I know you all get sick of my posts about Marvel heroes I don’t know and movie junk. The authorship is going okay. I’ve found a way to combine writing and not writing at the same time. Merm-8 should be getting re-released pretty soon by eTreasures publishing. We recently got Disney Infinity for our Wii U. Well, my wife really got it as a birthday present to herself, but I’ve been playing when I can. It’s like Kingdom Hearts but simpler. It’s just the co-operative multi-gameplay I’ve been wanting. Too bad it’s now defunct. Collecting the merchandise has been an interesting experience. On one hand, it’s super-discounted. On the other,…
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Writing Macros for OpenOffice
Hey, guess what I did? I converted my Word Macros into OpenOffice, so now you can use them with your favorite free alternative to Microsoft. Actually, I recommend these macros over the Word ones, as there are various improvements to the coding. They’re not as fast as Word’s (but nothing in OpenOffice is as fast as Word), but I think they work a little better. One thing to note: a lot of these macros use the OpenOffice’s highlighting function (A.K.A. character back color). For some reason, this doesn’t play well with Word’s highlighting function. So if you open a document in OpenOffice, highlight stuff, then open it in Word, it’s…
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Too Many Macros?
I’m going through the second draft of Defender with my macros. Over time I’ve developed, expanded, and restructured them so that they’re more efficient, and catch those writer mistakes. The difficulty is that it now takes a long time to get through a 100,000 word novel. On the plus side, these macros have helped me eliminate about 3,000 words. But they still take a long time. The problem is, once you get halfway down and you’re like “Christ, I just want to get these over with.” So you start being more liberal with keeping those adverbs or crutch words. Which, of course, means sloppy work. I didn’t run the macros…
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Code =/= A Story
Computer code is not a story. When it comes to written text in the King’s English (or other spoken language) there are certain rules about plagiarizing. These are set in place to make sure that creative works are not claimed by someone else or using them for some reason that was not given permission. But computer code is not a creative work. They are not the same thing. Sure, there are issues regarding copyright and piracy, but that’s really only for software packages. Generally, you pay for those, and by claiming them as your own or pirating them, you are depriving someone of funds they would have otherwise received for…
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Macros
Ok, I’m bored with putting all these together piece-meal, so I just put up the whole big file after the jump/break. Last Updated: 11/07/14 How do I put this on my machine? 1. Copy all the text in this file (or after the break). 2. Open Microsoft Word. 3. Press Alt+F8 (or go to Tools -> Macro -> Macros) 4. Click Edit. Microsoft Visual Basic will open. 5. In the project window (upper right), select Normal->Modules->NewMacros 6. Paste the code below into the text pane. 7. Click save and close Microsoft Visual Basic. How do I use these? In Microsoft Word, press Alt+F8 or go to Tools -> Macro ->…
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Macro 3: Find instances of “it’s” and “its”
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. Here’s a real simple one. It finds and highlights all instances of the word “it’s” and “its”. Thanks to my hypervigilance, I never used to make mistakes like replacing “it is” with “its”. But I guess I’m getting older, and I keep getting feedback that says I’ve used the wrong “its/it’s”. This will point out each one so you can quick review them. I read the phrase, and replace the word in my head with “it is”. If it sounds right, the word should be “it’s”. If not, the word should be “its”. (In…
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Macro 2: Find Sentences Longer than 20 words
UPDATE: This post has been amended. You can find the complete list of writer’s macros here. Okay, here is the second one, and probably the 2nd most useful. Word already has the ability to look for long sentences, but in today’s age, long is a lot longer than you should have. Especially if you’re writing query letters or synopsisesises. You can customize what the cut off is by altering the “maxWords” variable. One of the most difficult things when developing these macros was determining when a sentence begins, when it ends, and how many words are inbetween. Word claims to have native functions for this, but I found it quite…
