Tag Archives: Shoestring Austin

Happy Holidays: 2011 Year in Review

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By way of a holiday greeting, I thought I would share a bullet-point list of items that I call my 2011 Year in Review.

In 2011, I…

  • Bowled in the New Year with a new pair of bowling shoes;
  • Published Haiku for Haters as a mini-book in both print and digital formats;
  • Wrote and revised a bunch of online continuing education classes for a local real estate company;
  • Joined a writing group;
  • Pondered getting back into writing sex columns for a friend’s blog, but decided against it;
  • Paid someone to do my taxes early, for a change;
  • Considered starting an online writers’ salon for southern writers, but decided against it;
  • Worked a day job at a culinary school and wrote for their blog;
  • Bought a manual typewriter;
  • Successfully avoided the circle jerk that is SXSW for the second year running;
  • Participated in an awesome anti-SXSW reading event with my writing group (which was ironically covered by my nemesis);
  • Took the bus more than I ever wanted to, and rode the train to work on odd mornings;
  • Met a super-accomplished, awesome writer who has also been struggling to make ends meet, despite her obvious talent and skill, and enjoyed some conversation and iced coffee;
  • Took part in a day-long “Anticrastination Scribproductivathon” (aka a writing marathon) with my writing group;
  • Quit my writing group when they decided to start working on an anthology I wasn’t interested in, instead of just being the good, fun, supportive critique group I’d originally joined;
  • Joined the National Amateur Press Association, and later became their Director of Publicity;
  • Celebrated my cat’s 1st birthday on April Fool’s Day;
  • Kept plugging away at my novel;
  • Pondered going back to school (again) for my MFA, but decided not to;
  • Read and accepted and rejected hundreds (thousands?) of short fiction and poems for my literary magazine;
  • Continued blogging about Austin and the budget lifestyle for Shoestring Austin;
  • Celebrated my three-year wedding anniversary to the world’s greatest guy (who is still, incidentally, content to be known as “The UnGooglable Man”);
  • Joined WriteByNight as a writing coach and manuscript consultant;
  • Started using car2go to get around town when the bus just wouldn’t cut it;
  • Co-edited a kick-ass anthology of noir fiction with my pal Jimmy Callaway;
  • Joined a local food blogger’s group;
  • Participated in the 3-Day Novel Contest;
  • Read a TON of books;
  • Applied for a TON of jobs;
  • Completed a TON of transcripts;
  • Published several “quickies” on Amazon and Smashwords;
  • Turned another year older and celebrated by—how else?—bowling (and consuming delicious Thai food);
  • Volunteered at the Austin Chocolate Festival and got to sample lots of delicious free chocolate;
  • Joined the Professional Writers of Austin and started blogging for them on a monthly basis;
  • Attended the Texas Book Festival but missed the inaugural Lit Crawl thanks to Austin’s terrible bus system;
  • Attended my sister’s wedding and served as the Matron of Honor;
  • Thought I would work more on my novel during NaNoWriMo, but ended up too busy to do so;
  • Ate a lot of tasty breakfast tacos;
  • Started a weekend ritual of hitting the library every Saturday with my husband, checking out a ridiculous number of books and DVDs, and gorging ourself on media for the rest of the day;
  • Took a gig writing book reviews at the U.S. Review of Books;
  • Took a gig writing book reviews for Kirkus;
  • Took a gig writing news articles for a company that shall not be named;
  • Attended a few holiday parties;
  • Renewed a few domains;
  • Wrote this list and felt a little better about my accomplishments.

What did YOU do in 2011?

Boosting your creativity with free apps: OmmWriter

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Back in the glorious days of an Austin winter (glorious mainly because of the dead landscape, whose lack of pollen didn’t inherently tip off my allergies and require heavy OTC medication), I mentioned a free app that had inspired a few of my winter haiku. The freebie in question? OmmWriter, a Zen-like writing application that will help get a writer’s creative juices flowing and the words flying across the page like they were meant to be typed: freestyle and frenzied.

Ommwriter from herraizsoto&co on Vimeo.

The biggest pro regarding this app is, naturally, its free-ness. I can’t pass up a freebie, as those who read my Shoestring Austin blog might know, and when it comes to free software, I feel it’s worth downloading and giving a go. In the case of OmmWriter, it’s worth the five minutes it’ll take to download, and that’s not me damning with faint praise. (Sometimes, after all, you get what you pay for with free apps. But not here.)

I am also a big fan of any software that reduces a writer’s tendency to flit back and forth between applications, as I know that I am a huge procrastinator, as well as one of those types who are totally unable to just “block out” the rest of the stuff on a flickering screen. Why not check my email for the 477th time today? It’ll only take a second! Annnnnnd I’ll see you about three hours later, dazed and confused about what the heck I was originally going to do with those three precious hours. Oh, writing maybe? Whoops.

The fact that OmmWriter will go full-screen and help you escape from the desktop’s shiny, flickering enticements (not to mention three-bazillion windows) is excellent, but the way it also incorporates music and repetitive sounds that are linked with the tapping of your keys on the keyboard is truly genius. I am a distracted sort, and one who always pines for some type of music to engage and inspire, but I hate having to set up new “lyric-free” playlists on iTunes every time I’m in a writing mood. No worries! OmmWriter offers wordless repeating sound patterns that will keep you going on loop, without taking you out of your creative mode. Perfect!

OmmWriter reminds me of a computerized version of a device my husband has been doting on for years, the Buddha Machine (also available in iPod app format for $2.99, but “it’s the crusty little speaker and analogue output that gives it James Brown-level soul,” according to him; there’s also a Version 2.0, and you can play them together for maximum tranquillity), which plays a variety of repeating musical patterns on loop in order to help Buddhists (or, actually, the controversial devotees of Falun Gong) in their meditations. It cuts through the chatter of the mind with peaceful, harmony-inducing musical snatches, allowing you to more fully concentrate on writing. And really, anything that can still the “monkey mind” is hot shit in my books.

Try it out, for free, at OmmWriter.com.