrowth. As she hosed, she looked around in panic. Everything looked surreal through a blue-grey mist.

Where could she go? Where could she hide? All she could hear was the cracking of exploding trees and the loud whoosh of the flames as they shattered everything in their path. She heard a terrifying sound like a runaway train before she saw it, a gigantic wall of flame, cinders scattering through the sky, falling on her like black rain.

Where…are…the…fire…trucks..?

Go here to read other entries...

©Denise Covey, 2010