Kindle 2.0 Impressions and Tips

I received my Kindle 2.0 last night and have been playing with it for awhile.  My main reason for getting it is to read my own and other author's unpublished manuscripts.  Reading for long on a computer screen makes my eyes bleed, and the amount of paper and ink I use printing everything out, especially as I'm writing and revising on a daily basis, adds up quickly.  Reading published novels on the Kindle is something I may do every now and then, but I love the feel of an actual book in my hands, so that use of the Kindle so far is just a gimmick to me.

Overall, I'm pleased with the Kindle, and I'm glad I got it.  And hey, it's a new toy.  What's not to like about that?

Let's Get Physical

I'm impressed with how thin and lightweight it is.  It weighs about the same as an average size paperback novel, and it's thinner than a pencil.

Easy on the Eyes

Reading on a Kindle is very easy on the eyes.  Since the screen is not backlit and the resolution is so high, it really is similar to reading text on a printed page.  But you do need sufficient light to read by.  You can easily read it out in the sun (unlike a computer screen).  But in a low-light environment, you'll need a lamp.  It's not quite as easy to read as printed material in low-light situations, but it's pretty close.  For example, I have a lamp near my bed that I use to read by.  The lamp is not right at the edge of my bed, so I don't get direct light because of the lampshade.  With a printed book, it's plenty of light to read by.  With the Kindle, it's barely passable.  I had to scoot the lamp closer to the bed and get direct light for optimal results.

Don't Touch Me!

When you hand your Kindle to friends for the first time, they may be tempted to touch the screen, believing it to be a touchscreen.  It's not.  You may want to explain this first.

Brains...

The Kindle has a built-in dictionary, and can show you the definition for any word in the book you're currently reading.  Neat stuff.  I've read you can also browse Wikipedia, but I haven't tried that yet.

Where Am I?

An unfortunate feature of Kindle books is that there isn't any concept of a page number.  In a way this makes sense, because you can adjust the font size of the text, and that would change the page numbering of a book.  But it also makes it hard to know where you are in a book, other than the visual progress bar at the bottom of the screen.  I'd like at least the option of preserving a book's original page numbering (even though it wouldn't correspond to actual Kindle pages), so I could refer to a specific page outside the context of the Kindle.  This becomes especially important when critiquing or revising unpublished manuscripts.

Houston, We Have a Problem

I encountered some technical hiccups with my Kindle, and it turns out a lot of other people have, too.  When I first connected it via the supplied USB cable to my computer, my computer didn't recognize the Kindle (as a USB drive).  This was resolved by resetting the Kindle.  Here are two ways you can do that:

1. Reset the Kindle through the menu system by pressing Home -> Menu -> Settings -> Menu -> Restart.  (Yes, that's about as intuitive as an income tax form.)
2. Slide the power switch to the right and hold at least 15 seconds.

The Kindle will reset (reboot).  Unfortunately, I've had to do this three times already, and I haven't even owned the thing for 24 hours.  Not very comforting.

Another glitch I encountered was the Kindle getting stuck in Standby mode.  I'd see a graphic on the screen telling me to leave standby mode by sliding the power switch to the right and letting go.  But doing that didn't help.  When connected to the computer, it never recognized I'd unplugged the USB cable.  Since I couldn't navigate through the menus, I had to use the second option above to reset the unit.

I'm in Print!

Getting an unpublished manuscript on the Kindle is easy.  You can email a Word document to your own Kindle email address.  It actually goes to Amazon, they convert it to their own azw format, and send it wirelessly to your Kindle.  And they charge you 10 cents every time you do this.  Or you can send it to an email address that is your normal Kindle email address with this domain: @free.kindle.com, and Amazon converts it for you and emails you a link to the converted azw file, which you can then download to your desktop and upload to your Kindle via USB, for free.

You can also bypass Amazon altogether by converting the Word document yourself and uploading it via USB to your Kindle.  I feel a little better about this, as sending my manuscript as an email attachment doesn't exactly give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Here's what I do:

1. Format my Word document to be more suitable for reading on the Kindle.  I write my manuscript using standard manuscript formatting for novels.  This means I have double-line spacing, courier font, left-justification, two hyphens for em-dashes, underlines for italics, and so on.  I'd much rather it look like a published book when reading it on the Kindle.  I created a Word macro to do this for me at the click of a button.  It also makes all my chapter headings use the Header 1 style, to allow me to easily create a table of contents later on.  Of course I save this formatted document to a different file than my original document!  Note that headers and footers will not be retained during this conversion process, so you'll lose any page numbers there.
2. I use the free MobiPocket Creator to convert my formatted Word document to the prc format (which the Kindle can read).  I import the formatted Word document, edit the metadata so the book's title and author appear correctly, and add a table of contents (simply putting "h1" in the first tag field; this will make sense if you're looking at that part of the software).
3. I upload the prc file to my Kindle via USB.  Ta da.

Taking Notes

Reading unpublished manuscripts on a Kindle won't be very productive if you can't take notes and have access to those notes back at your computer.  I tried to make this work using the Kindle's built-in annotation feature, but ultimately it fell short.  You can highlight any portion of the text you're reading, and you can add annotations to any location in the text.  The Kindle's keyboard is tiny and a bit clunky.  It's fine for brief notes, but you don't want to be typing in revised paragraphs or anything lengthy (beyond a few abbreviated words).  And your annotations can be exported as a text file.  Unfortunately the text file by itself isn't very helpful.  Here's an example:

WIP (Me)

- Highlight Loc. 31-32 | Added on Friday, March 13, 2009, 10:46 PM

out.

==========

WIP (Me)

- Note Loc. 32 | Added on Friday, March 13, 2009, 10:47 PM

move earlier in sent

==========

WIP (Me)

- Highlight Loc. 47 | Added on Friday, March 13, 2009, 10:54 PM

then

==========

WIP (Me)

- Note Loc. 47 | Added on Friday, March 13, 2009, 10:54 PM

del

I had highlighted the word "out" and made a note to move it earlier in the sentence.  I had highlighted the word "then" and made a note to delete it.

The only clue about where in my novel these notes were taken from are the "Loc." numbers.  Whatever those are.

You could have your Kindle at the computer and go through all your annotations there, since they will appear within the manuscript as superscript references.  But even that feels cumbersome to me.

I settled on getting a small digital voice recorder.  That way I can read enough of the text out loud to identify where a change is, and describe the change or critique in much greater detail.  It's a compromise, but so far it seems best for my needs.

Footnote

For anyone who's interested, here are the formatting steps I use on my manuscript in Word:

• Page size: 6x9"
• Margins: 0.5"
• Single-spaced lines
• Full justification
• Pleasing font (Bookman Old Style 11 pt)
• Two spaces to one space
• Two hyphens to em dash
• Tabs to first line indent 0.3" (tabs didn't convert for me using Amazon's service; not sure about MobiPocket)
• Underline (both word & single line styles) to no underline and italic
• Straight quotes to smart quotes
• Remove headers/footers
• Remove whitespace before title on title page
• For section breaks, change # to centered *** with hard line breaks on each side (I use a single line with # to indicate section breaks in my manuscript; this change is to three asterisks with a blank line before and after)
• CHAPTER to CHAPTER with Heading 1 style (all my chapters begin with CHAPTER; if I have a PROLOGUE, I do it for that as well); this enables an easy table of contents creation later on

It's fairly easy to record a Word macro as you do all this, so you can later click one button for the entire conversion.

A Hero's Epiphany

No, this isn't an epiphany my protagonist had. It's an epiphany I had about my protagonist. Which, now that I think about it, might enable my protagonist to have her own epiphany.

I'm well over 20,000 words into my "new" (haha) first draft. (It's almost a total rewrite and re-plotting of a previous "first draft".) My protagonist up until now hasn't really had a clearly defined character arc. She's basically been an ordinary, nice person, thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Those intense, life-altering events bring out her inner character and show what she's really made of, and she perhaps is stronger because of it, but she doesn't really have a dramatic character arc of her own.

And that's not such a bad thing. Many fine novels have characters that don't change much. But I've always felt a good story can be made richer with a realistic, dramatic character arc. It's something you can't force. It has to grow organically out of the story. At least for me it does. I have to follow her around, writing down what she does, until I "get" her. Quirks and all.

Today, I "got" her. She's still basically a nice person from the start, but she's got some growing to do if she's to end up happy. Well, as happy as she can be after all the trouble I throw her way.

I've seen a discussion of character arc presented in many different forms, some more complicated than others, but my favorite is based on Michael Hauge's brilliant lecture from The Hero's 2 Journeys.

This is psychology 101, but the gist is that your hero has a wound. It can be a specific traumatic event in the past, or a period of time in their past that did some damage. They then build up armor to protect themselves from suffering that wound, either the past one or anew. Their armor is their outward personality they've built up to control and deal with the world. It's based on fear of suffering the wound again. And the armor generally works. It protects them. But it also prevents them from living in their essence, or who they are beneath all the armor. And it's difficult to love and be happy if you're not living your essence.

So, character growth is about someone learning to go beyond their armor and live in their essence. That's typically not a pleasant process, nor a process one undertakes voluntarily.

And speaking of epiphanies, you can't just throw in an "Aha!" moment and have your character change.  You'll lose your audience. There must be a continual struggle, back and forth throughout the story, a glimpse of essence, falling back into armor, a greater glimpse, retreating back, and on it goes. Then the change, which may not be complete, will be much more believable.

If you want to get deeper into this, check out Michael Hauge's work. He's a master at the craft.

As I write this, I'm 24% into draft one.

24498 / 100000 words. 24% done!

I have a bit of work to do on my next draft to weave in my protagonist's character arc up to this point, but it's very exciting.

Ahead of Schedule in Spite of Twitter

Writer and Muse Succumb to Laziness

After recently rousing myself from a bout of writer's lethargy (with the help of a motivating kick-start from c), I've been on my insane-and-probably-unrealistic writing schedule for a week now.

I'm actually a little ahead of schedule. Not bad, considering I'm outlining 10+ chapters a day. (I tend to write short chapters, so I'm estimating 50 chapters in a 100,000 word book.) The real test will come in less than a week when I have to churn out 5000 words a day (and work at a full-time job).

And all this just after I started tweeting on Twitter. Actually I'm far more a lurker than a tweeter. I'm following Felicia Day (season two of The Guild just ended; I'm hopelessly addicted), Wil Wheaton (now an author, blogger and geek), and a few friends. I had to remove Brent Spiner because he made me laugh too much throughout the day to get any serious work done.

I'll probably remove everyone except for friends soon, now that I see how people are using Twitter. It reminds me of the early Internet phenomenon where unknown people stuck webcams around their house and allowed you to subscribe and watch their lives. People actually paid to watch a young woman eat her meals, watch TV, and sleep. Day after day after day. With Twitter you can lurk into people's minds all over the planet. Of course there's more to it than that, but celebrity following seems that way for the most part.

It's far too easy to tune in to all the tweets out there and waste inordinate amounts of time. Kind of like YouTube's related video links.

So far I've found no compelling motivation to tweet often. Which is great for my writing.

Oh my, look at that. Right now Felicia Day is drinking a strawberry essence layered with donut-infused milk and topped with espresso.

Back to Work

I'm back to work full steam ahead on my WIP, essentially starting fresh.  I have a strict schedule, with progress indicated on the sidebar.

I imagine most of my posts will be extremely boring for awhile, for I am putting much less time into the blog so I can focus on writing.

My schedule covers the following phases: Outline, Draft 1, Draft 2, let my primary reader critique, Draft 3, let others critique, Draft 4, and that's it.  This one's extremely accelerated since I already know the characters, their world, and most of the key plot ideas already.

Steve Renfroe

Mom's book is finally available! I'm very proud of her accomplishment.

Steve Renfroe, the notorious sheriff turned outlaw, has long been a legend in Alabama. This novel is based on his life.

After the Civil War, during the bloody years of Reconstruction, the handsome Renfroe became a hero by rescuing Sumter County from carpetbagger rule.

With his election as sheriff, his downfall began. Driven by personal demons, and the fear of losing his wife, Renfroe committed crimes that turned him into a hunted outlaw.

No jail could hold him for long. His brilliant escapes added to his notoriety. As his crimes grew more daring, he became known as the Terror of Sumter County. Unable to turn back, Renfroe continued down a road that would end in tragedy.

This is his story, told as it might have been.

Advance Praise for Steve Renfroe:

“Stephen S. Renfroe's legacy is a source of unending fascination and speculation. By juxtaposing his family life with the public drama, [Kilgore] adds a tragic dimension to Renfroe's story. Students of Black Belt culture and folklore, as well as anyone interested in the continuing mystery of a remarkable man, will want to read this book.”
– PAUL M. PRUITT Jr., Special Collections Librarian, Law School, University of Alabama, Author of a new introduction to Alabama's Outlaw Sheriff, Stephen S. Renfroe

“Steve Renfroe was the handsomest [outlaw] in Alabama. This real-life rogue parlayed his charisma into a position of power and influence in the county seat of Livingston, Alabama before he became the most wanted man in the state. Recreating the turbulent Reconstruction days, Katherine Kilgore spins a tale based on the real Renfroe, but adds her own indelible touch to her novel of love and betrayal!”
– NAN GRAHAM, public radio commentator, author of Turn South at the Next Magnolia and In A Magnolia Minute

“An intimate view of history, a fascinating picture of how it may have been for this capable but flawed man and the woman who married him.”
– JOHN S. NEEL, former publisher, Sumter County Home-Record.
Author of A Lively Mind: The Story of Lynn Arthur Smith, A Gifted Teacher

“My wife and I both have read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. [The] book provided many unique twists to a story that I have heard repeated often in Sumter County. People in this area will be anxious to obtain a copy.”
– RICHARD HOLLAND, Ph.D., President, University of West Alabama
President, Sumter County Historical Society

“I found Steve Renfroe to be a fascinating character and followed his story with great enthusiasm. This carefully researched book increased my insight into the Reconstruction Era in the South, of which I knew little. Part notorious criminal and part victim, Renfroe was caught up in the turmoil of a difficult time in history that often brought out the worst in men.”
– ELLEN REULAND, author of Leaf Burning: Poems of grief, hope, and moving on.

Now available on Amazon

I'm Not Dead Yet

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Whew. The work project deadline has been met and I'm beginning to get life back to normal. I'm really excited about resuming work on my WIP, and there's a freshness to the entire book for me now.

My mom has received all of the cover blurbs for her novel, with a scheduled release date of December 4th. So she's very excited, too.

There's Pam!

Jenna Fischer (Pam) & John Krasinski (Jim)

I've been catching up with episodes from The Office lately. Since I have no real free time because of my work project, I squeeze in an Office episode while I'm eating. Of course I'm a big Jim and Pam fan.

Working day and night and entering into delirium at two in the morning has its advantages. Last night, unable to sleep or work, I flipped through cable channels and stumbled upon Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Yep, that's Jenna Fischer there, co-starring with John C. Reilly.

Small world.