A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Decent writing progress to report. I hit page 272 out of 368, which is a net gain of 14 pages over last week. I added 2 additional pages of new material—really 3—but with some other edits the end result was that the novel's length went from 366 total pages to 368.

Weeks left: 5.4. That's awesome. That means in just over a month I should be finished with this edit. The operative word is should. We'll see how it goes.

Here's some graphical progress:

Total word count remained steady:

Percentage completion is now at 74%:

That's it for this time. Hope I have some more good progress to report next week.

A micro-book review, like micro-blogging, is a review containing as few words as possible. In the spirit of Twitter, mine will be less than 140 characters (not including this intro).

Heldenhammer is a rip-roaring, gritty hack-fest that tells the tale of Sigmar, the Warhammer hero destined to unite the kingdoms of Men.

(136 characters)

What is Office Live Workspace?

A lot of people are mobile these days. I am. I have my laptop with me most times so that when I want to fit in some work on my current novel or other documents I flip it open and go. But every once in a while I leave the laptop at home. The dilemma then becomes one of how do I fit some work in on those documents when the files are not accessible?

Enter Office Live Workspace.

Office Live Workspace is a free "access your documents anywhere" service from Microsoft. With the service you can store hundreds if not thousands of documents remotely, then access those same documents from any computer.

Technically, you don't have to have Office on your desktop, but the integration is quite slick, so I would recommend it. Also, the product is beta, so keep that in mind.

Installation & Setup

You get hooked up with Office Live Workspace by installing the Microsoft Office Live Add-in available via Windows Update as an optional update. I'll assume you can handle that part of the install since it really is just another update. Also, once you get into the service, you'll likely be prompted to install some updates. Go through the motions and let it install what it needs.

Now, either you already have a Live Id from previous apps you might have installed or used or you'll need to sign-up for a new one. If you've already got one, you can sign in from the Office Live Workspace home page:

Otherwise, here's the step-by-step to get setup with Office Live Workspace.

1. Let's say you've fired up, say, Microsoft Word. Once the Office Live Workspace add-in has been installed you'll see the following dialog asking you to take the plunge with Office Live Workspace:

2. If you click "Continue" you're brought to the following web site where you can sign up for the Workspace service.

3. Type your email address and click "Next". You'll then see this:

4. Go through the motions of filling in the form in order to set up your account. Good luck with the captcha—it took me more times than I care to admit to get it right.

Once you've filled out the form to their satisfaction and clicked "Finish", you'll get a confirmation of sorts:

5. Go to your inbox and wait for the email to show up. When it does, click on the "Activate your workspace" link.

I ran into some problems at this point. The service was fairly unresponsive (see above comment about this being beta ;-) ). I waited a bit, and finally got in:

That's it. You're in. People familiar with SharePoint will see some commonalities here. Basically you've got a repository for storing documents and other files. You can upload files, create a new workspace for grouping files, or view shared documents if others have opened up their documents for you to see.

Save a document to Office Live Workspace

Uploading a document is easy. Let's do it through the web page first, then we'll look at how to save a document to the remote Workspace from within Word.

To upload a document to the Workspace over the web:

1. From your Workspace page, click on "Add Documents".

2. Navigate to a file using the resulting Open dialog and select it.

3. You'll see a progress bar next to the title of your document as it uploads. The time it takes to upload your file depends on the size of the file.

4. Done. File has been uploaded:

Now, if you're using Microsoft Word you can upload files directly from there.

1. First, sign-in using the account you created above.

2. This is one of those times mentioned above where you'll need to install some updates. Click through until it's happy.

Unfortunately, you will be asked to reboot. Once you've done that, open up Word again, select "Save to Office Live" again and sign-in.

3. A File Save dialog will pop-up. Double-click on the "Documents" folder (it doesn't look like a folder, but that's what it is) and click "Save".

Give it a sec…

That's it. Document saved.

Open a document from Office Live Workspace

Just like saving/uploading a document can be done from the web interface or through Microsoft Word, so can opening a file.

1. To open a file through the web interface, locate the "Edit" (leftmost) button.

2. You'll be confronted with a warning about unsafe files:

Click "OK"

3. Your document will open in Word or whatever program is assigned to open the file type you chose.

Now, to open a file stored on your Workspace through Word:

1. Select the "Open from Office Live" menu item. A File Open dialog will pop-up. Select your file.

2. Click "Open" and your document will open in Word.

Make changes and save. You'll see the "Saving" dialog again as the document is saved off to the remote Workspace location.

That's all there is to it. You've signed up for an Office Live Workspace account, uploaded a file to the service, opened it from the remote location, made changes, and saved it back.

Conclusion

I'm planning on using Office Live Workspace for those days when I don't have my laptop with me but where I also have some time to work on documents I typically only store there. I do have some concerns over security—I'm not going to store personal financial data out there. But as long as the service remains stable I think it will help me stay productive.

Further Reading

For more info and assistance visit the Office Live Workspace Community page.

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A weekly progress report as I work through the (second pass) editing of my current fantasy novel.

Very good progress this past week. Overall, I'm up 36 pages, from last time's 220 to 256. I added 1 additional page, bringing the current total page count to 366.

The graph:

You can see that the total page count dipped and leveled off, but has now been steadily (and slowly) rising. Total word count actually went down by 37 this past week to 106,845:

I expect there to be maybe one more bump in word count—there's a new scene I feel I need to add to give the reader some more context on one of the main characters, plus it will allow me to utilize my witch character again (I love witches). Then, a gradual lessening as I continue to pare down sentences of unneeded words and such.

Percentage-wise, I hit 70% completion:

Couple of other stats I've been keeping: "average pages edited per week" and "weeks remaining". The first of those is at 18.13 pages/week. The second, 6.07 weeks remaining. 6 more weeks and I should be done with this pass. Things are really fitting together nicely. I'm looking forward to the next edit, which I've no doubt will go a lot faster once all the pieces are in place at the completion of this edit.

Some more free e-book goodness.

This is the first time publisher Del Rey has given away in electronic format a front-liner book. The concept of The Patriot Witch, by C.C. Finley, sounds intriguing:

The year is 1775. On the surface, Proctor Brown appears to be an ordinary young man working the family farm in New England. He is a minuteman, a member of the local militia, determined to defend the rights of the colonies. Yet Proctor is so much more. Magic is in his blood, a dark secret passed down from generation to generation. But Proctor’s mother has taught him to hide his talents, lest he be labeled a witch and find himself dangling at the end of a rope.

A chance encounter with an arrogant British officer bearing magic of his own catapults Proctor out of his comfortable existence and into the adventure of a lifetime, as resistance sparks rebellion and rebellion becomes revolution. Now, even as he fights alongside his fellow patriots from Lexington to Bunker Hill, Proctor finds himself enmeshed in a war of a different sort—a secret war of magic against magic, witch against witch, with the stakes not only the independence of a young nation but the future of humanity itself.

You can download the DRM-free PDF from Finley's web site.

The Author's Guild has issued an E-Book Rights Alert, informing authors of the possible revenue loss to stem from Amazon's Kindle 2 'text-to-speech' feature because of that technology's potential to undermine the audio book market.

The Guild says this about the Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature:

[Text-to-speech] presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry. Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon's promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it's far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly.

In short, Kindle 2's text-to-speech feature is just that: any text stored on the Kindle 2 can be read back to you. The voice has been described as a "not-quite-natural electronic voice", but as the Author's Guild states, this feature should improve over time. Just the fact that we have such technology is proof enough that it will improve. Text-to-speech years ago was horrible. Yet now you can listen to say, my blog posts, through a service like Odiogo.com in a voice that is fairly pleasant if not a bit inconsistent in its pacing. It's 'serviceable', no doubt.

Personally, I take issue with the Guild's stance on this issue. First of all, audio books are expensive. Amazon has clearly invented a way to bring that cost down effectively to zero. That's good for consumers, right? Second, we live in a free market society where innovation is generally considered a good thing. This particular innovation, again, is a win for consumers because instead of having to buy print and audio versions of a book, you can now buy the Kindle format and that's it. Read or listen (or both), it's up to you. Just think of it: now you can read as usual, but you also have the option of listening for those times when reading is not possible. It's the ultimate in maximizing your time while still partaking in one of civilized society's greatest forms of entertainment.

I understand the other side of the argument. The "lost revenue" side, that is. But much like Paul Bunyan had to bow out to make way for the chainsaw, maybe it's time for the publishing industry to get out of the way and let technology and innovation pave the way to a brighter reading and listening future for all.

I'll leave you with Neil Gaiman's thoughts on the subject:

When you buy a book, you're also buying the right to read it aloud, have it read to you by anyone, read it to your children on long car trips, record yourself reading it and send that to your girlfriend etc. This is the same kind of thing, only without the ability to do the voices properly, and no-one's going to confuse it with an audiobook. And that any authors' societies or publishers who are thinking of spending money on fighting a fundamentally pointless legal case would be much better off taking that money and advertising and promoting what audio books are and what's good about them with it.

 Now, what do you think?

There's plenty of news, buzz, skepticism, excitement, early product reviews, and photos surrounding the imminent launch on February 24 of Amazon's all new version of the popular e-book reader, the Kindle 2.

The feature list for this new Kindle is impressive:

• Slim: Just over 1/3 of an inch, as thin as most magazines
• Lightweight: At 10.2 ounces, lighter than a typical paperback
• Wireless: 3G wireless lets you download books right from your Kindle, anytime, anywhere; no monthly fees, service plans, or hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots
• Books in Under 60 Seconds: Get books delivered in less than 60 seconds; no PC required
• Improved Display: Reads like real paper; now boasts 16 shades of gray for clear text and even crisper images
• Longer Battery Life: 25% longer battery life; read for days without recharging
• More Storage: Take your library with you; holds over 1,500 books
• Faster Page Turns: 20% faster page turns
• Read-to-Me: With the new Text-to-Speech feature, Kindle can read every book, blog, magazine, and newspaper out loud to you
• Large Selection: Over 230,000 books plus U.S. and international newspapers, magazines, and blogs available
• Low Book Prices: New York Times Best Sellers and New Releases $9.99, unless marked otherwise

For me, the most attractive items from that list are the size, weight, battery life, and the sheer selection of Kindle-formatted books that Amazon now offers. The wireless feature is kind of cool, but I don't know that I'd use it all that often. In other words, once you've got a book or two downloaded you're pretty much set for days if not weeks, right? I spend enough time in the office and at home that having to hook up to a standard network isn't a big deal, though it's not clear to me at this point if that is even an option. Downloading over 3G might be the only way to bring content down.

As far as size, the image on the right says it all. The Kindle 2 is described as "pencil thin". That it is. That's one slim piece of machinery, though I do wonder about the Kindle 2's durability. I'm anxious to read early adopter reviews to see if this is an issue at all.

Other intriguing features include Whispersync which will allow you to start reading a book on the Kindle 2, then pick it up automatically on your iPhone or Blackberry, then jump back to the Kindle 2, all without losing your place. Read-to-Me is of some interest as well, though I wonder how tinny or jagged the speech will sound as it reads the book to you. If done right, with a smooth, pleasant voice, you may never have to actually read a book again

Update on Read-to-me: Legal action is already being contemplated because of this feature. Publisher's Weekly reports:

Some in the publishing community are raising objections to the new device's deployment of text-to-speech software that lets users have books read aloud by Kindle. Agents are raising questions and Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken tells the WSJ "they don't have the right to read a book out loud. That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law." Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener says "these are not audiobooks. Text to speech is simply software that runs on devices and reads content." To that argument, an agent responds to us: "TTS is a tool. So is a knife. If I use it to cut vegetables, I'm using it for its intended and lawful purpose. If I use it to stab someone, I'm committing a crime. The fact that they are using a technology to create an audiobook rather than recording one has nothing to do with the issue. They are using a tool that has lawful purposes to violate copyright." Asked about next steps, Aiken says "we're studying it right now."

The Kindle was intended as the iPod or iPhone of the book world. Based on the sales figures Amazon has reported it would seem they're succeeding in this regard. According to Jeff Bezos, Amazon had been selling e-books “for years” and “it wasn’t working until 14 months ago” when the Kindle was launched.

You can see the "Kindle effect" clearly demonstrated by the spike starting in 2007.

So, what to do? Wait-and-see or rush out and pre-order right now? What are other folks' thoughts on the new Kindle 2?

Further Reading

• SlushPile.net's Jones and Kindling
  
• Kindle, schmindle... I've got your $350 e-book reader right here
• Kindle2 to Launch February 24
• Kindle 2: Now Are You Ready to Take the eBook Plunge?
• The Kindle Hardware Tax
• Amazon Kindle Community
• Kindle 2 Photos