#docs is where you can ACCESS google doc files

[local-magpie]

i wish it was easier to handle document organization in google drive on mobile. in THEORY i might be able to do what i want to do (locate and compile all of my unposted fic for later titling, formatting, and uploading) but like, im pretty sure i'd be bouncing between the drive and docs app CONSTANTLY and i fucking hate that shit

[renthony]

I am begging people to use LibreOffice and personal storage devices like hard drives or USB sticks instead of relying 100% on Google Docs. LibreOffice is free and open-source, it saves files to your own computer, and it lets you save as many different file types. You can write in it, format ebooks in it, and do everything you might possibly need to do as a writer.

"Oh, but I'll lose my USB stick--" Fine, back things up in whatever cloud you use as a form of extra protection, but you should also try your absolute damnedest to also put them on some form of storage that isn't a cloud.

I know it's not accessible to everyone, but if you at all have the ability, don't rely on shit that lives on other people's computers. Especially with everything going on with AI theft and aggressive censorship of adult media. If you don't store your files on your own personal computer that you have control over, your files aren't fully yours, and they're at the whims of whoever owns the cloud.

Learn where your files are stored and how to access them. Get into the habit of backing up your files to your own personal storage. Even if you're not up for intense tech research and you don't care about how the computer actually works, please stop letting your art live in corporate clouds.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Unpersoned

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Unpersoned." It's about the implications of putting critical infrastructure into the private, unaccountable hands of tech giants:

https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/

The column opens with the story of romance writer K Renee, as reported by Madeline Ashby for Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-happens-when-a-romance-author-gets-locked-out-of-google-docs/

Renee is a prolific writer who used Google Docs to compose her books, and share them among early readers for feedback and revisions. Last March, Renee's Google account was locked, and she was no longer able to access ten manuscripts for her unfinished books, totaling over 220,000 words. Google's famously opaque customer service – a mix of indifferently monitored forums, AI chatbots, and buck-passing subcontractors – would not explain to her what rule she had violated, merely that her work had been deemed "inappropriate."

Renee discovered that she wasn't being singled out. Many of her peers had also seen their accounts frozen and their documents locked, and none of them were able to get an explanation out of Google. Renee and her similarly situated victims of Google lockouts were reduced to developing folk-theories of what they had done to be expelled from Google's walled garden; Renee came to believe that she had tripped an anti-spam system by inviting her community of early readers to access the books she was working on.

There's a normal way that these stories resolve themselves: a reporter like Ashby, writing for a widely read publication like Wired, contacts the company and triggers a review by one of the vanishingly small number of people with the authority to undo the determinations of the Kafka-as-a-service systems that underpin the big platforms. The system's victim gets their data back and the company mouths a few empty phrases about how they take something-or-other "very seriously" and so forth.

But in this case, Google broke the script. When Ashby contacted Google about Renee's situation, Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson insisted that the policies for Google accounts were "clear": "we may review and take action on any content that violates our policies." If Renee believed that she'd been wrongly flagged, she could "request an appeal."

But Renee didn't even know what policy she was meant to have broken, and the "appeals" went nowhere.

This is an underappreciated aspect of "software as a service" and "the cloud." As companies from Microsoft to Adobe to Google withdraw the option to use software that runs on your own computer to create files that live on that computer, control over our own lives is quietly slipping away. Sure, it's great to have all your legal documents scanned, encrypted and hosted on GDrive, where they can't be burned up in a house-fire. But if a Google subcontractor decides you've broken some unwritten rule, you can lose access to those docs forever, without appeal or recourse.

That's what happened to "Mark," a San Francisco tech workers whose toddler developed a UTI during the early covid lockdowns. The pediatrician's office told Mark to take a picture of his son's infected penis and transmit it to the practice using a secure medical app. However, Mark's phone was also set up to synch all his pictures to Google Photos (this is a default setting), and when the picture of Mark's son's penis hit Google's cloud, it was automatically scanned and flagged as Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM, better known as "child porn"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

Without contacting Mark, Google sent a copy of all of his data – searches, emails, photos, cloud files, location history and more – to the SFPD, and then terminated his account. Mark lost his phone number (he was a Google Fi customer), his email archives, all the household and professional files he kept on GDrive, his stored passwords, his two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator, and every photo he'd ever taken of his young son.

The SFPD concluded that Mark hadn't done anything wrong, but it was too late. Google had permanently deleted all of Mark's data. The SFPD had to mail a physical letter to Mark telling him he wasn't in trouble, because he had no email and no phone.

Mark's not the only person this happened to. Writing about Mark for the New York Times, Kashmir Hill described other parents, like a Houston father identified as "Cassio," who also lost their accounts and found themselves blocked from fundamental participation in modern life:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

Note that in none of these cases did the problem arise from the fact that Google services are advertising-supported, and because these people weren't paying for the product, they were the product. Buying a $800 Pixel phone or paying more than $100/year for a Google Drive account means that you're definitely paying for the product, and you're still the product.

What do we do about this? One answer would be to force the platforms to provide service to users who, in their judgment, might be engaged in fraud, or trafficking in CSAM, or arranging terrorist attacks. This is not my preferred solution, for reasons that I hope are obvious!

We can try to improve the decision-making processes at these giant platforms so that they catch fewer dolphins in their tuna-nets. The "first wave" of content moderation appeals focused on the establishment of oversight and review boards that wronged users could appeal their cases to. The idea was to establish these "paradigm cases" that would clarify the tricky aspects of content moderation decisions, like whether uploading a Nazi atrocity video in order to criticize it violated a rule against showing gore, Nazi paraphernalia, etc.

This hasn't worked very well. A proposal for "second wave" moderation oversight based on arms-length semi-employees at the platforms who gather and report statistics on moderation calls and complaints hasn't gelled either:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/12/move-slow-and-fix-things/#second-wave

Both the EU and California have privacy rules that allow users to demand their data back from platforms, but neither has proven very useful (yet) in situations where users have their accounts terminated because they are accused of committing gross violations of platform policy. You can see why this would be: if someone is accused of trafficking in child porn or running a pig-butchering scam, it would be perverse to shut down their account but give them all the data they need to go one committing these crimes elsewhere.

But even where you can invoke the EU's GDPR or California's CCPA to get your data, the platforms deliver that data in the most useless, complex blobs imaginable. For example, I recently used the CCPA to force Mailchimp to give me all the data they held on me. Mailchimp – a division of the monopolist and serial fraudster Intuit – is a favored platform for spammers, and I have been added to thousands of Mailchimp lists that bombard me with unsolicited press pitches and come-ons for scam products.

Mailchimp has spent a decade ignoring calls to allow users to see what mailing lists they've been added to, as a prelude to mass unsubscribing from those lists (for Mailchimp, the fact that spammers can pay it to send spam that users can't easily opt out of is a feature, not a bug). I thought that the CCPA might finally let me see the lists I'm on, but instead, Mailchimp sent me more than 5900 files, scattered through which were the internal serial numbers of the lists my name had been added to – but without the names of those lists any contact information for their owners. I can see that I'm on more than 1,000 mailing lists, but I can't do anything about it.

Mailchimp shows how a rule requiring platforms to furnish data-dumps can be easily subverted, and its conduct goes a long way to explaining why a decade of EU policy requiring these dumps has failed to make a dent in the market power of the Big Tech platforms.

The EU has a new solution to this problem. With its 2024 Digital Markets Act, the EU is requiring platforms to furnish APIs – programmatic ways for rivals to connect to their services. With the DMA, we might finally get something parallel to the cellular industry's "number portability" for other kinds of platforms.

If you've ever changed cellular platforms, you know how smooth this can be. When you get sick of your carrier, you set up an account with a new one and get a one-time code. Then you call your old carrier, endure their pathetic begging not to switch, give them that number and within a short time (sometimes only minutes), your phone is now on the new carrier's network, with your old phone-number intact.

This is a much better answer than forcing platforms to provide service to users whom they judge to be criminals or otherwise undesirable, but the platforms hate it. They say they hate it because it makes them complicit in crimes ("if we have to let an accused fraudster transfer their address book to a rival service, we abet the fraud"), but it's obvious that their objection is really about being forced to reduce the pain of switching to a rival.

There's a superficial reasonableness to the platforms' position, but only until you think about Mark, or K Renee, or the other people who've been "unpersonned" by the platforms with no explanation or appeal.

The platforms have rigged things so that you must have an account with them in order to function, but they also want to have the unilateral right to kick people off their systems. The combination of these demands represents more power than any company should have, and Big Tech has repeatedly demonstrated its unfitness to wield this kind of power.

This week, I lost an argument with my accountants about this. They provide me with my tax forms as links to a Microsoft Cloud file, and I need to have a Microsoft login in order to retrieve these files. This policy – and a prohibition on sending customer files as email attachments – came from their IT team, and it was in response to a requirement imposed by their insurer.

The problem here isn't merely that I must now enter into a contractual arrangement with Microsoft in order to do my taxes. It isn't just that Microsoft's terms of service are ghastly. It's not even that they could change those terms at any time, for example, to ingest my sensitive tax documents in order to train a large language model.

It's that Microsoft – like Google, Apple, Facebook and the other giants – routinely disconnects users for reasons it refuses to explain, and offers no meaningful appeal. Microsoft tells its business customers, "force your clients to get a Microsoft account in order to maintain communications security" but also reserves the right to unilaterally ban those clients from having a Microsoft account.

There are examples of this all over. Google recently flipped a switch so that you can't complete a Google Form without being logged into a Google account. Now, my ability to purse all kinds of matters both consequential and trivial turn on Google's good graces, which can change suddenly and arbitrarily. If I was like Mark, permanently banned from Google, I wouldn't have been able to complete Google Forms this week telling a conference organizer what sized t-shirt I wear, but also telling a friend that I could attend their wedding.

Now, perhaps some people really should be locked out of digital life. Maybe people who traffick in CSAM should be locked out of the cloud. But the entity that should make that determination is a court, not a Big Tech content moderator. It's fine for a platform to decide it doesn't want your business – but it shouldn't be up to the platform to decide that no one should be able to provide you with service.

This is especially salient in light of the chaos caused by Crowdstrike's catastrophic software update last week. Crowdstrike demonstrated what happens to users when a cloud provider accidentally terminates their account, but while we're thinking about reducing the likelihood of such accidents, we should really be thinking about what happens when you get Crowdstruck on purpose.

The wholesale chaos that Windows users and their clients, employees, users and stakeholders underwent last week could have been pieced out retail. It could have come as a court order (either by a US court or a foreign court) to disconnect a user and/or brick their computer. It could have come as an insider attack, undertaken by a vengeful employee, or one who was on the take from criminals or a foreign government. The ability to give anyone in the world a Blue Screen of Death could be a feature and not a bug.

It's not that companies are sadistic. When they mistreat us, it's nothing personal. They've just calculated that it would cost them more to run a good process than our business is worth to them. If they know we can't leave for a competitor, if they know we can't sue them, if they know that a tech rival can't give us a tool to get our data out of their silos, then the expected cost of mistreating us goes down. That makes it economically rational to seek out ever-more trivial sources of income that impose ever-more miserable conditions on us. When we can't leave without paying a very steep price, there's practically a fiduciary duty to find ways to upcharge, downgrade, scam, screw and enshittify us, right up to the point where we're so pissed that we quit.

Google could pay competent decision-makers to review every complaint about an account disconnection, but the cost of employing that large, skilled workforce vastly exceeds their expected lifetime revenue from a user like Mark. The fact that this results in the ruination of Mark's life isn't Google's problem – it's Mark's problem.

The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.

Google's defenstration of K Renee, Mark and Cassio may have been accidental, but Google's capacity to defenstrate all of us, and the enormous cost we all bear if Google does so, has been carefully engineered into the system. Same goes for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and anyone else who traps us in their silos. The lesson of the Crowdstrike catastrophe isn't merely that our IT systems are brittle and riddled with single points of failure: it's that these failure-points can be tripped deliberately, and that doing so could be in a company's best interests, no matter how devastating it would be to you or me.

If you'd like an e ssay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[bunberiii]

13. bunlix original (third free template!)

Introducing "13. Bunlix Original", a Netflix-inspired Google doc template for single muses based around the aesthetic of ENHYPEN's 'Bite Me'. This document includes custom-made elements to include space for general information, personality, character details & quirks, relationships, and character backstories.

PERSONAL UPDATE: I know I haven't posted in a bit, unfortunately, my life outside of tumblr has become a lot busier, so my frequency of templates might be less. BUT I am hoping to finish at least two more this month!

notes/rules

editing and modifications are welcome once you purchase the template.

all drawings and images in this document are custom-created (or in the case of the pictures, edited) by me. If you would like to take elements from this document, you will need to credit me as an inspiration or the creator of that element(s).

resizing or moving objects/images can throw off the document, so be careful.

do not remove my watermark/credits!

please like or reblog this post if you use my template!  ♡

how to use

click the source link above

download the template via my payhip

follow the instructions left on the note attached

once you receive access to the template, go to file  →  make a copy

how to edit

to most easily put in your own images, go to replace image then choose how you wish to replace it (either uploading a file or via the image's URL).

this document includes drawings. Double-click the drawing/image on the bottom left or top right corner, then click the edit tab. this will take you to a page where you can replace, edit or delete features of the image

for those who cannot see the source link, here is the link itself: https://payhip.com/b/e3JqH

[cripplecharacters]

Hi! I just wanted to let you all know that the link you shared to an article on historical views of blindness in the ask you answered about disabled characters in medieval fantasy settings was a PDF that wasn’t very screen reader accessible. I just tried to read it myself as a blind person and really struggled. If you can find an alternative source for it where it’s more of a plain text document instead of a PDF, that would likely make it much more accessible.

Hello!

Unfortunately it looks like the only other versions of the document are behind a paywall.

I did, however, spend a couple hours or so messing around with Google Docs, Word, and a dozen or so useless sites before figuring out how to upload a plain text copy so hopefully this works [Link]? If you download the .txt (Plain text) file, you should be able to access it. I gave it a try with my screenreader and it was compatible but I know that some of them are a bit picky so hopefully it works.

If anyone knows of a better way to share the document, please please please let me know. I am terrible with technology.

Cheers,

~ Mod Icarus

[badolmen]

“I’m scared to pirate stuff - ” do it scared!*

*with Firefox and Adblock and a VPN and -

If you want a nonspecific, nonexhaustive “where do I even start” guide…

Sail the cyber seas at your own risk!

Streaming - “I want to watch xyz”

This is normally what most people want when they talk about pirating.

Use Firefox with uBlock Origin and additional privacy add-ons such as PrivacyBadger, TrackMeNot, etc.

Free VPNs are out there. Get one - but vet it’s efficacy. My go-tos are Proton VPN, or Windscribe if you plan to do a bit of torrenting.

What is torrenting? How does it work? Here’s a guide!

Back to streaming -

Make sure that a) you’ve got your Mozilla browser with all its adblocking private glory, and b) you’ve got a VPN turned on to hide what you’re doing in that browser from your ISP (internet service provider).

Now you need to actually find a site to stream from. This is the tricky part, because openly sharing these sites will get them taken down if they’re talked about widely enough. (Remember how tiktok idiots got zlibrary taken down?)

You’re going to have to talk to people on forums. You’re going to have to experiment with sites you find yourself. Search for ‘x online free’ and look at the links that come up - is the preview text mangled or clickbaitey? Are there Reddit threads about that website confirming or denying its content? A good rule of thumb is to ignore the top result or two - copycats of good streaming sites will often buy out the top result spot. Eventually, you’ll develop a good gut feeling and understanding of what a good site ‘looks like’ from the results page alone.

However, there are some places that compile good sites that haven’t been nuked by lawyers (yet) - check out r/FMHY! The masterposts are actively curated and updated when a site goes down or is found to have malicious downloads.

Remember - loose lips sink ships. No tweeting (xeeting?) or Facebook statuses about your new favorite piracy website and where you found it. Even posting to tumblr (kind of like this…) isn’t a great idea if you want those websites to stay under the radar and stay accessible. Nobody talks, everybody walks (away with their share of pirate booty)

If you aren’t downloading media, pick pretty much any site and watch away! Adblock and Firefox will keep away pop-ups and other annoying ads, and your VPN means your ISP can’t tell that you’re visiting an unofficial streaming service.

Note: In my experience, I’ve never heard of visiting a site and watching stuff on it infecting or otherwise compromising your computer. That tends to come from misclicks on invisible or overwhelming pop-up ads that redirect you to an automatic download or similarly malicious bullshit. If you’re using Firefox and uBlock, you shouldn’t be in any danger of an accidental redirect.

Downloads - “I want to keep xyz”

This is the realm of pirate archiving - you’re keeping files physically on your hard drive, an external hard drive, or burning a disk.

Adblock + Firefox browser? Check. VPN on? Check.

Go to your streaming site of choice - most if not all have download options. You can download those files or, manually, right click and save the video file from the webpage as an mp4. I honestly don’t know if there’s a difference in quality or more danger in clicking the download buttons, but regardless -

Run that puppy through VirusTotal.com! It’s a reliable browser based virus checker - if the file is too large, use a local virus checking program (your native Windows Defender on Windows computers or, I prefer, Malwarebytes)

Generally mp4 and mp3 files are clean - choose where to save them for the long term, and bam! Free forever media.

Optionally, I also upload mp4 files to a named Google document - this way I can easily share them or make them findable through a ‘xyz Google doc’ search for others :]

Torrents - “I want to keep and share xyz”

I’m not going to go into this subject in depth because, honestly, it’s not something I do regularly.

See the previously linked Torrenting guide for information on how the process works, and check out r/FMHY for recommendations and warnings about different torrenting clients (I’ve personally only used qBittorrent - I’ve heard to stay away from the Pirate Bay and Bittorrent.)

As with streaming, turn on that VPN baby! You’re going to need one that supports peer-to-peer (p2p) connections, so Proton’s free version is a no-go. Windscribe is what I’ve used for torrenting (and it’s a good free VPN on its own - I’m just partial to Proton). You get 10GB every month on Windscribe’s free version, which is more than enough for a few movies/a season or two of your favorite show.

(Bigger torrents like video games are easily 30+ GB, so be prepared to either pay for a no-limit premium account or spend a few months downloading your files in chunks.)

VPN on? Double check.

Boot up your torrenting client - I use a slightly out of date version of qBittorent, but there are other options. The Reddit thread and previously linked torrenting guide have a few dos and donts of selecting a client, so be thorough before you download your client of choice.

This is getting into the logistics of torrenting a bit, so forgive me if this is vague or incorrect, but now you need a torrent seed. These will be .tor files found through pirating websites or archives - these are rarely malicious, but it’s good to run any piracy related download through something like VirusTotal.com or scan it with a local program like Malwarebytes.

You open your seed file in your client and wait. A ‘healthy’ seed tends to have lots of seeders and few leeches, but sometimes you’re stuck with an obscure seed you just have to wait for.

Your torrented files have fully downloaded! Now what? a) keep your client open and seed those files for others as long as you want to - sharing is caring! and b) run those files through a security program like Malwarebytes (not sponsored it’s just the only program I’m familiar with).

Be wary of what gets flagged - sometimes the files seem important, but are just trojans, and likewise sometimes they seem malicious, but are just cracked software getting flagged by your system. It’s good to check and see if others have had a problem with this particular torrent before - Reddit threads from 2008 are your long dead friends.

And that’s about it. Feel free to correct me if anything I’ve recommended is malicious or outright wrong. I’ve been doing this for years and haven’t had an active problem to my knowledge, so if there is something fishy with how I do things, I am a statistical outlier and should not be counted.

I wish you smooth sailing and strong winds in your ventures me hearties!

Obligatory ‘don’t pirate small author’s or artist’s works what the fuck dude’ statement.

[olderthannetfic]

As someone who's college age: yeah, there's a TON of people my age who don't know how things work and don't try to learn. Can't unzip a zip file, want to know where to download anime but haven't tried looking it up, ask things on subreddits a Google search or quick search on the wiki would answer, ask questions answered in FAQs or by professors or in the syllabus, say they can't download and install a new browser or app or program because they don't know how and they never think to look up how to do so, go months without logging into their student email because no one explained to them how to do so and they never thought to ask anyone how to do it, go months without washing their laundry because they don't know how and they also don't know how to look up instructions on how to do it, don't know how to cook and can't Google a recipe so they throw things in a pan and pray it works out, don't understand how to back up files, don't know how to attach a pdf to an email to send to a professor, cannot manage to put stuff on a USB drive + go to the library + print it off of the library computer, etc.

I spent most of freshman year teaching people things. The year after, my patience got more frayed and "Google it" started coming out of my mouth a lot more. This last year I gave up and now if people fuck themselves over, that's their decision. I'm not going to stand there begging people to do basic things they should already know how to do.

It was really funny when someone from Career Services came to talk to us about resumes and said we didn't need to put down 'can use Microsoft Excel' on there because everyone knew that and all but three people said actually no, they didn't. People who are 40+ really think we're all good at tech by default, like we fall out of the womb clutching a little phone already making spreadsheets in Excel or coding computers or whatever.

Meanwhile in reality you see a ton of people posting on tumblr going, "How do I post fic on tumblr?" whose blogs proudly state that they're under 18. The thought that you could just type into a Word doc and then copy and paste onto here never hits. And it's not going to.

I hate to break it to millennials and older people but yeah, actually, my generation does in fact have morons. We're not a moron-free demographic. I'm pretty sure moron-free demographics don't exist, tbh.

--

It infuriates me that my father (in his 80s) is always saying to me that he needs to find a 12-year-old to explain his tech to him. I (40s) keep telling him it's more like a bell curve or something. We had a blip of people being taught in school or having their asses kicked about technology. But then it went away again.

I think we made computers and then phones much more accessible, which is great, but we forgot we still need to teach people things. I know not everyone got explicit instruction in school even in my era, but it seems like the US, at least, phased some of that out as we started assuming The Youth automatically knew it all.

That said... in my day, college freshmen were also terrible about doing their laundry, so some things never change.

[youcouldmakealife]

Hello! Another writing question! Which word processor do you use? I've been relying on Google Docs, but want to upgrade. TYIA!

I've been using Scrivener for many, many years now. Like a shocking number of years, given I am the kind of person who picks up every new program or app with 'this will surely fix me' energy, only to discard them when they did not, in fact, fix me (or they stopped providing The Dopamine, or I started tracking too many things and things got too convoluted, or--)

Before I was using Scrivener, I was using Word (or an open source alternative, depending), and I use Google Docs for editing, but Scrivener, and its ability for me to have a work space that includes all my projects (they're all in one project called 'kitchen sink', unless it's a novel I'm prepping for publication, in which case it gets its own project). It's basically the ideal program for someone who flits from piece to piece, and it's insanely customizable, which is probably the reason I've never left for more novel pastures: if I change the way I want to work, I can alter it to suit.

If you're a one project at a time person, I still pretty heartily recommend it, because it has spots for ancillary bits that you need to have access to but don't necessarily fit in the main file (character profiles, a scene you cut but really like a few lines from, research, etc)

It can do a ton for you if you put the time into learning it (I not only write in it, but also format my books for publication within it), but you don't need to use all its bells and whistles.

Most exciting of all: you buy it once. Like. Seriously. Not even once per laptop or whatever, though I'd still be hyped about that.

They also have a really generous trial where you can use it for 30 days (not calendar, but days of use -- if you used it once a week, say, that'd be 30 weeks).

I'm genuinely really happy to stump for them because I use it like...every single day and every time I've had trouble with it, it's because of something I did or didn't do (say, forgot to set up auto backup) rather than a problem with the program. They've also been actively refining it and working on it the entire time I've had it. In a world that's gone all in on apps over programs, subscription based models over ownership, and general enshittification, it's a product that just...works. I love it. Could not more highly recommend at least giving the trial a shot. (it's available for Mac, PC, and IOS)

[shepherds-of-haven]

Unsolicited Writing Advice

Completely random reminder to back up your work, especially if you're a writer, IF or game developer, coder, or creator of any kind. People sometimes ask me what my advice for other writers is, and I always forget to include this one, but it's one of the most important things, especially if your career, livelihood, or long-form projects hinge on writing in any way! Take it from someone who just had two backup methods fail unexpectedly and only the third backup prevented me from losing a solid month of work, you need to back up your work in as many ways as you possibly can. It may seem like a pain in the ass at the time, but I've seen a lot of games or stories stall or fail completely due to a catastrophic loss of data that utterly kills any drive to keep going with the project because of the need to start over. I'M BEGGING YOU, BACK UP YOUR DATA.

I recommend having at least 2, ideally 3 methods of backup:

Automatic cloud storage. I personally prefer working with Dropbox, where every change I save is automatically synced and backed up to a cloud server as well as natively saved on my own device. It also has robust version history, so if you figure out you've done something horrific and unknowingly saved over something important or rewritten a section you weren't supposed to, you can rewind everything in a folder down to a specific minute (over the last 30 days): a feature that has saved my hide just a few too many times for comfort. A free Dropbox account gives you 2 GB of storage to work with. Working within Google Drive works just as well, and the free version gives you 15 GB of storage (though that's shared between your email account and other Google apps, as well)! However, I don't believe it provides automatic syncing and backup the same way Dropbox does: you either have to work directly within a Google doc for your work to be automatically saved to the server, or you have to manually upload the files to your Google Drive to back them up each time.

Physical storage. Every few weeks or months, I also take the time to back up my important files to an external hard drive or thumb drive. Again, it's kind of a hassle, but if the day ever comes that you lose your passwords or find that they've been changed, a company's servers go down or they go bankrupt, they decide to start charging you to access your data, or whatever crazy circumstance you can think of, it's always good to have a physical backup somewhere. A basic 1 TB thumb drive is somewhere around 20$ USD (though it can be slower at that price point if you're transferring a large amount of data each time), and it's even less if you don't need that much storage. A 1 TB external hard drive (which has a much quicker transfer rate) is around 40-50$.

If all else fails, email. If you can't get access to physical storage devices and cloud storage services don't work for you, consider setting up a free Gmail or what-have-you account specifically for backup purposes, then email a copy of your most important files to it every time you make a significant change to them. This may seem sort of primitive and simplistic, but it works, and you can even use it as a little journal or diary of your progress!

Again, you may think this is overkill, but I am convinced that writers are especially prone to proving Murphy's Law and have seen way too many projects, friends, and colleagues fall prey to this oft-overlooked issue. I can count at least half a dozen times where -> my primary device like my laptop broke, failed, became corrupted, had water spilled on it, etc. -> I then turned to my secondary device (hard drive or thumb drive) only to find something was wrong with THAT (broken, outdated, incompatible with currently-owned tech, corrupted, not up-to-date backups) OR I turned to my cloud storage and found something wrong with THAT (unknowingly saved over data and didn't realize it until 3 months later, meaning not even version history could save me) -> and it was only the THIRD method of backing up that saved my ass.

Anyway, this is just your friendly neighborhood writer reminding you to back your work up! It's a necessary part of the job! Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk!

[icarusbetide]

suggestions for the amrev resource folder that nobody asked for?

i have the structure worked out and want to start adding resources in there: if anyone has any suggestions on edits to make beforehand, pls do so!

Shared Google folder with subfolders:

Events (Resources centered on "events"/"periods": aka Pre-War, Wartime Experience, Constitutional Convention, Federal Period, maybe even just "General")

Topics (Sexuality, Religion, Race, Fashion, etc.)

Figures (Hamilton, Burr, Jefferson, etc. with folders of their own separating their biographies, letters, primary sources, etc.)

Primary Sources (Inside: Newspapers, Letters, etc.)

Inspired (Section for media based on amrev period: thinking Hamilton, 1776, George Washington: Founding of a Nation, Turn. For instance, someone shared their Hamilton musical commentary book, so that'll be a resource under this folder)

NA (resources that don't fit and/or are about things that are too sparse for a specific category quite yet)

Along with this, I have made:

Masterlist: Google Sheet with every single resource in the folder. I'm working on making it sortable by tag (for larger category, specific topics, people, etc.)

Wishlist: A Google Sheet where you can add resources you've like to see but have no access to. Once they've been added to the folder, they'll be crossed off.

Submission Form: Anonymous Google form for anyone to submit resources. File upload or long answer section where you can give me contact info/link to your own folder are both options.

Help & Advice Form: If something doesn't make sense or you think there's a better way to do things, submit here.

RateTheResource: Google doc where you can write out your review/thoughts on a specific resource you are familiar with. I thought it might be helpful to provide context, especially for biographies, on bias level, etc.

[dk-thrive]

Writing is thinking, but it’s thinking slowed down — stilled —

... And that’s one of the arguments for writing well — for taking the time and summoning the focus to do so. Good writing burnishes your message. It burnishes the messenger, too.

You may be dazzling on your feet, an extemporaneous ace, thanks to the brilliant thoughts that pinball around your brain. There will nonetheless be times when you must pin them down and put them in a long email. Or a medium-length email. Or a memo. Or, hell, a Slack channel. The clarity, coherence, precision and even verve with which you do that — achieving a polish and personality distinct from most of what A.I. spits out — will have an impact on the recipients of that missive, coloring their estimation of you and advancing or impeding your goals.

If you’re honest with yourself, you know that, because you know your own skeptical reaction when people send you error-clouded dreck. You also know the way you perk up when they send its shining opposite. And while the epigrammatic cleverness or audiovisual genius of a viral TikTok or Instagram post has the potential to shape opinion and motivate behavior, there are organizations and institutions whose internal communications and decision-making aren’t conducted via social media. GIFs, memes and emojis don’t apply.

When my friend Molly Worthen, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a frequent contributor to Times Opinion, took the measure of the influential diplomat Charles Hill for her 2006 book “The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost,” she noted that a principal reason for his enormous behind-the-scenes influence was his dexterity with the written word. He took great notes. He produced great summaries. He made great arguments — on paper, not just on the fly.

Worthen noted in her book that “transmitting ideas into written words is hard, and people do not like to do it.” As a result, someone who performs that task gladly, quickly and nimbly “in most cases ends up the default author, the quarterback to whom others start to turn, out of habit, for the play.”

Good writing announces your seriousness, establishing you as someone capable of caring and discipline. But it’s not just a matter of show: The act of wrestling your thoughts into logical form, distilling them into comprehensible phrases and presenting them as persuasively and accessibly as possible is arguably the best test of those very thoughts. It either exposes them as flawed or affirms their merit and, in the process, sharpens them.

Writing is thinking, but it’s thinking slowed down — stilled — to a point where dimensions and nuances otherwise invisible to you appear....

I think you can take the “pen and paper” out of the equation — replace them with keystrokes in a Google Doc or Microsoft Word file — and the point largely holds. That kind of writing, too, forces you to concentrate or to elaborate. A tossed-off text message doesn’t. Neither do most social media posts. They have as much to do with spleen as with brain.

What place do the traditional rules of writing and the conventional standards for it have in all this? Does purposeful, ruminative or cathartic writing demand decent grammar, some sense of pace, some glimmer of grace?

Maybe not. You can write in a manner that’s comprehensible and compelling only or mostly to you. You can choose which dictums to follow and which to flout. You’re still writing.

But show me someone who writes correctly and ably — and who knows that — and I’ll show you someone who probably also writes more. Such people’s awareness of their agility and their confidence pave the way. Show me someone who has never been pressed to write well or given the tutelage and tools to do so and I’ll show you someone who more often than not avoids it and, in avoiding it, is deprived of not only its benefits but also its pleasures.

Yes, pleasures. I’ve lost count of the times when I’ve praised a paragraph, sentence or turn of phrase in a student’s paper and that student subsequently let me know that the passage had in fact been a great source of pride, delivering a jolt of excitement upon its creation. We shouldn’t devalue that feeling. We should encourage — and teach — more people to experience it.

— Frank Bruni, from "A.I. or no A.I., it pays to write — and to write well" (NY Times, December 21, 2023)

[novella-november]

Tiny Tip #2

So, you've decided to take up creative writing! You open up your preferred writing program and go to open up your last file, which is your 20,000 word first draft of a novel-- until, uh oh! An error message pops up, saying the file is corrupted, can't be retrieved, etc!

Or, say lightning strikes your house, and fries your computer--!

Or, a cat comes scampering across your computer desk, sending your computer crashing to the floor where it promptly explodes in a million prices --!

How to you avoid losing all your hard work in these scenarios?

✨By Backing up your work regularly✨

You should take steps right now with any important documents you have on your computer!

Here's some very simple ways you can back your work up, from completely free to paid services:

Each day that you make changes to your main writing document(s), make a brand new copy with the "Save-as" function, and label each one with that day's date, so you have a complete timeline of documents from day one to current day, instead of all being one single document.

Email the Docx / ODF file to yourself once a day, and if you have more than one email, or a trusted friend/family member, email it to them as well in case you somehow lose access to your account.

use Google Docs to back up your documents or for cross-platform writing, or if you use Google Docs as your main writing program, back up your writing locally to Libreoffice and all other methods mentioned above. It only takes 1 issue with logging into your account or a service outage to lose access to your work on google docs!

Use 4thewords as another online cloud service to back up your writing and write cross platform

Use A cloud drive service to back up your works once a day, such as Google Drive, Mega, One Drive, IDrive, Sync Drive, etc to back up your works once a day

Use Calibre to convert your document into an ebook format or PDF, and send it to your phone as an extra backup, and a handy way to reference your writing on the go.

use Google Docs to back up your documents or for cross-platform writing, or if you use Google Docs as your main writing program, back up your writing locally to Libreoffice and all other methods mentioned above. It only takes 1 issue with logging into your account or a service outage to lose access to your work on google docs!

[keydekyie]

The time has come! The Moth and the Bear book III: The Summer Road is in need of beta readers! 

I am looking for no more than 10 readers, with the following requirements:

An understanding that the story you will be reading is a work in progress and there might be errors, additions, or significant changes before publishing.

An interest in critiquing story elements, themes, and grammar to help make the story the best it can be.

Be on the Welcome to Kellabor discord server.

Have read books I and II. It does not have to have been recently.

Ability and willingness to access the story in a shared file on google docs and leave comments directly on the document. Your email address you share with me to get access to the doc will be visible to myself and other readers.

Ability to provide comments on the story in a separate document that will be provided. This can be done directly in the google doc or in another word processor, as long as it can be shared with me when you’re done.

If you’re interested and meet the requirements, please join my discord and send a message or DM me there. If you feel more comfortable messaging me from tumblr first, that’s fine, but I am going to want all my beta readers to join the discord for ease of organization.

Please message me before March 18th if you want to be a beta reader.

Even if you've already told me you want to be one and I've already agreed, please message me again and make sure you're a member of the discord server so I can get you into the beta readers channel. That is where I'm going to be distributing instructions and news, so it's important!

[tanaor]

Tired of writing your wips in Google docs?

(✨Free resources for writers 1: Reedsy book editor✨)

What is Reedsy book editor about?

Reedsy is a free web where you can peacefully write your books, similar to Scrivener or Dabble. It has the option to divide your writing in chapters and parts, and you can also insert scene breaks. It's easy and intuitive to use, and apart from the book editor, you can also read Reedsy's blogs, attend writing lives with professionals or look in the marketplace for writing-related services (you can access Reedsy marketplace for free, but if you are willing to hire any of the services in it you will have to pay the professional).

Other features:

It has word count and word goals (you can also see an approximation of the time it'd take to read your work).

Space for your notes and outlines, or whatever you need while you're writing (character sheets, an image, some link...).

Possibility of sharing, but the other person can only read. You can select which chapters they can see.

You can access your work in any device.

Version history for your manuscript.

You can create as many projects as you want.

You can upload your existing manuscript to Reedsy and continue working there.

It has spell check.

Downsides:

Reedsy it's only accessible online, so you'll need internet connection.

It gives you little formatting options, with three different fonts.

I have a lot of resources like this, so stay tuned if you don't want to miss out!!

Hope you like it and happy writing :)

Other free resources: next

[bunberiii]

10. blueprint (single muse template) UPDATED!!

introducing "10. blueprint", a dark blue, ocean aesthetic in-depth google docs oc template, with many custom drawings such icons, menu, and social media posts. this document includes space for general information, backstory, personality, character relationships, and character headcanon information, themed around the aesthetic of the ocean (depending on the colour chosen, the aesthetic changes from ocean, forest, purple flowers and pink flowers) feel free to edit this as much as you wish as long as you do not remove my credit.

UPDATES: i have lowered the prices of a few of my current google document templates, as i know some of you have mentioned that you can't always afford templates. also this template is officially available in 4 colours!

notes/rules

editing and modifications are welcome once you purchase the template.

all drawings and images in this document are custom created (or in the case of the pictures, edited) by me. If you would like to take elements from this document, you will need to credit me as an inspiration or the creator of that element(s).

resizing or moving objects/images can throw off the document, so be careful.

do not remove my watermark/credits!

please like or reblog this post if you use my template!  ♡

how to use

click the source link above

purchase the template via my payhip

follow the instructions on the downloaded note

once you receive access to the template, go to file  →  make a copy

how to edit

in order to most easily put in your own images, go to replace image then choose how you wish to replace it (either uploading a file or via the image's URL).

this document includes drawings. Double-click the drawing/image on the bottom left or top right corner, then click the edit tab. this will take you to a page where you can replace, edit or delete features of the image

for the custom-edited photos, I've linked a tutorial to how I created them in the zip file you'll receive after the purchase

[ilyastudies]

I saw that you use a tablet, a desktop, and paper notes. How do you conciliate those notes?

Is there a mechanism of making primary notes on one resource and then passing those notes to other while reviewing them?

hi! thanks so much for asking! here are my favorite methods for sharing notes between devices :). i personally have apple devices so i can fairly easily airdrop and sync things between devices, but i also frequently work at the library desktop computers where i can't do that! so here's my tips and tricks for sharing notes between devices

for context: i've been mostly doing digital notetaking recently, but i also like to scan my paper notes as well!

i'm going to be dividing this post into 2 methods! (there will be some overlap). syncing already written notes and syncing notes (in progress) between devices

for already written notes:

the first step i would take is export your notes as a pdf or any other file type. if they're handwritten try going into your notes app (for ios) or downloading a pdf scanner app for your phone! if your notes are digital check the sharing options in your app to see if there's anything about "exporting".

personally, i like to use either discord or notion. i have created a discord server with only myself that i use just for sharing links/files/anything between devices! i like discord because there's apps for pc, mac, tablets, and phones; and even a web app! discord is really nice and fast, and you can make different channels (as pictured below) for organization. as long as your file size isn't too big, you should be fine.

my second app i like to use is notion! notion is such a beast in itself, but i like to use it to upload files and images and links! below are two ways i have used it: to upload pdfs/files, and to upload goodnotes (my notetaking app) links to the pages i'm writing on! similar to discord, notion has apps for all devices, but it also works great just by itself on the website (no app required)! it's really great to access it from all my devices.

another way you could share your notes on different devices is through the cloud! (yes, discord and notion are both through the cloud). google drive, microsoft onedrive, icloud storage, etc. are great tools that you can use to upload files and see on multiple devices. i personally like discord and notion more, just because they're already apps i frequently use, but if you can't get either one cloud-based storage platforms are also a great idea! they definitely have more security than discord or notion, because your files may be at risk of being deleted!

for the purposes of sharing notes to reference on another device when writing an essay, or something of similar vain, i really love discord and/or notion and they both work great!

for syncing notes in real time:

pretty similar to the last one, i would say notion or google docs (or microsoft word on the web i believe has similar functionality, or onenote, anything similar!)

if you want to be writing notes on one device and have them sync up quickly on another - i think any word processing software is the best bet for you.

both notion and google docs you can access them on any device, and/or on their websites too!

google docs is a lot more straightforward, but since notion is so powerful it provides a lot of flexibility for your notes! here's an (old) example of notes i've taken on notion. (i personally really like how easy it is to make columns!)

i hope this helped a little bit! please let me know if you have any more questions :)

also! notetaking is very much an individual thing, if something works for me and doesn't work for you - that's okay! we're all learning and just have to figure out what's best for ourselves.