Category Archives: technique

State of the Art: Alternative Presses for Printmaking

A few posts back I mentioned my deep dive into YouTube and how it woke my interest in alternative presses for printmaking.

Back in my undergrad years I’d heard about people using a variety of different tools to make prints, top among them the tortilla press! Way back then I attempted to make my own press from scrap wood my Dad had laying around and it was a pretty dismal failure. I know a lot more now than I did then. I probably should have asked my Dad for help in building the little press. After that I built another press with 2 thick slabs of crappy plywood, 4 long bolts, some wingnuts, and a handle. It worked well enough but I soon used it more for pressing notebooks than anything else.

Somewhere along the way I bought the little 5×8 Speedball press. Back then they were a more reasonable $30, currently they run $90! (Though available at most discount art suppliers for around $70!)  Good investment. Though I had initial terrible luck with getting smooth even prints with it. Live and learn, literally. It needs a pusher to even out the pressure from the lid if you are going to print in the upright traditional manner.  The Speedball relief press works on the same idea as a tortilla press- hinged lid and a lever for pressure. That’s all you really need to make a relief print.

Then there’s the Open Press Project, which is a miniature (very tiny) 3D printed press. You can print it yourself for the cost of time and filiments or buy one ready made. They offer them at cost and also at a bit of a profit- a pay what you can offering. Even at the base cost of just materials, it costs well over $100. I’m not sure what it would cost if you were to 3D print it your self. There’s also a proofing press, called the F-Press that you can purchase from the designer. YouTube and instructables are littered with instructions for building your own presses.

Of course there is the good old wooden spoon or rolling pin. If you want an upgrade from a rolling pin, there’s the stainless steel Akua pin press, aka a fancy stainless steel rolling pin.

Or homemade barens? I’ve wrapped a few cardboard rounds in news paper and fabric and secured that with masking tape to burnish the backs of prints. I’ve read about people putting flat head push pins into a block of wood and burnishing with that. Or gluing a fist full of toothpicks into a cardboard tube!

All of these ideas allow you to put pressure onto the back of  the art to get a good relief print. Sometimes they work for intaglio process, sometimes not.

But the idea of a craft embossing press as an etching press? That was new to me.

This led me to looking into other ideas for getting the slightly higher pressure needed for intaglio style printing.

Pasta makers!!! You can feed small thin intaglio sheets and paper with felt through the largest setting of a pasta maker!

Other folks still will print their work by sandwiching their plates between pieces of plywood and running over it with their car a few times! Often printmakers will have an event where they’ll rent a steam roller for a day or two and spend a day making massive 4x8ft prints in parking lots. I’ve never been to one of these events but I’m always interested when I see the resulting images and photos of folx having a ton of fun.

Or what about those cold roll manual laminators? I saw a guy on youtube using one for relief prints, he reported using it for an etching but couldn’t say that it would last. But he’d made over 4000 lino and relief prints on the one inexpensive cold laminator!

If you are old enough you remember “knuckle busters” or the old school credit card imprint tools that were used at check out. You’d get a little carbon copy of your receipt. One person has repurposed a knuckle buster (So called because cashier often ran their knuckles over the store’s info on the bed of the machine, which hurt… a lot!) to print little relief prints.

Learn from my mistake- most of these alternative presses can give you the pressure you need for collagraph and other intaglio style work, but you need to take care with the amount of pressure you apply and adjust it for every material (my big error) you run through it. If you are pressing relief prints you don’t need intaglio pressure! The press roller just needs to exert enough pressure for an even print, and most can do it at a lower pressure than you expect.

Because I had a rather traditional printmaking education I was stuck in the idea that I needed wool felt blankets for printing intaglio style. I’ve since learned that this isn’t the case. Almost any material with little grain or pattern will work. So craft or fun foam, mouse pads, yoga mats (any pattern squishes out of them), cheaper recycled plastic craft felt, neoprene rubber, and a variety of other less natural materials will work. They are also significantly cheaper than traditional wool blankets. With the little craft presses or cold press laminators, you may even need less packing than in a large press. IF the rollers are rubberized then they may give a bit of the cushioning you need to get a decent imprint and adding additional blankets actually decreases the pressure.

Wool blankets are so expensive that a kevlar blanket protector was developed by Keith Howard (1998) in the 90s to protect them! I have distinct memories of fellow students getting worried about getting ink on the blankets and hoping the professor wouldn’t notice. When I first read about using foam and other materials I balked then realized that use of these new materials opens the door for more people to be able to take part in printmaking. Cheaper newer materials opens the door for more people to explore and enjoy printmaking.

Anyway, if you have used anything interesting to make prints, leave a comment and tell me about it!

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State of the Art: Collagraph Test Plates

One of the things that I really like about making prints is that you can test out how things are going to print on a smaller scale. I decided to make collagraph test plates. I pulled every acrylic medium that I own out and blended it in some manner with 3 grades of sand- extra fine, fine, and medium. I then sealed the plate with 2 varnishes, one applied two ways. The results are that I can see how each material will react under each varnish.uninked drying test plates with a variety  of mediums and sands uninked drying test plates with a variety  of mediums and sands

The plates measure 2.5×3 inches and there are a lot of them. I’m printing each one on Strathmore 400 drawing paper. Why drawing paper? I had a ton of it left over from an unfinished project, in a size that would fit into my printer and give me plenty of space to write notes on.hand holding an uninked test plate hand holding an uninked test plate

The result is a lot of interesting printable texture and deep dark areas of the prints and really interesting wipes. It is worthwhile to note that with collagraphs the wipe is as important as the original plate. You can use a variety of pressures and materials to wipe away the excess ink, also using direction of the wipe can give interesting effects.Test plate next to print from plate. (Print on left plate on  right.) Test plate next to print from plate. (Print on left plate on  right.) Test plate next to print from plate. (Print on left plate on  right.) Test plate next to print from plate. (Print on left plate on  right.) Test plate next to print from plate. (Print on left plate on  right.)

Currently I’m printing with a blend of Blick and Speedball relief inks blended weith a fair amount of retarder and a bit of antifilm.

Review: NovelPad Cloud-Based Writing Tool Part 1

As part of my new series on writing processes I am exploring a series of websites and apps that are similar to Scrivener but are a little different. NovelPad.co is a browser and cloud based novel writing app. It features a chapter and scene card based outlining and writing tool, a character and scene tracking and outlining tool, goal tracking, an insights tool, and the ability to export into a variety of formats. I’ll explore all of these tools in detail in this review of the cloud-based writing tool, NovelPad.

Everyone’s writing needs are a bit different from another person’s, but I need an app that will sync across devices and can be used on my PC* laptop, android** phone, and Fire*** tablet. Whatever I use to write, needs to work as well, if not better than Docs on these 3 devices. When I hit save on one I want to see that work on all 3 as instantly as possible. 

I currently writing in the morning and evening on my cheap laptop, on my lunch break on my tablet or phone. In the pre-Covid times I wrote in a café on Friday evenings and Saturday days. When I’m out and about my tablet and a small compact BT keyboard are a lighter weight option so it is important that any of these writing tools I review work seamlessly on the tablet and phone.

To start this review out, NovelPad works well on all my devices. It has been speedy and smooth my my cheap laptop, slick in the Silk browser, and great on Chrome on my phone. Chrome is sideloaded onto my Fire tablet and it seems that the ‘Zon interferes with sideloaded apps and their ability to use BT devices connected to the tablet. I have been able to work in all my usual manners in almost all my usual locations using NovelPad.NovelPad Opening Screen- Review of the cloud-based writing tool, NovelPad.

NP has a simple and clean interface. At the website you are greeted with a clean page that include icons that look like books with the titles of your novels. When you mouse over, or tap them, they open the book and offer for you to open that document. It opens to the “edit in context” option, where you can write directly into your novel. Along the left side of the screen are a series of icons. It took me a moment to figure out the icons and their meaning, and the tutorial is pretty clear.

NovelPad Navigation Bar

The icons are as follows:

  • Edit in Context
  • Chapters
  • Plot
  • Characters
  • Location
  • Insights
  • Goals
  • Save
  • Export
  • Settings
NovelPAd Chapters Horizontal View

Horizontal View

NovelPAd Chapters Vertical View

Vertical View

I really wish it opened to chapters for many reasons. Chapters is what makes NP really stand out. Chapters allows you to set up chapter cards and scene cards within each chapter. You can then easily drag and drop scenes and even whole chapters into new locations. Chapter 3 not working between 2 and 4? Does it need to be between 7 and 8? Drag, drop then renumber. It’s ridiculously smooth and easy. And I love it.

As I was working on my NaNo novel, I realized I’d left out a scene at Thanksgiving. I dropped a scene card in that said, “Add Thanksgiving angst.” I then highlighted it in orange so that it would stand out as I worked on my novel. The color coding is meant to assist you in tracking plots and scene changes, but I have found in my raw writing stage it most useful to remind me of where I’m currently writing and what scenes need more work.

I really like that I can open the chapters tab, click the pen icon for a scene, and a writing area pops up. The writing area can be half or full screen. With this I can keep an eye on the outline as I write. I can easily toggle between my writing and my outline. It really helps to keep me on track.

Each scene has an associated notes section, the icon looks like a tiny sticky note in the corner. This allows you to drop in research notes, character ideas, and other associated information into the body of your work. The notes section can also be set up with a reminder, that can be set to remind you in an hour, a day, week, or month. Nifty.

Because I’m finishing my NaNoWriMo novel I decided to stress test all the apps I’m testing with a cut & paste of the 58k words in a Google doc into each app. I wanted to see if the app would 1. divide the doc up into scenes and chapters based off my heading structure 2. use three * to divide into scenes 3. be able to handle the giant number of words dumped into the app.

I don’t recommend dumping nearly 60k words into any app, heck even Docs doesn’t handle it well and Word’s online version was shaking apart at the seams. It took several tries for NovelPad to accept the cut and pasted doc. It did not divide into chapters and scenes in a way that made sense, though it did break the novel up into several scenes, though they seemed to be rather random. Instead of cutting and pasting 60k words at a time, I’d suggest pasting the novel in a chapter at a time.

This might seem like it’s a negative, but does anyone really expect any app to handle that large a document in one large cut and paste? I would like to see NovelPad include an upload feature that works as well as their download feature.

Once your novel is finished you can download it in markdown, ePub, and Word formats. The process is simple and easy. Best of all it works well.

In Part 2 of this review I’ll look at the Plot, Character, Location, Insights, and Goals sections of the app.

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Maker: Setting Up My Every Thing Every Where Journal

I mentioned on instagram that I had decided to retire my 2020 Every Thing Every Where Journal (ETEWJ) and start a fresh one for 2021. I never do this. The whole POINT of the ETEWJ is that it is flexible and not retrained by dates or years, rather it flows undated with my needs and my uses.  The next issue of Useful Journaling (1.3) explores the idea of Every Thing Every Where Journals.

My need for 2021 is to leave behind 2020. Also, the Baronfig Work/Play III has a lot of really intense journaling that needs to be left behind, though referred to often. Mostly I did not want to carry that weight with me on the daily.

So I ripped open my new ScribblSheets (full review soon!) journal and started to set it up. You’ll recognize many elements from Bullet Journaling, but with some added flexibility. I’d cut out chunks and added things as I need change.

To start I add a bunch of sticky notes to the front pages- a few extra large lined, a few regular 3×3 inch, a few 2×2, a few flags, and a handful of tabs. I use these to flag books I’m reading but to also flag important notes in my journal as I’m working. I’ll slap the large post it notes on the outside of the journal to trigger me to remember specific things.

The first spread of pages gets divided into 3rds, and I add in what would be called a “future log” but only includes 6 months. My ETEWJ rarely lasts 6 months, sometimes they are abandoned, but more often than not, I fill them in 4 to 6 months.

I then add in monthly logs for the next 2 months. I use a durable file tab in blue to mark the current month, on the fore edge of the book for easy access. I use these to mark off weekends, pay dates, dates when bills need to be paid, and when I need to do various assort things around the house. Blogging info goes in here as well.

Then I’ll start specific project logs. These only get a paper tab when I’m actively working on that issue. If you think of GTD, this would be your project to do list- it’s got all the things that need to get done to make this project a reality. I call this my Every Thing Task List In the case of this example, Useful Journaling, the to do list doesn’t change, but it helps to make one of these lists for each issue. The opposite page get the rough outline for the current issue I’m working on. This will get translated to Google Docs or NovelPad for drafting.

The next spread gets my Blog Posts To Do list. This page gets a durable plastic tab on the top edge of the page in whatever color I’m feeling at that moment. When a stationery item arrives at my house it gets logged here. As I write, photograph, or post I tick off the appropriate box.

Then come my weekly logs. I use a separate DayJob bullet journal, so my ETEWJ only concerns my side hustles and other creative work. Having a daily log for all of this seems unnecessary and I don’t put pressure on myself to do this work during my DayJob work week. Generally these are labeled with weekend dates. The opposite page is for information gathered in regards to my side hustles and creative work. The left page is for short bursts of info, quotes, and things I want to remember.

This series of notes is from my old ETEWJ.

This series of notes is from my old ETEWJ.

After this I’ll use the next free series of pages for notes. If I’m reading my ETEWJ is there with me. I’m taking an edX class on Project Management, my ETEWJ is there with me as I take notes and learn. I also use as many pages as I need for planning and designing things I’m interested in. I’ve got ideas for making planters out of pallets so I drew up some basic designs in my journal.

Then I’ll start the weekly log for the next week. The ribbon marker is always on the current week’s log.

Rinse, repeat as needed.

What I like about this system is that it is fluid and easily adapts to what I need,

State of the Art: Making it Work

A thing that happens a lot among artists is that we find a tool we like, use the hell out of it and realize that it doesn’t just work the way it is so we start to need to adapt our tools. This can be done simply with a knife or scissors. Or with the addition of layers of masking, electrical or duct tape. I often will use jelly silicone pencil grips to bulk up the grip of a pen.

A case in point is this little number I did to this Bic Gelocity. You know the one I reviewed over here. Well it is not a great pen, but it does make nice fine deep black lines, but wow is it uncomfortable. I slid a gel grip on hoping it would slide around easily but instead it’s a snug fit. I wedged it just above where the cap clips and used a pair of scissors to snip the cap off so it fits without needing to go over the now phat grip. The clip started to catch on the grip so snip snip, that went goodbye as well. I filed the sharp pieces of plastic down and now the Gelocity is more comfortable and not bad for sketching in a pocket notebook.

I’ve also removed clips that poke into the meat of my hand, bulked up pens with masking tape and made adaptive devices for other people with Crayola model magic.

I also have added a roll of fabric to the side of my mouse to adapt my grip to reduce stress. This is a temporary fix and I’ll eventually go back to a ball but for now, it works.

While I would hesitate to make a more expensive pen 100% mine, I wonder why? Why not take my Sarasa Grand and bulk up the grip with Sugru or Sculpey? Why not stretch and slide a silicone squishy grip on there?

I might raid my pen cup and play some more.

Maker: Writer Processes- Using Docs

A slightly different port today. If you’ve been reading for awhile you know that I write novels (4 years winning NaNoWriMo) and I’ve been using Google Docs for this since, well, what seems like forever. I adopted it early on as a way to work on the go and on my breaks at the DayJob, as well as for my thesis in graduate school. My work style has evolved as docs has evolved. Let me go over my current method then we’ll compare how other writers’ tools work in future posts.

Docs is primarily a place to churn out words, and it’s great for drafting large volumes of words especially if you are collaborating with others. Several self published authors I know use docs as their primary writing tool. In part because it’s free and available on all their devices. It also makes it easy to share with beta readers and editors.

Docs has offered an outlining tool that allows you to create an outline and add headings. The headings appear on an outline bar to the left of your work area. You can toggle this on and off as you are working. My current method is to outline in a doc as so: (I apologize for this not looking like the outline style in docs, it did not translate well to WordPress.)

  • Title of Piece
  • Chapter 1(This gets a description)
  • Scene 1 (one sentence description)
  • Scene 2
  • Chapter 2
  • Scene 1
  • Scene 2
  • And so on.
Outline

This is what it looks like in the writing area.

Outline on left bar.

This is what the outline looks like on the left bar of the page. It looks very much like a table of contents.

All of this appears in the sidebar as soon as I designate them with a heading style. This is easily accomplished with a quick highlight and select.

The side bar lets me navigate through my document quickly and easily. Say I want to work on scene 5 in chapter 10, well I can easily find that one the side bar and navigate to it. Or if I decide to change a character’s last name in chapter 3, and she’s not mentioned again until chapter 10 I can toggle to chapter 10 and leave myself a note, “Don’t forget Jane’s last name is now Dough not Doe.” I can highlight this or use a comment on the chapter title.

How has this worked in practice? Really well. It’s simple and brainless. While I didn’t plot my 2020 NaNoWriMo novel once I started and got an idea of the characters and setting, I plugged in chapter ideas and went back into the story and added in scenes and chapters as I needed them. It was very flexible. I wrote some of the scenes out of order and then cut and pasted them into the spaces where they needed to be. This was easily accomplished by toggling through the chapter and scene headings on the outline bar.

I use a similar method for the blog. I write a long list of the items I have for review, and turn each one into a heading:

  • AmazonBasics Mechanical Pencil
  • Wing Sung 601
  • Jinhao 51A

Super easy and this lets me quickly and easily toggle through my list of items and find them when it comes time to post them to the blog, then it’s a quick copy and paste.

I mentioned in a recent post that docs worked better than ever before for my NaNo win. In past wins I broke my novel up into 10 to 15K docs. After that loading took forever and it wouldn’t register as I typed, then an entire paragraph would slooooowwwwly load. It was enraging. I’d stop typing waiting for the doc to catch up with me. Loading the doc when I opened it would also take forever, the larger the doc the longer it would take. I remember waiting for one doc to load and it took a full five minutes! Not this year, even at 40k words the doc loaded quickly and kept up with my typing. It wasn’t until I hit 45k that I noted longer load times and any lag in what I had typed loading.

Some positives:

  • It’s free
  • Available anywhere I take my phone or have access to a computer with wifi.
  • Works well on all my devices, now that I have docs sideloaded onto my Kindle.
  • Outlining is fast and easy.
  • Load times and lag are better than ever before.
  • Many add ons to make it work better.
  • Super easy to just open up a doc and write.

Some Negatives:

  • Moving scenes and chapters is hard if you work out of order, cut and paste can leave you with missing work, create a copy before you cut and paste stuff!
  • Significant lag times at 50K or more words, even on high speed internet.
  • Add ons can slow the app way down.
  • No concentration/typewriter mode. (One of my favorite tools in JotterPad and Dabble.)
  • No dark mode.
  • Uses Google Drive storage and does not back up elsewhere, so if google deletes your account, well, you’re SOL.

Obviously this has worked for me thus far. When I mentioned the idea of “if it ain’t broke why try to fix it?” to a friend, she suggested that I might LIKE the ease of use of a few other apps and sites. That the ability to easily drag and drop a chapter like a file is worth learning a new process. I’ve requested review access to a few pieces of writing software and apps. Thus far the learning curve isn’t that high and they are easy to use. More on that in future reviews.

State of the Art: Photo a Day

Waaaayyyyyy back in 2009 Polaroid introduced the Zink Pogo printer. A cute little printer that spits out 2×3 inch prints on sticker paper. Sweet little journaling tool. I of course immediately asked for one for the holidays. And my lovely partner managed to get a good deal on one and I loved it, for 50 prints or so. 

Other folx got hundreds and hundreds of glorious little stickers. Not me. I had a dozen or so prints before mine was a streaky mess.

It ended up in a drawer.

In the great office clean out of the Covidalypse I found the dusty little printer and thought I might dust it off. I did and it was still streaky. I headed to the internet and found loads of info on cleaning it. So I tore it apart, which was really easy and only around 8 screws or so. I was able to clean some little bits of what looked like… glitter in there, as well as some, big surprise here, dog hair. I gave the roller and print head a good swabbing down with rubbing alcohol with a q-tip, then ran several sheets of super thick cardstock through it.

This is not a pogo print but an image I considered for a pogo print.

No more streaks.

Well, mostly no more streaks. The pogo works best on low-res images. So it is helpful to take smaller pictures. I started this project off using Lightroom. Bad idea, it automatically saves in the highest res option on my phone. Also the Pogo prints in 2×3 images, so I used the basic camera on my phone and set it to 3×4 on the lowest res setting available. This particular option also saves it to the cloud so I have the option of editing it down on my laptop. Sadly the polaroid apps that are still available do NOT work with the Pogo. I can’t get any of them to pair with it, or even print to it. BUT I can snap a picture with their app, save it, and print manually, the way the pogo always worked. It takes the picture in the right 2×3 ratio.

Anyway, the goal of this little project is to snap an interesting pic once a day for at least the next 50 days and to journal around a page along with it. If I find that this is a useful journaling practice for me, I’ll continue it with another 50 pack of paper. We’ll see what happens!

An interesting aside to this is that the battery died on the Pogo and no one makes a replacement pack for it. I ripped the old battery apart, picked up a 2 pack of AA battery holders soldered the leads in place, and made my own. It’s not at all pretty but it does the job and is better than being tethered to the hideous and HUGE wall wart plug this thing has. The wall wart on this thing is inexplicably huge. I will also add that Polaroid’s CS when I asked about the battery was prompt and curt. Funny thing, since making the battery pack I have yet to take the Pogo anywhere, so I guess a useful thing is to consider if you will actually use the Pogo on the go.

Anyway, we’ll see how long I can do a photo a day.

https://dronebygg.wordpress.com/2011/05/21/how-to-repair-your-polaroid-pogo-printer/

Maker: Plans for Supporters

A unique feature that Ko-Fi offers is that I can designate certain posts for supporters only, so anyone who has supported within the last 30 days can unlock certain benefits. I’m currently figuring out how I can utilize this in the best way possible. I don’t necessarily want to create a subscription model, yet.  Though that is a future plan. What I want to do is offer certain items to supporters, at any rate of support.

As of yesterday I offered a free printable downloadable PDF of a pocket sized, undated 12-month planner for members of the RSVP podcast FB community. It has a 1-month calendar on the left page with lines and college ruling on the right hand page. I want to offer other similar printables for free to supporters of this blog. The first month I offer these bonuses I’ll offer them here so that past donors can benefit. I also hope to design some in half page size as well.

Mostly I’m looking at and exploring the systems that broke down around the Covidalypse and the stress of the hybrid work from home and office work. I’m also looking at what has worked in the past and tweaking the little things.

For the blog, the month on a page and then lines to record a variety of ideas and plans has always worked when combined with my long list of blog posts to write in my Every Thing, Every Where Journal.

Below, you will find the free printable 1-year month per page with notes area on the right hand side. It is a PDF and is intended to be printed double sided. Follow instructions for your printer for double-sided printing and these instructions for stitching a simple pamphlet stitch.

One Year Month on a Page Undated Planner Printable

State of the Art: Writing Posts and Other Stuff

I’m surprised that I’ve never written about my digital writing tools on this blog. I’ll link to the tools and apps you’ll need to recreate my set up.

First I have a low end Lenovo laptop that I use as my main machine when I’m at home and at my desk. I had for a very long time a mid-level Asus that served me well for 7 or so years. The Lenovo is not even half the machine as the Asus. Given that most of my work is writing with some minimal image processing, which I largely do on my phone, the Lenovo has enough processing power for most of my needs. I’d enjoy being able to do a multicam video set up, but that can wait until later.

When I’m out of the house or even sitting in my reading nook, I use an Amazon Kindle Fire 7 inch (formerly an 8 inch.) The 8 inch has more processing speed and power over the 7 inch and if I had it to do over again I’d buy a second 8 inch instead of the 7inch. The 7 inch is the better machine for reading, so win some and lose some. 

I pair this with a bluetooth keyboard, mine is the no longer available AmazonBasic BT Keyboard for android devices. If I ever need to replace it I’ll go for this one. I have a nice thick heavy duty case for this keyboard. I used to just throw a previous version into the laptop pocket of my backpack. I killed it.

The results of this, even with the cases, is a nice portable set up that is very lightweight and can travel anywhere.

I have spoken about my philosophy of NEVER writing on my work computer and only ever on my breaks. This helps me stick to that philosophy. Even if I don’t have my tablet with me, I can pair that keyboard with my phone and work in an ultra lightweight manner. Using your work computer leaves you open to all sorts of legal issues. A friend of mine had many issues when he worked on his novel on his work computer. His job had many down periods and it was a common occurrence, and accepted practice, for employees to work on school work and other nonwork related things when on the clock. But his bosses didn’t seem to think that working on a novel in those down times was okay. When he left the company it was very unpleasant and they made noise about coming after his novel and money made from it.

Anyway. To make the Kindle fire a good tool for writing you need to sideload the Google Play store, Drive and Docs. I also use the app JotterPad on my Kindle Fire. Sadly, JotterPad isn’t available for my laptop or I’d use it there as well. They do have an online version which does not seem like it is able to link to my account. JotterPad syncs across the cloud and saves to DropBox or Docs. They’ve integrated a lot of new features which you can learn about in app and on their website. I don’t use them YET, but might double down and more out of the minimal paid version of the app I’ve been using for years at ths point. Docs also syncs everywhere faster than anything else I’ve used.

In the years I’ve been using Docs as my main location for drafting, it has gotten leaps and bounds better. In the past my novels needed to be broken up into 10k word lumps, compiled into one final dreaft at the end for speed of loading and processing. In the past, loading took forever on any speed of the internet. Currently I’ve drafted my entire 50k nano novel into one single doc and while it takes a moment to load, it no longer takes 3 or 4 minutes, simply 30 seconds at most. Even on my older Android phone it is faster than ever before.

Anyway, once you have sideloaded the Play store you can load other drafting apps to the Fire, and use it to read. For me it has become an all in one machine I take with me everywhere. Battery life with BT is an issue, but a small portable battery pack solves that issue much of time. I have 2 that will fully charge the Kindle twice before needing to be recharged. No links to either since I have no idea of their brand or where my partner sourced them. I inherited them after she broke them and I repaired them.*

I will note that I do not have ANY social media on the Fire. I’ve disabled Alexa and eliminated pretty much everything but the reading apps, a couple of music apps, a Pomodoro timer, and the writing apps. I’m pretty weak willed when it comes to distractions and eliminating the ability to easily scroll over to FB or Insta keeps me on track. Continue reading

State of the Art: Making the Zine

The physical act of making a zine is usually a pretty easy endeavor. After you write up the contents, do your layout and print and bind. Most of the time it goes smoothly.

Not this time. I’m not sure what happened to my head when I was collating the covers and sheaf of paper that makes the single signature of the pages, but in half of the zines I bound (60!) I reversed the sheaf, so the first page was 9 and page 1 and 16 were in the middle of the book. UGH. I didn’t notice until I had stapled all of them and folded half the zines that I’d already stapled. I pulled 120 staples with a pair of needle nose pliers. I use a jig to staple so I was easily able to get most of the staples in the original holes.

Mostly this was annoying because it added about 45 minutes of work and a fair amount of aggravation that I hadn’t checked to be sure the stacks were aligned properly. Lesson learned, the next zine will get double and tripled checked before stapling.