Distraction: Find out what your character is doing on Twitter

Erm, so, I realised that while I have a beginning to my novel, I don't really have a middle or an end to it. Except for the basic stuff: the mother wins the election, and the bucket runs out of wishing liquid. That's my roundabout way of saying that I'm stuck.

So I was looking at plot twist generators and was finding that if you're trying to write a realistic sort of story, they aren't much help. They give you ridiculous scenarios and if you're really feeling uninspired it doesn't help. So I thought, Hey, Twitter is full of real people doing real things which are pretty random and could be quite inspiring. So of course I had to use their RSS feed to find out what Terry was doing... and then I piped it.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/mandraco/charactertwitter

Slightly dodgy, slightly doesn't work, slightly uninspiring. But certainly useful as a distraction for a moment of your time.

Example below:

Auto-Post Your #NaNoWriMo Wordcount To Twitter

NaNoWriMo made me obsessed with Twitter.
Twitter made me obsessed with Yahoo! Pipes.
Behold the result.

Warnings: This is largely untested, but worked for me. If you have problems leave a comment. I'll get back to you in between noveling.

Step 1: Find your NaNoWriMo Numerical User ID.
The easiest way to do this is to log into NaNoWriMo and you should get redirected to your user profile page. If you're not redirected (or are already logged in), click on "My NaNoWriMo"

The last digits after /user/ in the url of that page form your UID.

(This is difficult to do in these server crashing times, I know. But if the site's down you won't get a wordcount anyway.)

Step 2: Plug that into the Yahoo! Pipe I created
Go here: http://pipes.yahoo.com/mandraco/nanowrimorss
Type in that UID you found in step one, decide whether you want to prefix your wordcount with anything (e.g. My nanowrimo wordcount is:), and whether or not you want to include a link to your user profile in the text.

Step 3: Run Pipe
Click the button that says Run Pipe. A preview of your post should appear with your most recent wordcount (or nothing if there was no previous wordcount). If you don't like it, repeat Steps 2-3.

Step 4: Save as RSS
Click "More options" then "Get as RSS". Copy the URL.

Note: You can skip the rest of the steps if you're not going to use TwitterFeed to post your wordcount to Twitter (i.e. if you already know what you're doing).

Step 5 (possibly optional): Burn the Feed with FeedBurner
TwitterFeed might not mind you using that URL you got in Step 4, but in my experience it doesn't like them so first you have to burn your feed or give your feed a different address.

• Go to http://www.feedburner.com.
• Paste the URL from Step 4 in the box, then click "Next".
• Call it whatever you like and choose a feed address.
• If you don't already have a FeedBurner account, create a new one. Otherwise sign into your existing account.
• The next page will have a link to your new FeedBurner feed. Copy this for the next step.

Step 6: Set Up TwitterFeed

• Go to http://www.twitterfeed.com and sign in with your Open ID.
• Click "Create new twitter feed".
• Type in your twitter details, and paste in your FeedBurner feed URL.
• Choose your update frequency. And post 1 new update each time.
• Choose to include "description only" and uncheck "include item link". There are no item links anyway.
• Post new items based on GUID. There is no date information so you have to use this option.
• Make sure it's active then click "Create" and you're done.

It might take a couple of hours for TwitterFeed to sort itself out and post the first wordcount. After that, depending on the NaNo site and everything it might take a bit longer than expected. But you don't want to spam your followers' twitter streams anyway. Right?

Hopefully the whole process was relatively painless. Leave comments if it wasn't and I'll try to help.

And oh yeah...

Did you notice the new image slideshow at the side? It was created using my new most favourite webapp (alongside twitter) Yahoo Pipes.

It actually takes keywords from my blogs then browses Flickr for relevant pictures and puts them in a show. Absolutely useless and somewhat irrelevant, but fun all the same. Thanks Yahoo Pipes!