Welcome back, imaginative readers! I’m happy that you’ve decided to join me for this issue of Imagine That.
I’m in the process of writing a web novel called The Realm of Quarkopolis. It is in its infancy and may take me several years to complete. But I have the time, so please keep your fingers crossed for me!
The Realm of Quarkopolis is a web novel residing in the Zeroth Dimension imagined from Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi robot series. The robots created the Zeroth Law but didn’t mention the corresponding dimension. They knew about it, probably just slipped their positronic minds to mention it.
I could go on and on about this but to make it short, let’s get back to the web novel, the one I’m working on.
Short synopsis: Quarkopolis is inhabited by energy and light beings called Quarkles. They are invisible but become semi-visible upon going through a dual portal to the Earth on specific missions.
I’m just now beginning to organize and outline the novel, gathering the tools necessary to make it feasible. If you’re a writer, you know how daunting the volume of information and tools that exist can be. My process was long and difficult, like a quest in some of JF Danskin’s books
. But I think I’ve finally decided on the tools that I will use for writing about Quarkopolis and the powerful Quarkles.
My five-step process for writing this web novel of the brilliant Quarkles and their dimensional tale is this:
COMPUTER - I bought a new laptop that integrates with ALL the tools that I need to use. I had an old one that wasn’t working for the plan that was forming in my mind. So now I can move forward with the right tool.
SCHEDULING - I’ll be using Microsoft Outlook to track any appointments or meetings. I have a Gmail account and have been using the free Google calendar for years. It syncs well with Outlook.
NOTES - Microsoft OneNote is my choice for tracking things like the Medium publications where I’m helping out as an editor, the different pubs that I’d like to write for and what they require, the challenges that I want to participate in, and other miscellaneous notes of importance to me.
I looked at some other choices for note-taking such as EverNote which is a paid service. There are however a lot of free note-taking services such as Google and others.BRAINSTORMING - There are several excellent apps for this stage of the writing process. I looked at LogSeq, Notion, and Obsidian of which I chose the latter. This will be invaluable for writing down my thoughts about the Quarkles, having a graph or outline created by the app. Flow charts and other tools will help immensely to get my scattered thoughts in order.
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