by Bob Miller, on K.M. Weiland’s  ‘Helping Writers Become Authors’ site

Today, I’m pleased to get to share with you a special guest post from Bob Miller, the developer of our new Outlining Your Novel Workbook software. I’ve asked him to give you a tour of the program, his own process for using it, and what inspired him to create it in the first place.

Here’s Bob…

The Creation of the Outlining Your Novel Workbook Software

I love origin stories, don’t you? The Outlining Your Novel Workbook software (available for PC and Mac, as well as internationally) originated at the intersection of my desire to write novels, my programming skills, and Katie’s fabulous Outlining Your Novel Workbook.

I found Katie probably like most of you did: I searched online for instruction on how to write a novel. I’ve been listening to her podcast for years. I learn new things from her every week.

Since I’m in the process of writing a five-book series, I purchased the Outlining Your Novel Workbook to plan my second novel, and then I purchased another copy for my third novel. That’s when I got the idea of making a digital version of the workbook. I do database development for my job, so I thought that it would be a quick, easy task.

Turns out, not really…

I contacted Katie about the idea, and we agreed to work on it. Eleven months later, we’ve just finished it!

Although much of the programming was just a fill-in-the-blanks type of application, there were a number of tricky programming tasks that took much longer than anticipated, such as:

• Project export and import
• The built-in music player
• The Scene List
• Scene List export

For those of who already have the program, let me share with you a few tips about how you can use some of these features.

Continue reading and access the links at:

Outlining Your Novel