Writing Reminder – Our proposed solution was simple to implement for us and accessible by any writer (not only the members of the Asengana Community). Preferences were for daily, weekly, or monthly. Personally, I prefer daily.
The French version of the platform is live. This is an important step in the direction we want to go. While there are features we can add to the platform, we got to the moment when the features necessary to write your book are in place.
When you decide to choose a book writing software, you don’t choose just a tool, you choose a business partner. And this business partner needs to provide you with three things:
Research Notes – You can have the main Notes as world building components – Geography, People, Culture, Economy and others – while detailing each one of them. We also improved on the way the editor is cleaning the content you copy from a website as research. In this one, we used a text from Wikipedia. The images (also ads on the webpage) are automatically removed, leaving the content you need.
Distraction Free Writing and the fine line between being detailed oriented when you create a character profile and getting swallowed by the quick sand of never ending nitpicking.
New writing editor – Froala. The first editor we used for the platform it was simple and functional. We had to decide between developing functionalities for it or use a different one. It was a decision based not only on cost but also based on the wonderful work done by the Froala WYSIWYG HTML Editor team.
What if it’s actually a need for connecting with other writers? I’m certain that the writer asking knows she can find the answer online, but it’s more about connecting with your own community, a conversation opener.
This is the big one. There are tools paid or free that can help you create an eBook. The difference is the integration with the rest of the tools you work with. Once you got to the final draft, you can export your book to ePub with one click. You can upload it to any online store that sells eBooks after that.
We start a new part of our blog – Learning Resources for Writers with one of our favorite writers: Brandon Sanderson. These videos are free on YouTube. They were filmed and provided by Camera Panda.
I was siting in a Zoom video-call with a client holding my 10 months old daughter in my arms and I had a moment. A “this is it” moment. Our lives are changed for good. It will get better, but it will not get back to anything like before.
Do you have a hard time sticking with writing? Check out these great tips to help you create a consistent writing practice.
If you practice, you’ll see improvement. If you don’t practice, you won’t. It’s that simple. Saying “I can’t do it” is self-defeating and does nothing for you. Sometimes it’s difficult to see the improvement you’ve made in your writing. But trust me, your readers notice. That is one of the gifts of publishing – getting real feedback about your progress from your readers.
Every time you design something and you spend too much time in the system, you forget to explain or show certain things because in your mind they’re clear. That is why we work in improving the user experience every month. The Project Map is a step in this direction.
Time Map. This is one of the most important analytics tools that you’ll use as a writer. It’s structured as a vertical timeline based on the born/dead dates for your characters and the date for every scene.
We have a few improvements to Menu and Manuscript page and a major update for this month – a new page – Chapter List.
The constructive feedback kept coming. Our Concierge – Jira Service Desk – proves to be a very easy to use and efficient communication tool. It’s a pleasure to answer back to writers and tell them “Hey, we made last night the change you suggested. Please check and let us know if it’s what you needed. Also, thank you because we are sure the other writers will benefit from it too.”
And then comes the other type of feedback revolving around the next two ideas…
I wish I could say the month of January was a quiet one, but I would be lying. It was an exciting month, especially because of the official launch of the platform.
To be honest, for us, the launch of the Asengana platform took place 10 months ago, when the first Early Adopter subscribed to the list.
Kanban is an Agile methodology I use in my everyday life. You will be using it when writing your books with the assistance of the Asengana platform.
The sales numbers isn’t the only result you should examine. You should keep track of the number of followers on each social network, the number of likes and shares for certain posts, your website traffic (Google Analytics), and anything else you think might be helpful in quantifying the user experience.
This another boring article about things everybody knows. Sometimes, self-sufficiency makes us ignore the changes in functionalities or algorithms of various social networks. Is back to basics, one-on-one communication.
These three recipes for writing articles seem to produce more compelling results than others and are easy to follow. Even if they are not applicable per se for a writer, they offer a glimpse into the mind of a marketer.
