K.L. Neidecker's Blog

Welcome to yet another “first post” on my blog.

That’s right, folks, I’ve restarted the entire blog, and that’s ok. Wiped it clean, dusted things off, shoveled away all the refuse and the little piles of junk which collected over the years on this mostly-ignored corner of the internet.

A complete reinstall, a kick in the pants, plucking at cobwebs.

Why, you ask? Or, more likely, you didn’t ask, but I’ll tell in a moment either way.

I know blogs aren’t what they once were even a few years ago. Micro-blogging, social media, arguing with troglodytes online in 280 character bursts, these things quickly made long-form blogs almost as trite as a typewriter in a coffee house—and in record time. In only a few short years, blogging went from the Next Big Thing to Oh That Old Thing, except for a few great ones still in existence and a whole lot of tinfoil-hat, lizard people type crank blogs.

The fact is, I never followed the “best practices” of the fiction-writer-with-a-blog. Post every day, talk about this or that, engage with your audience. Start a podcast. Report on the newest publishing news. SEO. Forget about it. If I was on the first twenty pages of a Google search it would be surprising.

To be frank (which would be odd, as I am not, to the best of my knowledge, Frank, but feel free to call me whatever you want), I always found many blogs to be very shallow waters. Ankle deep at best, full of little posts with tiny paragraphs and a sort of machine-gun cadence. “Badda badda bop bop. Badda bop badda badda! Badda bop bop bop. THE END.”

Not that this is some terrible thing on its own. Tight, short posts that deliver information quickly are wonderful. But when all the posts on all the blogs are like that, well, it gets boring, like reading a novel made up of one-word paragraphs or flipping through a calendar full of aphorisms.

Pith and snark.

I never wanted to follow that pattern.

But I also never wanted to become the politicized blog, the wall-of-text clearing house where I vent into the void while paddling the ass of my hobby horse and shooting a toy cap gun into the air. Do I want to scream into the internet’s ear? Sure I do. If I had the super-power to jump through time and space, pop into being in any place in the world, have no doubt I’d flit here and there grabbing lapels and shaking chowderheads until pennies fell out of their ears, shouting “What the hell is wrong with you God damn it!”

I, however, cannot do such a thing, which leaves me one real recourse, which is to put all my politics, thoughts, and opinions out on Twitter, or Facebook, or here on a random blog.

But we all know there are more than enough places to read rants and screeds, some with real weight and heft and meaning and others…well, not so much.

However, allow me to present to you Exhibit A, labeled “The internet today and the recent history of 2020,” which I think should be sufficient proof that venting online does absolutely nothing for anyone at all. Not even for the person venting, which they think will make them feel better. Instead they get sucked into some kind of online fight-club where cheap shots are encouraged and the nearest hospital is on the other side of a field of dirty diapers and broken glass.

How many of us really have the energy to spare?

Anyway, why I am starting this blog fresh:

When I started this thing almost a decade ago, things were different. I was different, the world was different, the internet was different. So much of what I said here, while fine enough I suppose, was also very out of date.

This was old stuff, folks. I had bits and bobs installed from almost a decade ago, subfolders in subfolders, plugins which hadn’t been updated since Twitter was a force for good instead of evil—eons ago in internet time.

Sure, some blogs like that of John Scalzi have been around way longer than most and have not needed to start over. Mr. Scalzi, however, was a professional for years before starting his, while I was mostly winging it and the difference in quality showed.

On top of that, I just creaked my aging bones over the forty year old marker. A lot of things have become clear to me in the last ten years.

Oh, and sometimes it seems like the world is ending.

Stuff like that.

I’m a writer, yet I don’t write nearly enough. I never have, honestly. I’m not one of those “I bleed words” folks, nor am I a “if the world ended I’d still write using burned wood to scratch black marks onto the bomb-shelter walls” guy. I’m the “I enjoy creating things and telling stories” guy, and there are a lot of ways to do both those things.

If the world ended, I’d be surviving, not writing. If aliens came down, kidnapped me as a specimen for study, I’d be busy biting my captor’s long gangly gray digits and flailing on the gurney, not looking for a pen and paper.

It’s likely that these experiences would—at some later time when I’m alive and well, having escaped my alien captors or found enough food to get by after some great apocalypse—be used in some way to create, tell a story, to entertain or inform. But not until after it was over.

In the end, I’m a person who wants to create. I’m the guy who looked for the level-editors for my favorite games, back when those things were held together by duct-tape and spit and shared over modems screeching through telephone lines. I’m the kind of person who always looks for a way to turn one thing into another (often using things in ways they were never meant to be used). I’m the guy who voids warrenties, cobbles together tools out of whatever is laying around, dreams big dreams even as my body tells me I just don’t have the energy to follow through.

And I think the best way to scratch that creative itch is by writing, for sure. The budget for that is whatever it takes to buy a word processor, laptop, or even a pen and paper. No vast crew of folks to run cameras and edit a movie, no licensing fees to develop games using Unity, no paint to dry on the palette while you zone out.

Writing is accessible, wonderful, and portable.

It’s also a real pain in the ass.

Want instant gratification? Nope. You are knee deep in the muck and light is but a myth, each step in the sucking mud a reminder that there is a destination, but not one you can really see, or even know if it’s worth getting to, until you are nearly there.

Like to see the results of your work in one viewing? Nah.

Have to take a “big picture” look at the novel to see if you are heading in the right direction? Better be ready to read a hundred pages to do so. No whacking the F5 key to quickly run your creation, or holding your canvas up to the light to take in your progress and see where you are at. It’s just pages and pages of dense ideas, concepts, words, all of it needing to entertain on their own while also coming together in some greater arc at a distance you just can’t see while you are nose-to-the-screen.

Are you doing it right? No idea.

What even is the right way to do it? Um, well, take your pick from the gamut of options ranging from just write it will suck but that’s ok to plan every detail to use this framework and beat sheet to frameworks are the devil’s work and you should just feel the story, man and more and more.

If you write, I bet you’ve delt with this very thing: A good idea, an exciting idea, all sorts of concepts, bits of theme growing in your mind, this is going to be great, oh my god…then you sit down, and with the long, mourning brrrriiiiiiiiippppppppp of a deflating balloon it all just leaks out of your ears and onto the floor, leaving you staring at an empty screen and berating yourself for yet another failure.

But I’m not a fearful person, you think. I do crazy stuff all the time, no planning, just off the cuff! I mean, I managed a retail store with no training, nearly got into a dozen physical fights with folks who thought they could push me around or threaten those I love, volunteered for important jobs with no prior experience and managed to pull it off, hell I’d skydive right now if I was magically teleported onto a crashing plane and I’d not even think twice about it…

And yet, somehow the transition between thinking about a project and actually writing the damned thing scares the crap out of you, like plucking the magic ideas out of the ether and stapling them to the page was akin to slaying a dragon.

It’s not a problem you used to have. Hell, it’s almost like reading and listening to things about the craft has filled your head with so many opposing concepts and things you should or shouldn’t do, you need to be an expert at doublethink to make any sense of it all.

It’s almost like you’ve paralyzed your creativity.

And since it’s always like that, you don’t do the hard part. There is always a reason. Something else needs to be done. You’re tired. Stressed. Just can’t get around to it.

If this is you, then I’d like to invite you to join me here, because this is also me. I may even be the poster-child for exactly this problem. I’ve been in that state for years now. At this rate I may be writing a novel in a bomb shelter, given how the last year went.

But I don’t want it to be like that any longer. I’ve written here and there since a young age. No, I’m not one of those folks who wrote their first novel at 12 years old. I’m not someone who “bleeds words.” It’s always been an on-again-off-again thing for me. Part of just one of the many things that excite me, that interest me, that get my brain going and thoughts bouncing around in my head.

Honestly, I’m tired of that cycle. I’d like to break it. No more off-again, just on. I can’t really tell you why that is when there are easier things to do in life, things that would make more money, take less time, not require one to actually get good at in order to succeed. Yet, for some reason, here I am, forty years old, sitting in the middle of the Great Dumpster-Fire of 2020–2021, wanting to write. Trying to write.

So that’s why I’ve rebooted this blog. I’m letting all the gathered cruft, all the lessons, all the dos and don’ts I’ve learned over the years, just slide on out of my head and down the drain. They aren’t helping, and so they have to go.

And I hope to document that as I do it. What works, what doesn’t, in real time. Because, if you think about it, that’s the best use of a blog at this point.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

One Person’s Take on what the Infinity War Pitch Room Conversation was Like

A week or so back, I finally broke down and watched Avengers: Infinity War.

It took me a long time to get around to it. I’m not sure, but I think, perhaps, I’ve seen the requisite number of superhero movies one must watch to be considered a happy and productive human in modern society. Check that box, one piece of being an American consumer fully in place, now on to the next strange trend…

Not that I hate comic book movies. In fact, I enjoy them. Just, hey, a few dozen a year is more than enough, thanks! And let’s not even mention that we are stuck with Marvel movies as DC seems to be having…trouble…making movies that don’t suck since the third movie of the Nolan Batman series.

So, considering the spoilers about Infinity War which assaulted my eyes for months, and the fact I knew what was going to happen…the supposed “big moment”…I simply felt no great rush to see it. Sure, I’d see it sooner or later, but it was way down on the the list of things to do—somewhere below a visit to the proctologist and spraying out the inside of the garbage cans.

But, hey, I figured it would be fine for a movie night.

And from minute one, I knew I made a terrible mistake, one which proves karma is a bitch and in a past life I must have been a terrible person. Maybe Attila the Hun’s third cousin twice removed, Bob the Hunnish.

I’d like to present to you my imaginings if what the pitching and brainstorming room must have been like as they planned Infinity War out.

Neon lights flicker and highlight nicotine stained drop ceiling panels. The energy is high, the air buzzing with electricity, though that could always just be the faulty wiring buried in walls which have been privy to so many great ideas in better days…

“Ok, so me and the boys have been talking,” Jim said, gesturing to a pile of sock puppets discarded in a dingy corner, button-eyes staring blankly into the distance, “and we got some ideas for the next Avengers movie.”

The writer’s room hushed in anticipation. A head writer for Iron Man 2, an artichoke heart pickled in brine, wetly rolled from its perch.

“Ok, so we open with a battle! Action is good, right? People love that stuff.”

A cricket farted in the distance, the mating call falling on dead ears.

“I mean, just some fighting, on a space ship. In space! Bunch of stuff happens. Sure, it will be confusing, and maybe some viewers will wonder, hey, did I miss an entire movie or something, because this scene feels like it’s part of some larger whole…

“And then we kill off some important characters! Yeah, baby, yeah! That will get people invested.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the room, taking the form of various belches and the whisper quiet rustle of a nostril mined for ore by a probing digit.

“Ok, and then the Hulk enters the picture, a being so powerful he’s been sent into space because of how dangerous he is to have around…but Thanos mops the floor with him. And guess what? That’s the last time we see the Hulk for the rest of the movie!” Jim leaned back and placed dirty boots on the table, grinning.

He continued, “So, no Hulk, because hell, who needs him anyway, and it fixes the plot hole where he would simply own Thanos early on, end of movie.

“Then, we add in every Marvel hero we have into the mix. So many, in fact, that they all only get five minute snippets on screen, and we just keep cutting between everyone fast enough to send a third of our viewers into epileptic fits. Thank goodness for CGI because we need a half-thousand sets to marionette these characters over.

“Thor, even though he’s been around multiple earthlings over a bunch of movies, will act dumb as hell and confused about words like ‘moron’”

Moron twitched in his sleep, the sound of his name nearly pulling him out of his comfortable dreamland.

“Also, some of the best characters in our universe, the space cadets from Gargantuans of the Galaxy or whatever it was we made a few years back, will run into Thor at random in the almost infinite reaches of the unfathomable soul sucking emptiness that is the ever expanding universe. Good timing!

“Let’s see…ah, right, Thanos just keeps winning non stop, and our heroes simply throw the same tactics at him over and over to no avail. You know, like punches and missiles and some Kung fu or some shit. Hey, the dude owned Hulk, so why wouldn’t Captain America try punching him in the gob?”

Tim, the newest writer, one not yet broken in by Marvel and not yet fitted out for his Marvel Brand Gimp Suit, broke his silence when he could take no more. “Hey, uh, this all sounds great and all, but don’t you think—“

“No, I try not to, Tim. Thinking is the direct cause of migraines and bed wetting. Ok, so, we have wizards doing the circle things with their palms, some space folk bopping around almost disconnected from the rest of the story, Avengers not calling other Avengers even though fifty percent of the life of the entire universe hangs in the balance…damn, what else was I going to say,” Jim grasped a bong like an infant would a bottle and ripped on it before smashing it on his own head in victory.

“Right. The love story. Every great tale needs a love story: Romeo and Juliet, Ren and Stimpy, all the greats. So, we have a budding relationship between Vision and whatsherface. Let’s make the viewer care, get them invested.”

Tim nodded, “Right, that’s a solid idea man, sounds—“

Jim cut him off, “Of course, with fifty main characters and a two hour runtime, we won’t actually see any of this love or whatever. We’ll just hint at it a bit, you know. Gotta save screen time for purple ballsack, er, I mean Thanos, to wax laconically about how nice a bro he really is on the inside.”

“Hey, no, I don’t think—“ Tim stuttered.

“Good, my man, good. I think you’ll fit in here with that attitude. So, then let’s kill of all the fun characters. Let’s start with the people of color. First scene to last scene, let’s off some green folk, dissolve some Wakanda heroes, let’s go for broke.

“Again, no Hulk. Just Bruce in a CGI suit, so it’s kinda like the Hulk but suckier. You know, we wouldn’t want that actor to actually be in the movie or anything. Just CGI his ass at all times. Note to self, can we just completely CGI his likeness and not have to have an actor at all?

“Let’s have Dr. Strangelove or whatever his name is willingly hand over the one item his entire order was formed to protect… You know, stay true to the characters.”

The sounds of shattering glass echoed from wall to wall as two writers leapt naked through the windows, fist-bumping one another and shouting, “Brooooooooo!”

“See, Tim,” Jim said, “that’s the kind of energy we need here. Get your shit together. Ok, and lastly, let’s dissolve all the interesting characters we have left. Black Panther for one! Oh, and did I bring up the White Wolf? No? Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t have an arc in the movie anyway. Hell, no one needs a character arc here. It’s only half a story, after all, and doesn’t need to stand alone or anything.”

Joseph the Randy Donkey brayed a lonely song at the water cooler before defecating a sad pile on the floor.

“Damn, I love that donkey,” Jim said while cleaning his left ear with his right big toe. “So, you see where I’m going here, right? For year people have complained we are formulaic, but look at us being all badass and breaking the mold! We will take a decade worth of characters and squash them together, making half a movie that means nothing on it’s own, simply designed to set up our next million dollar movie in a year, needlessly kill off dozens of the best characters in a way that means nothing and will be reversed within the first quarter of the next movie, dabble in romance sorta, and wipe out half the life in the universe to save everyone from running out of food and stuff!”

The room erupted in cheers and whoops. Three men dueled to the death in celebration, Moron awoke from his long slumber in time to vote in the midterms and drive without using his blinkers, seven Hollywood executives took time away from sexually harassing the donkey the stamp and squeal in delight, a motley mob of slatterns boxed with a dusty group of heroin addicts in a mock Walmart, and the seventh seal was opened in the distance.

But a hush fell on the room like a smothering pillow as Tim cleared his throat.

“Hey, um, if Thanos can control time and matter with a mere thought, wielding enough power to kill fifty percent of all living things at the blink of an eye…why doesn’t he simply will infinite resources into being instead of killing untold trillions due to limited resources?”

The silence in the room laid so thick in the air that a large housefly, fat and well fed on over-ripe Hollywood movie drech, collapsed like a crumpled piece of tinfoil from the mere pressure in the room.

Lucky for the brave writers of Infinity War, there was a handy and already broken window to defenestrate Tim from before calling the seventy-five actors and warming up the computers for modern CGI magic.

Blogging and Slogging

I’ve had this blog forever. I mean, maybe not forever forever, geologically speaking, but close enough in the internet world.

This started a fat bunch of years ago. I’m not even sure of the timeline anymore. 2014? 2013? Maybe. I know I still worked as the anti-theft guy for a large cable company at the time, and dabbled in riding the still-popular wave of blogging to great success. I know I had the blog before I found Michael R. Fletcher’s amazing novel, (it was once called 88 and has been since rereleased) Ghosts of Tomorrow, which was around 2014. (Addendum, 2013 for sure. And, oh boy, amateur hour blog at that time for sure…)

That, obviously, isn’t quite how it panned out. You see, the web is chock full of blogs, and maybe half of them (those not written for purely marketing reasons anyway) are by writers of other things besides blog posts. Fiction, non-fiction, talking away and posting away about this or that very important thing.

For a while there, I posted regularly enough. Some reviews, some interviews, some opinions. You know, generally screaming into the void. But that all fell away over time. What, exactly, could I add to the tsunami of writing blogs out there? I’m just some sarcastic git with some writing skill lost in an ocean of blogs, a single bobbing plastic bottle thrown this way and that in the sea of words that is/was the bloggosphere.

And, of course, blogging isn’t the great force it once was. The internet is nothing if not easily corrupted by the whims and will of those who want to make money advertising you their dumb crap. Clickbait articles, nonsense sites with ads above, below, to the left, to the right, in the middle, and all over the content you came to read. Websites that take 30 seconds to load on a 30 megabit connection due to autoplaying videos and fifteen CSS stylesheets layered one over another.

Really, look at the blogs or news sources you even bother reading now. I bet it has shrunk precipitously over the last few years. If you follow the writing world, maybe you read some of Chuck Wendig online, take a gander at John Scalzi, pop on over to Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the occasional updates from George R. R. Martin, and possibly watch Neil Gaiman do his amazing and eloquent thing on Tumblr. And I do read all those, and a few more (may I recommend File 770 for constant updates on the world of publishing, awards, authors, and fandom).

But the days when one followed dozens of blogs, interacting with the authors of those spaces via comments, getting updates on everything that interests you, is mostly a thing of the past. Hell, half the sites out there disabled comments a long, long time ago, and for good reason.

And in the last few years, I’ve published a few small things here and there, bits and bobs of fiction, as well as done grant writing, journalism, marketing copy, been involved in a brewery, a newspaper, an art gallery, moved a handful of times… Well, you get the idea.

Also, in that time, I’ve written my own work far less than I should have, let this blog languish in some cold purgatory, hardly touched my Patreon, and been sidetracked by numerous dead-end projects and things that have taken more of my attention than they should have.

Not to mention just how…wearing…three years at a tourist hot-spot like the brewery I worked in from its opening week until a few months before this post can be on your creativity. Sure, all work is like that to an extent, but honestly some jobs are more damaging than others.

When your job is to entertain, have full-on conversations, and pay 100% attention to dozens of people at once for ten hours a day, well, you ain’t coming home refreshed and ready to roll your face on the keyboard, that’s for sure. Hell, you can’t even escape to a back room, stock area, or kitchen for a breather. It’s you, three foot of bar depth, and people right there with nothing else to do but stare at you and ask what kind of wood the walls are made of, or if you have gluten free free-range fair trade sustainably farmed ethically sourced “ales, because I hate lagers.”

Obviously, that’s also a fat lardy can of excuses (and this is the curse of being human, one can believe they are in the right to be stymied and tired while at the same time realize they could do better if they got off their stupid ass and just did it at the same time).

Writers did their work during World War II. The Great Depression. Through imprisonment, through drug addiction, alcoholism, with kids, with sick family members, while battling figments of their imagination manifesting as sloppy squid-creatures slapping tentacles on the kitchen floor…

And here I am, boo-hooing like a small child who scraped their knee on gravel about some average, everyday life bullshit.

But again, even that isn’t true. Every one of us has our own little monsters nipping at our brains, tiny creatures sapping our will to do more. And it’s simply not good enough to compare our problems with another’s problems and declare ourselves weaker or stronger based on some relative metric of how well we think we (or someone else) is doing. Some things work for our makeup, our particular configuration in this world of infinite configurations, that don’t work for others. And their ways don’t work for us.

We are a combination of our parts, both more and less than the sum of those parts. Chemicals in our brains regulate mood, function, physical reactions, how we see and hear and interact with the world.

And those chemicals are encased in a skull riding a meat-machine with who-knows what strengths and weaknesses, things formed by physical maladies, stresses, what we eat, what we do.

So here we are, I suppose. All of us trying to do whatever it is we are trying to do. And here I am, back at this blog, a blog long since cleared of many of the old posts, written long enough ago as to be not what I want representing me anymore.

For any human-shaped meat-popsicles that remain watching this space, I’ll be posting on a regular basis to rant or rave or talk about what I’m doing. In part to talk to the world. In part to vent the thoughts rattling around in my head. In part because screaming into the void is, contrary to what they might tell you, an honorable and important thing to do. Hell, maybe even healthy.

And finally, I’ll be doing what I should have been doing all this time. Writing stories, getting them into people’s eyeballs. Fixing up and kicking the dust off the Patreon account, brushing the rust off the writing skillset, and seeing where this goofy damn thing takes me.

Writing Hardware

Writing is a very personal process…

Blech, I feel dirty even writing that.

I mean, yeah, it is, but so are most things. But writers, oh precious and fragile artists we aren’t, make it a real personal thing. Like, crazy personal.

“I write best in a crowded zoo while listening to the chimpanzees mate to the beat of Skrillex.”

“Oh no, one needs complete silence! A zen like space, positive energies flowing though their ear holes like angry African ants.”

In reality, almost anyone can write anywhere under any conditions on anything. But, no doubt, we aren’t all equipped to deal with certain things as well as others. I, for one, am ADD as fuck, and humming and whistling, tapping and bumping, throw me off my game. I can write at a park. But I don’t.

In the same way, writing hardware and devices can play to our strengths and weaknesses.

This gives rise to the writing snoots, all aquiver with excitement to convert you to their way of working, their particular hobby horse…

Longhand via pen.

Typewriter via well-muscled-fingers.

Windows PC only.

Mac only.

I want to take a moment to wipe away the dusty, dried yak poo coating these ideas, and talk positives and negatives, as well as basic reality, about writing hardware.

Software is for later. Trust me, I have a lot to talk about there. But we’re dusting the yak poo from hardware today.

Doing it Twice, or I Like to do More Work:

Longhand, i.e. the Cold and Dark Days of Yore

Some folks swear by longhand writing. For those youngins born into the age of the iPad, longhand means writing things (scratching into) on other things (dead tree matter) with cylindrical objects filled with slightly toxic fluid (the elders called them…pens).

(Note, as you read, I like to make fun of stuff, but it’s all in good humor. If you enjoy longhand, I’m not here to take a shit on it.)

I mean, but damn, you know?

Some swear it’s the only way to write, and that it has a sort of mythical, magical feeling to it. It unlocks their inner writing monster and teleports them to a zen place of composition.

Maybe it does. Not for me, of course. My hand is cramping just thinking about it. But if it works for you, and you like the smell of hot ink on cool paper, go for it!

But here’s the deal: no one accepts hand written manuscripts. At all. Period. No agent, no publisher, and Amazon would zap you with a laser from space if you tried to stuff a sheet of notebook paper into their Kindle site—not to mention how unhappy your CD drive would be if you tried to shove your manuscript through it in a desperate bid to turn 300 pages of hand written manuscript into an ebook.

Before you dive into the world of longhand fiction, think long and hard how you plan to get it into someone’s sweaty little palms for reading. You’d likely have to type the whole thing anyway.

If you are adverse to working on a keyboard, ask yourself why. Slow typist? That’s ok. Get a typing program and practice. Or just ignore it and type slowly. Need the smell of paper to get in the mood? Keep some nearby and idly rub your nose on it.

Because, really, you shouldn’t be writing much with pen and paper unless there is a damned good reason. It’s just adding a very lengthy step to your process.

Typewriter, i.e. the Clacker

Oh, there it is. A beauty. Shiny keys, clacking clacking typing action.

A physical way to write, no doubt. And fun enough.

Like the longhand writing above, there are diehard typewriter folks as well.

Who doesn’t want to look like Asimov, IBM Selectric whirring away in front of him? Very writerly, no?

But here we come to a similar problem: typewritten manuscripts are almost never accepted now. We’ve entered the digital age, my friends, and like it or not, it’s a good thing. As a slush reader for a magazine, I can tell you I’m perfectly content with a digital pile of doc files instead of a literal pile of typewriter paper.

If you buy into the “typewriter is the best and only way to write” line some folks spout, be prepaired to have to retype the whole thing into a computer later.

And don’t think you can OCR that bad boy with that fancy assed scanner of yours. I’ve tried. Doesn’t work.

I have a green first gen IBM Selectric on my desk. Told you, I like typewriters. It has a special, easy to read “type” ball on it that OCRs well enough. And even so, there’s an error introduced every few words, spaces missing, and worse. It’s almost as much work to fix the shit as to just retype the work.

Doing it Once, or Keeping up with the Joneses:
Desktops and Laptops: Mac vs Windows vs Linux

This is where we cut through the bullshit and send the fanboi communities to sit in their respective corners.

I’m a tech man, period. I have a Macbook, a Windows PC, an iPhone, iPad, a Kindle, multiple Android tablets, an Atari 130XE from the early 80s with 128 kb of RAM… I play no fanboi games, and worship no brand. The following are from personal experience.

When combing through the myriad choices for writers, there are a lot of things to consider. But, in the end, these systems are as similar as thay are different.

But that doesn’t stop people from endlessly comparing, and yapping, about how only a moron would use Mac/Windows/Linux because of price/stability/etc.

But, let’s step back, brush aside the crap, and dive into what really separates these different systems, pros and ugly cons all on display.

Windows computers

The Good

Let’s get one thing straight: Microsoft is no more, or less, evil than Apple. Just push that all out of the way. Companies do shiesty shit. Big companies do more. World dominating companies like Microsoft and Apple do way more.

Another bit of bull to shovel out of the way: Windows does not crash more, or less, than OS X (now, MacOS…yay, useless name change!). Not anymore, at least. The last few Windows versions have been quite stable, since about Windows 7. Granted, one could ask what took them so long, but I doubt they’d answer your strongly worded letter.

First up, for us writers, Windows is ubiquitous. There is a ton of writing software for Windows, and the newest iterations of Word link up nice with the free cloud service Microsoft offers, which allows for work on Word via your iPhone, iPad, or Android device.

Then there are all the fiction specific software you can find for free or cheap on Windows: yWriter, Sonar 3, Scrivener (the Windows version), WriteMonkey, and more.

Windows machines can be found pretty cheap, and if you’re on a real budget, most of these programs can be run on a fairly old machine bought off eBay.

Your work computer is likely Windows, so yeah, writing on your down time (or when you’re supposed to be doing something else…) is possible.

And Windows is easy enough to use if it is all set up for you already. If you avoid surfing fishy sites and mucking with your drivers, well, it should be as simple as clicky-start-menu, clicky-application-icon, write. Though, for some reason, people above a certain age (my parents for example), somehow mess up their computer every other week clicking on some dumb-assed email that looks, smells, and tastes like a scam, but they click that link anyway…

Windows laptops can be be found really cheap, and often are good enough for writing.

The Ecosystem

Due to how Windows programs may be Windows only (like many OS X programs are Mac only) be aware that working on a Windows machine may lock you into the Windows “ecosystem,” in other words, that world of computing and software.

If you work in yWriter, you will need to keep working in yWriter. If your system doesn’t have yWriter, or you want to write on a mobile device when out of the house, no joy my friend.

But, of course, Word is linked up to its own little cloud system that works well on Windows, OS X, and all mobile devices worth a damn. So, if you are a big-honking-Word-document-for-my-whole-novel writer, this would work great for you.

But other than Word, or Scrivener for Windows, or pure text files (maybe in Markdown), Windows will become your home from here on out.

The Bad

It’s Windows, so let’s be real here: even though they improved a lot in the security department, it’s still possible to nab yourself a nice bit of malware.

The backup system is not nearly as robust as Apple’s Time Machine system, so be ready to put your stuff on the cloud somewhere, or futz around with Windows’ sub-par backup system.

When a Windows machine breaks, it breaks. It usually requires a full re-install of the operating system to get stuff running again, unless you’re a geek like me, and that could be wasted time and energy, not to mention a headache, when you’re trying to write. That sub-par backup system doesn’t help here, except for restoring lost documents. See the following section on Apple’s Time Machine to see how backup systems should work.

Low-level Windows laptops will likely be prone to breakage and have crappy displays. Seriously, it’s the way of things. Ever try to use a Walmart level laptop outside on a sunny day? Not gonna see shit. Battery life? Poo. Keyboard feel? Meh. Note, this is just the budget laptops I’m talking about here, as there are plenty of high-end, very nice PC laptops out there. Just be very careful to look for a super HD screen, like the MacBook’s “Retina” display, with a nice clear picture. We write, folks, which means squinting at little letters on a screen all day. Be wary of budget PC laptops for this reason.

OS X (MacOS), otherwise known as an Apple computer

The Good

Another moment here to scoop up the horse-poo that confused folks may dump on your doorstep: Apple computers are no more expensive than a Windows PC with similar hardware. Sorry folks, I’m a computer guy, and I’ve priced this stuff out. If the hardware specs are the same, the price is the same, give or take $100.

Apple computers tend to be made of pretty stern stuff. In the ten years or so I’ve had Apple computers in the house, along with my Windows boxes, I’ve only had one major issue with one—a power supply took a dump. In that time, I’ve had PC hardware shit the bed multiple times, from hard-drives failing to keyboards just forgetting how to keyboard. You pay for this sturdy hardware, of course, and if you buy yourself a nice $1500 Dell, your milage may be the same as if you bought that iMac, but I’m just telling you what I know.

There is also a distinct difference in the quality of software for creatives on a Mac. This isn’t because Macs are better, or more cool, or whatever. Anyone that tells you that is full of shit. But facts are facts: more writers and graphic artists use Macs, and so more companies writing software for those folks make them on Macs. This is just a “better batteries for the same flashlight” thing here—computers are computers, and honestly there is little reason Windows PCs couldn’t be brimming with gems like Ulysses or Storyist (we’ll get more into software in the next post).

The backup system is way better than anything I’ve ever used before. Time Machine, what Macs use to back up files, makes incremental backups of all files, including certain system settings. You can click a file, go into Time Machine, and reset that file to any version it has backed up, from a day ago to hours ago to months ago. The real benefit, however, is how Time Machine is used to restore a screwed Mac or change over to a new one. Boot up a Mac into its restore mode, or boot a new one up fresh and hot from the store, and point it at your Time Machine backup, and boom—all files, all settings, even your messy-assed desktop, is restored to just how it was before.

Macs are also very good when it comes to malware. You really, really have to fuck up to get spyware on your Mac, people. The reason is simple: like Linux, OS X is based off the age-old operating system of Unix, and Unix is designed for multiple users in a public setting. Think old 70s colleges. Everything is locked behind a wall of passwords and limits, so an app can’t insert itself into the guts of the operating system like one can with an older version of Windows, or even the newest versions of Windows (when those pesky loopholes are found and exploited). That isn’t to say it can never happen, as it can and has, but these malicious programs are few and far between, and Apple tends to patch out whatever loophole they used within days.

The Ecosystem

Like Windows, when working on a Mac, you are going to get the most of your writing software if you work within the ecosystem.

Apple has recently changed its half-assed iCloud into a better iCloud Drive, something like a Google Drive or Dropbox, but integrated into the system itself.

Most writing apps on the iPhone/iPad/iPod/iToilet/whatever are able to sync via this iCloud Drive back to your home base iMac or MacBook.

This means, write on Ulysses on the Mac, open the file on your iPhone, continue writing on the bus, come back home, open Ulysses on the Mac, continue like you never left home.

While you can simulate this with various tricks via Dropbox and apps in Windows and mobile devices, none are as seamless as the Apple iCloud system, except maybe Word and Microsoft’s own cloud system.

That’s not to say it can’t be done on Android with your Markdown editor on Windows, just that I’ve never had it made easier than this before, and I’ve tried it all…I mean all. Windows to Android, iPhone to Windows, even writing on a Kindle. Trust me when I say, Apple got this thing right this time.

The Bad

There are no budget Apple products. The cheapest MacBook is still $800. If you’re on a budget, this can be a real problem.

Apple is super proprietary. All their goodies are designed to get you to use their systems forever. Now mind you, I like their systems, and since switching to a Macbook to write, I’ve been much more productive. But thisis a thing, and it might not be your cup of tea.

Linux, or NERD!

The Good

Time for the standard “nip the bullshit in the ass” moment: Linux is not hard to use. Not anymore. No sir/ma’am. Install Ubuntu or Linux Mintand you will have access to a perfectly nice, even amazing, user interface with windows and menus and all the standard modern PC goodness.

Linux can be installed on almost anything, and will run fine in one configuration or another on almost any machine made in the last decade or more. This means a cheap laptop, one that chokes on Windows 7 (the oldest version of Windows I’d say is at all secure and stable), will run Linux like a champ. You may have to forgo some pretty effects, or use a more simple windowing system like XFCE, but damn if it won’t run.

Basically all software on Linux is free and open source. This complicates things a bit sometimes, as open source is sort of nerd code for “always in beta” and may be lax in updates, but on the same token, it may mean it’s way better and more streamlined than anything you have ever worked with. Take OpenOffice for example. It’s a complete Word compatible program, with everything a word processor needs, and is the cheap price of $0.

Linux is about as stable and secure as they come, next to OS X and other Unix type systems. You can crash Linux, but you have to try pretty hard. You can infect Linux with some piece of malware, but oh man do you have to screw the pooch to let that happen.

Linux can, with a certain amount of luck and computer know-how (look up Wine), run Windows software like a champ. So if you like Windows, but are worried about performance or security, this can be an avenue.

There is also an (unsupported) version of Scrivener for Linux, but it seems it’s been abandoned, so it won’t be keeping up with the other versions (so don’t expect them to play nice with each other).

The Ecosystem

There isn’t much of one to speak of in Linux. Linux utilizes free software what can usually be found compiled on Windows or Mac, or simply compatible with software on those systems. OpenOffice, for example, can save in the industry standard doc or the newer docx formats. You can open those in word, no problem, on Windows or Mac.

But, then again, this lack of ecosystem has a certain disadvantage: no integration with mobile devices. Again, hacky use of Dropbox and compatible mobile apps can mitigate this, but don’t expect to find a smooth and easy way to do this, unlike iCloud with Ulysses or Pages, or OneDrive with Word.

The Bad

Linux is a nerd’s heaven. If you aren’t a computer geek, and something goes wrong, have a nerd on hand to help. It can get ugly down there in the old command line.

Linux doesn’t support all hardware (at least out of the box), so be aware of that when picking out a computer to Ubuntu up. Often this can be worked around, as the Linux community is lively and usually has a fix for everything, but this is nerd territory again.

No mobile integration, so if that matters to you, take note.

And you are basically stuck with the software you can find. If OpenOffice doesn’t do it for you, or you really want to use a Mac app, or something along those lines, Linux might not be your cup of tea. This isn’t a slight against Linux, and there are many great pieces of writing software out there for it (if you are a super-geek, you can even dip into Vi, Vim, or Emacs), but the selection can be more limited than the other, more commercially successful systems.

Backup systems are nerd only, folks. There are a lot of quality and amazing backup systems for Linux, but they are usually not plug-and-play like Time Machine.

Chromebooks

The Good

Chromebooks, for those who don’t know, are Google Chrome/Chromium based laptops. It runs what is less of an operating system than a well integrated Chrome browser that takes the place of the normal icons and start-menus of more traditional machines.

While I haven’t messed too much with Chromebooks myself, I hear nothing but good things—they are cheap, use Google Docs by default, and are light and portable.

The Ecosystem

Chrome, Chrome, Chrome, and Google. As they run nothing but web-apps, I’d expect almost everyone using one is Google Docs/Drive only, meaning instant sync and all the good stuff that goes along with it.

The Bad

It is, again, a web-app only device. No Scrivener, or as far as I know Word or OpenOffice. They like to be online, and though you can save documents for offline use, that’s an extra step you may forget.

Though, if Google Docs is your thing, well, I don’t think this is an issue.

Doing it Mobile, or “Look at what I have in my pocket!”
Apple vs Android vs um…is there anything else?


Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.)

The Good

I used to use Android phones, and loved them. Lots of freedom, lots of apps, many free things…

But I’ve slowly moved over to Apple devices through and through.

Apple phones and tablets are expensive, but again, this is a hardware thing. A similar Android device, with a similar “Retina” like super HD display, will cost you much the same.

There are way more creative apps on the iOS systems than Android systems. When I used Android a few years back, there wasn’t a word-smith program worth a damn. No Markdown apps, no apps with bold or italics. This has changed a bit from then, and Word is on Android systems now, as well as others, but there is still a large gulf between them.

Take, for example, Storyist, Ulysses, and now, Scrivener. All are writer-specific apps. All are for writing other than business writing. All support some form of instant syncing back to the home base computer. All allow subdocuments for chapters or scenes, character sheets, and the like.

Or take Apple’s own word processor, Pages. It works the exact same on a Mac, on the web via iCloud.com, or on an iDevice. Exactly the same. Every feature, every shortcut. And it syncs instantly via iCloud.

These are all iOS only apps, and I’ll be damned if I found anything even close when I was an Android user.

The Ecosystem

The same as it is for Apple computers above. You use an iPhone? You’d best stick with an app that works well with iCloud (or Word, which uses Microsoft’s own cloud). You can work through Dropbox and a text editor, etc., but you give up some of the best features of the ecosystem that way.

The Bad

There are no budget Apple devices. It’s an all or nothing affair, or eBay for a used phone. Android device, however, can be found inside cereal boxes if you look hard enough, and can be more budget friendly. The same warning applies here as above: these cheaper devices likely have shit screens, so be aware of your eye’s needs when shopping budget Android devices.

Android devices

The Good

Android is an operating system, not a hardware manufacturer (Google is Android, in fact, and Android is Google).

But, one can find an Android phone for dirt cheap, and a tablet for under $100 if you know where to look.

The higher-end Android devices can be very nice indeed. Nice displays, lots of storage (a big failing of Apple devices is a pricier markup on storage), etc.

While there was not a lot of writing apps on Android when I switched, there are more now. Mostly, I’d say Word is the best here for syncing and having a full-fledged document, and not a stripped down text only file.

The Ecosystem

Android is Google and vice versa.

If you use Android, you are likely using Google for everything. Google Drive/Docs is a very good cloud word processor, and can be used for pro level writing.

Word on Android is as good as Word on anything else, and you can swim in the Microsoft ecosystem with that just fine.

Apple stuff, on the other hand, is less accessible to you. With some Dropbox trickery, you can make this work, but don’t expect a Scrivener on Android, or to be able to open Pages documents.

The Bad

Again, Android has a limited range of creative apps. I blame this on the odd decisions Google made with Android, like a custom version of Java for all the apps to use to run. This makes porting software from one platform, say iOS or Windows, to an Android device a bear, and there are simply less of those out there.

Compare this with Apple and iOS. Ulysses is a Mac app. They ported it, feature complete, to iOS, and now we have it on iPhones and iPads. I can promise you, as a programmer myself, this was way easier than doing the same between a Mac or Windows app to Android.

Many of the lower-end Android devices are, in a word, shit. Slow, shit display, shit RAM. Don’t expect a snappy experience from a Walmart Android phone.

That’s my quick and dirty rundown of the hardware you can use to write, and next up will be the software. It might get messy…

It Begins Anew

Hey there, remember me? No? Likely not, but that’s ok. I’m pretty sure this blog gets more visits from Russian spam bots than humans.

But that’s cool. Our future Russian spambot overlords need to read once in a while too. Who am I to deny them that?

This writing blog was a map of my tentative, wobbly steps as a fiction writer. A ‘wannabe’ or ‘aspiring’ writer of nerdy fiction. It spanned a few years, and included a bunch of missteps, odd ideas, whacky formatting, and assorted theme snafus and site issues.

So, no longer being ‘aspiring’…stupid word…I’ve decided to sweep much of the old and dusty detritus under the nearest available rug and start with a fresh slate. Some of the best old posts remain for intrepid Google surfers, but starting here and now, I’d like to refocus and sharpen this blog into something useful and interesting.

Of course, I’m far from finished learning as a writer. In no way does this imply I think I’m oh so amazing and have learned it all! But, in the end, the web is chock full of early level fiction writers wobbling about drunkenly, and I see no need to add to the existing pile of blog posts already out there about this or that low level topic.

Instead, come join me by the fireside…what do you mean there’s no fire? Of course there is a fire. It’s right there next to that pink elephant playing the harmonica. Anyway, join me as we delve into some writing subjects that interest me, like hardware and software, books and stories that excite me, news in the writing world, and even some of my own work on Amazon and Patreon.

You in?

Groovy. Sign up to my RSS feed at http://klneidecker.com/feed, follow the blog on your favorite reader like Feedly, and maybe join my reading group on the left side of the screen (the group is for my book and story related news only, no spam, minimal emails).

Next up, let’s talk writing hardware, once and for all, bullshit aside, and fanboi brand fanaticism kicked to the curb.

Rebirth!…or something!

Archiving all the cruft to start anew!