This is the general room for Writers Corner, so it felt like the right place to start.
It's for talking about writing: what you're working on, what's going well, what's stuck. Questions about the app are fine here too, and I'll answer the ones I can.
If you're new, say hello below. Who you are, where you are and what you're writing is plenty.
hi!! first one here apparently, which never happens to me
i'm Jordan (they/them), i work in an indie bookshop in Leeds and write queer YA at night. currently in the second draft of a sapphic romantasy about a girl who steals the moon's reflection. 88k and counting, which is too many k
someone posted chaptermuse in a UK YA writers group on facebook and i installed it on my lunch break instead of eating. no regrets. mostly
Hello all. Priya, Leicester.
Day job: backend engineer.
Night job: The Salt Crown, book one of an epic fantasy trilogy set in a monsoon kingdom, loosely built on the temple towns near Chennai where my grandparents grew up.
Stage: 60,000 words drafted after two years of planning, which I'm told is not a normal ratio.
A sponsored post turned up while I was scrolling Facebook. I've been running World Anvil and Scrivener side by side for far too long, so I'm giving this a proper go.
Plotter. Not taking questions about the spreadsheets.
welcome Priya!! two years of planning AND spreadsheets you won't talk about. i now have so many questions about the spreadsheets
Colm. Belfast.
Twenty-six years a detective, retired early on a bad knee. I write police procedurals now.
Book one is in a drawer and deserves to be. Book two, The Quiet Parish, is out with agents.
Saw an ad on Facebook the same week Word ate my formatting for the third time. Good timing on someone's part.
an actual detective writing procedurals!! welcome Colm. i have a feeling you're going to get asked a LOT of questions in here. fingers crossed on the agents
alright all. Samir, Sparkbrook, Brum
i do nights in a warehouse and write on my breaks. paranormal, a djinn stuck in a balti house. this is my third time starting the same book which is embarassing to type out but there we are
a reel on facebook sent me here at about 4am so blame the algorithm
Good morning everyone.
My name is Margaret, though everyone calls me Maggie. I live in Harrogate and I was a primary head teacher for a good many years before I retired. I am writing my first novel, a village mystery called A Swarm at St Wilfrid's. My detective is a widowed beekeeper, which I suppose is writing what you know.
I am about 40,000 words in. I lost a whole chapter in the spring when my old laptop gave up, so when my library writing group shared ChapterMuse on their Facebook page I liked that the book stays on my own computer. I do hope that was the right idea, given what happened to the last one!
Maggie
Welcome, Maggie. It's a sound instinct, but because the book lives on your computer it's worth making a backup now and then. Open Settings from your avatar menu, go to Storage & data and click Export .muse. That saves your whole library to a single file.
Copy that file onto a memory stick, or anywhere that isn't the laptop, and a dead laptop can't cost you a chapter again. The steps are also here: https://www.chaptermuse.com/documentation
Thank you, I have done that now and put it on the memory stick my grandson left here at Easter. It feels much better knowing it's in two places.
Maggie
Bea, Hull. Twenty years as a reporter on a regional daily until the cuts, now a freelance editor.
My own book is narrative nonfiction about the three Hull trawlers lost in the winter of 1968 and the women who campaigned afterwards. Proposal and three sample chapters so far. Background, if anyone's curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hull_triple_trawler_tragedy
Found this place through a freelance editors' group on Facebook. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm here to write, not to find clients.
The headscarf women. There was talk of them in our house when I was young.
Worth a book. Welcome.
Rafa here. Walthamstow, by way of Seville on my mum's side.
Twelve years writing screenplays. Two optioned, none made. So I'm turning my favourite into a horror novel, The Quiet House on Marsh Lane, because nobody can option a novel out from under me. (Please don't tell me that's not how it works.)
Someone posted this in a UK screenwriters' group on Facebook. Day job is assistant editor in TV post, so hello from a lunch break and a meal deal.
Hello. My name is Tomasz and I live in Swindon. I am lorry driver, long distance, so I record the book by voice notes in the cab and type it in the night.
I am writing hard science fiction about a mining crew on Europa. First draft, around 30,000 words. I am reading Lem in Polish since I was a boy, and Clarke in English later.
Somebody shared ChapterMuse in the Polish community group in Swindon on Facebook. One question: is there a phone app, so I can record the voice straight into it?
English is my second language, so I apologise already for the grammar.
no need to apologise mate your english is better than half my mates. another night owl as well!! im on shift till 6, whats your usual
Usually I drive until late evening, then I type between 1 and 4 in the night when the house is quiet. So we are on the same shift, almost. Thank you for the welcome.
Welcome, Tomasz. No, there isn't a phone app. ChapterMuse is a desktop app for Windows and Mac, so for now the voice notes stay on your phone and get typed up the way you're already doing it.
Evening. Hal Brennan, Coleford, in the Forest of Dean. I make furniture for a living.
I'm writing a novel about a free-mining family in the Forest in 1910. I have four boxes of parish and colliery records, my grandfather's diary, and 15,000 words of actual book, which tells you which part I enjoy more.
Our local history society put ChapterMuse up on its Facebook page. What sold me was the Research Center. For years the diary scans have lived in one place and the draft in another, and I've been going back and forth between them like a man who's left his tape measure in the van. Every trip.
Four boxes of primary sources is worldbuilding with the hard part already done for you. Slightly jealous. Welcome, Hal.
Hi everyone, Sophie from Falmouth. I write Cornish small-town romance as Kit Averill. Eleven books out, drafting book twelve of the Harbour Lights series.
Found you through a self-publishing group on Facebook. I do my own EPUB and print files, so I'm mainly here to see whether one app can take a book from first draft to upload.
School run done, coffee in hand, 3,000 words to go today.
wait. KIT AVERILL?? one of our regulars reads harbour lights on her kindle and tells me about every single one at the till. welcome!! i'll have market questions for you at some point, fair warning
hi. i'm nell, 19, first year english lit in edinburgh.
i write poems and flash fiction, mostly about weather and grief. i've entered two competitions and got longlisted in one, which i am still quite pleased about.
my mum saw an ad on facebook and sent it to me with no message, just the link. that's how she tells me she believes in me.
i'm autistic and i'm better at replying than starting things, so this felt like a big one.
longlisted is a huge deal!! and your mum sounds lovely. welcome nell, this was a very good first post
Good evening. Marcus, Bristol. I teach English at a secondary school, which means I spend my days explaining The Great Gatsby to people who would rather be anywhere else, and my evenings trying to write something half as shapely.
Twenty years of writing, four abandoned novels. The fifth, The Chapel Bell, is a dark academia thriller set in a boarding school in slow decline. It stands at 52,000 words, which is historically where I lose my nerve.
A colleague shared a post on Facebook. I have been a Scrivener man for fifteen years and I am wary of anything with AI attached to it, so I will admit the deciding factor was that Muse suggests and does not write the prose. My sentences may be poor, but they are mine.
Bore da, everyone. My name is Ruth and I live in Swansea.
I was married to a Baptist minister for 48 years, and I lost him two years ago. I am writing down our life together for my nine grandchildren and for our chapel family, a decade at a time. There is also a little Christian novel I have carried about in my head for years, but the memoir comes first.
My granddaughter saw ChapterMuse on Facebook and put it on my computer before she went back to university. I am not very good with computers, so please be patient with me if I ask silly things.
God bless,
Ruth
Welcome, Ruth. There are no silly questions here, I promise. I'm new to all this myself and only last week I had to ask what a snapshot was! I think it's lovely that you're writing it all down for your grandchildren.
Maggie
Callum, Dundee. I write branching dialogue for a games studio by day, and by night I'm writing a middle-grade book for my eight-year-old, who is the harshest editor I've ever had.
It's called Isla and the Rude Gull. There is a girl called Isla. There is a gull. He is rude. 18k in, aiming for about 40k.
Saw a sponsored post on Facebook on the bus. Latest review of chapter 3: "the gull is good." That was it. That was the whole review.
another scot. hello from edinburgh. "the gull is good" is a very efficient review
Hello from along the coast. She gets the efficiency from her mum.
Two of us now. That's practically a devolved administration.
I've been reading here since the 5th and it started to feel rude to keep lurking, so hello.
I'm Ada, from Manchester, born in Moss Side. I'm a resident doctor, so I write in twenty-minute pockets between shifts. My novel, What the Harmattan Carries, follows three generations of women between Enugu and Moss Side. The draft is finished at 94,000 words and an agent has asked for the full.
A sponsored post caught me on a break. Thank you all for making this a kind place to read.
A full request is no small thing. Welcome, Ada.
What this place is
ChapterMuse is a desktop app for writing novels. Not a folder of documents and not a browser tab: one room holding the plan, the cast, the places, the research, the draft, the revision history and the finished files, all of it on your own computer. Rename a character in chapter one and the profiles, the prose and the exports follow.
It runs on Windows and macOS, works with the network off, and is bought once rather than rented: £24, £36 or £48 for a lifetime licence. AI runs on credits you only buy if you use them.
Your book is a file on your own machine. Nothing to renew, no outage that can reach your draft, and it still opens if we disappear.
30 days, everything unlocked, no card.
