what program do you use?

[penfold]

I've been wondering for some time, what programs does everyone use for writing? Do you just use the classic word processor? Or is there something better out there?

I use a little app called "notebook" that holds info in separate pages, and lets you put links between pages into the text very easily. It's pretty good, especially because it's free, but it has its shortcomings, particularly in not letting you tag or categorize each page.

What do you use?

[ora]

CopyWrite, but I am also trying DevonThink Pro.

Prior to that I used TextEdit, the basic Mac writing prog that comes with OSX.

[zizban]

Mellel. TextEdit if I must work with Word docs.
I used to use FrameMaker (which is way overkill for fiction writing) but they dont make a Mac OS X version.

[andrhia]

I used WriteRoom (for Mac) for quite some time. I've been trying out Scrivener lately, though, and I think I'm in love. :)

[Marko Kloos]

CopyWrite, with final editing done in Word.

I've checked out Scrivener, and I wouldn't mind trying it, but none of my Macs run 10.4, which is the minimum requirement.

Oh, and for mobile use, nothing beats the Alphasmart Neo.

[ethyachk]

I use OpenOffice.org Writer. I used MS Word, but I upgraded.

[penfold]

I used WriteRoom (for Mac) for quite some time. I've been trying out Scrivener lately, though, and I think I'm in love. :)

Man, Scrivener looks awesome, like something I wouldn't mind actually ponying up and paying for, even. :)
But damn, is everyone else on the board a mac user? I may be in trouble-- I've been a windows guy forever, only recently having started delving into linux a bit.

[ethyachk]

But damn, is everyone else on the board a mac user? I may be in trouble-- I've been a windows guy forever, only recently having started delving into linux a bit.

Don't show fear! When they smell fear they start trying to get people to switch!

[ora]

*sniff...sniff*

<Mobilise iCult brigade for an immediate conversion>

Oh and I am tempted by Scrivener now, looks a lot different to when i last looked and the exchange rate makes it little more than a new dvd.

[sleary]

I used CopyWrite for a while, but switched to Scrivener shortly after it came out. It is among the finer things in life. I figure I owe Scrivener and Novel in 90 about equally for the fact that I have a complete draft of a novel instead of a million assorted notes and vignettes.

If you were to buy a Mac just to use Scrivener... well, you wouldn't be the first person of my acquaintance to do so.

[izanobu]

I use a bit of graphite and some dead, pulped, and thinly sliced tree.

Then I get less technical and type that up in MS Word 2003. I've never used a specialized writing program. Might be interesting, but I don't have a Mac so can't try any of the ones here. Oh well. Note cards work great for keeping track of notes. As do notebooks. Even have 'note' in the name :)

[Brian White]

I use Dark Room (http://they.misled.us/dark-room) for my first draft. It's like Write Room -- full screen, black background, green text, saves to a .txt file -- but for PC. Nice and distraction-free. Then I used Word 2007 for further drafts, formatting, etc.

[JimR]

I recently started writing things out longhand because, frankly, there's too much juicy internet goodness distracting me, and my productivity went WAY up--n a weird way. On the PC, I would work on one or two stories at a time (using OpenOffice Writer, btw, I can't imagine needing anything fancier) and finish them in the course of 2 or three months. Now, I have 6 or so stories going, taking me about 4 months to get any progress on any individual one. I still get more pages on average a day, though.

I find that having the notebook around most of the time, I get more ideas on paper, and so have more to work with in general. I have a problem with attention span, so it's hard to keep at one story for a sustained period of time. If I have lots going at once, I can jump back and forth and satisfy my inner sparrow while still making progress.

[edited for stupid, stupid typos. stupid.]

[penfold]

It occurred to me that I hadn't posted a link for the program I use: notebook. It can run on windows, linux, or mac-- I use it on the first two. But damn, I'm positively lusting after scrivener now.

I recently started writing things out longhand because, frankly, there's too much juicy internet goodness distracting me, and my productivity went WAY up.

Food for thought. :)

[Phil]

I use two tools. Devon Think Pro Office and iWork 08:Pages.

Devon Think Pro Office is... well, it's simply the best damn information management program I've ever used. The version I have, I can import image files (that I scanned in) with OCR to allow indexable PDFs (or TIFFs or whatever). It can archive web pages, integrate easily into Apple Script aware programs, has nice rearrangeable hierarchical layout (really, look at the product page). I use this not only to organize my ideas, plot-lines, research and other writing tasks, I use it to organize my bill paying and keep track of important documents and records in my real life as well. The Pro Office is a little pricey, but they offer different versions. I'd say the Personal version is probably enough for most and in fact that's what I used for a long time. But Pro Office is the only one that has OCR built in, and I cannot live without my precious, precious OCR :)

The main reason I use Pages is simple (other than it being *much* cheaper than MS Office). Margin annotation. More than once I'd be steaming along, tippy-tapping on my MacBook keyboard, and suddenly there would be sand in my gears. I knew where I *was* and I knew where I want to end up, but somehow along the way I couldn't seem to figure out how to get there. Very frustrating. So now I simply fill a section with about twenty or so blahs (as in, "blah blah blah" ) and leave a small margin note of what I was *trying* to accomplish there but just couldn't seem to do.

I also find annotation very useful as little reminders. Sometimes something I write works, but just barely. Again, rather than agonize about it, I leave a little note to re-work it and move along.

[ethyachk]

It's worth mentioning that OpenOffice.org is free.

[Novembrance]

I recently switched from Word to Scrivener, and I absolutely love it.

[Domini]

Gosh. I thought my reply, "Microsoft Word" was going to be a common one. I'm kinda shocked that it isn't.

I don't need my word processor to do anything fancy, so I just keep using Microsoft Word 2000. That, and all of my work going back to 2001 was written in the same format with the same program, and I'm too lazy to convert things. Besides, that'd mess up the timestamps. I like looking at an old bit in one of my folders and seeing that I actually wrote it in 2004 or something. Or, even better, looking at my "cut" scenes (I save these into separate documents, rather than deleting them outright) and seeing the date I actually cut it out of a story.

[ora]

This reminds me, on recommendation of those here i bought a scrivner license, Mr Scalzi, you should get some kind of cut!

[KJToo]

Depends on what and where I'm writing.

Blog entries (and sometimes even short fiction) are typically written in the WordPress WYSIWYG editor, though I've been toying with the idea of installing ScribeFire.

When I'm writing at work, it's mostly Microsoft Word 2003 (or occasionally Notepad). At home or wandering around, I use Geany or OpenOffice. Oh, and Google Docs if it's something I need to collaborate on with other folks.

[Arachne Jericho]

For "for reals" fiction, including my web serial, I use Scrivener. I'd use it even if it were ugly, as long as it was readable, because it has some extremely practical functionality that, for some reason, hasn't made it to other word processors.

For everything else, there's Vim.

[paul crilley]

I hunted high and low for a Windows equivalent to Scrivener. I eventually settled on Liquid Binder XE. It has quite a steep learning curve, but it's well worth spending some time playing around with it to see if it's the tool for you.

[MWT]

Wow, lots of Scrivener fans here. I've tried it and discovered that it was going to be too easy to get distracted fiddling with the virtual notecards instead of actually writing anything.

I use Jer's Novel Writer. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Everything about it is geared for not interrupting the writing process, so if you're the sort that likes to wing it from a basic barebones premise instead of having lots of prewrite planning and outlines in place before you start, give JNW a try.

Also, for Windows users who are still searching high and low: I've heard good things about Rough Draft.

[tobiasbuckell]

Like many, I'm a die-hard user of Scrivener. I swear it's been essential to a very clean and easy draft of Sly Mongoose in record time for me, of a novella recently written with no major hiccups, and so far 20% of the next novel. I usually struggle to be able to flip around the novel easily, and comprehend what I have. I also like full screen writing (which is what I should be doing right now, but I'm procrastinating).

[Marko Kloos]

I tried Scrivener recently (new MacBook...yay!), but I think I'll stick with CopyWrite. I've gotten things just the way I want, and there are some aspects to CopyWrite that Scrivener can't quite match.

(There's also the fact that I've already purchased CW, and that they're both similar enough to not justify the extra expense.)

[dingosatemybaby]

I use Writeroom on the Mac, and Voodoopad for alot of the pre-writing outlining, research snips, character notes, etc. Scrivener is starting to make me rethink my choices though...

[The Finkess]

What are the advantages of using specialist software over a standard word processor (Word 97/2000 in my case)? What about the disadvantages?

[penfold]

The program that I use, notebook, has a good portion of each.

Advantages are that you can keep notes, backgrounds, and actual text all in one file, can make links in the text to jump to another page, and can write your own extensions/menus/hacks to the program. Also, it runs on windows, linux, or mac. And it's free.

Disadvantages are that it doesn't save in ms word format (it exports to one or multiple HTML files) and doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor (so you have to put in <i></i> tags for italics, etc). Plus, I don't think it has an auto-installer, so getting it up and running is a little more involved.

All in all, since I write on multiple computers, have some backstory I like to have close at hand, and am a raging cheap bastard, notebook's been pretty satisfactory so far.

[ora]

Disadvantages are that it doesn't save in ms word format (it exports to one or multiple HTML files) and doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor (so you have to put in <i></i> tags for italics, etc). Plus, I don't think it has an auto-installer, so getting it up and running is a little more involved.

Sounds like LaTex! Next we'll be having the emacs/vi debate!

[Sub-Odeon]

I have been a PC and Microsoft Word user since 1992. Some of my first manuscripts were actually done on Windows Write and imported later into Word.

I was also SysOp for a Fortress-PC (citdadel-type) BBS back in the day, and enjoyed composing in that environment: all black screen, white text. No distractions.

Sometimes I think the internet is the worst thing to ever have happened to my writing discipline. Ever.

[Rob Wright]

I use both Pages and Final Draft 7.

Rob

[Marko Kloos]

I was also SysOp for a Fortress-PC (citdadel-type) BBS back in the day, and enjoyed composing in that environment: all black screen, white text. No distractions.

Sometimes I think the internet is the worst thing to ever have happened to my writing discipline. Ever.

Try q10...it's a full-screen text editor that lets you choose your font type, page margins, font color, and background color. Nothing but text, and an optional small status bar with a clock and a live word count at the bottom.

That's what I use when I write on my Windows desktop. No distractions, if you can keep yourself from alt-tabbing out.

[Sub-Odeon]

I was also SysOp for a Fortress-PC (citdadel-type) BBS back in the day, and enjoyed composing in that environment: all black screen, white text. No distractions.

Sometimes I think the internet is the worst thing to ever have happened to my writing discipline. Ever.

Try q10...it's a full-screen text editor that lets you choose your font type, page margins, font color, and background color. Nothing but text, and an optional small status bar with a clock and a live word count at the bottom.

That's what I use when I write on my Windows desktop. No distractions, if you can keep yourself from alt-tabbing out.

Awesome. Thanks!

[Brian White]

I recently started using PageFour. I bought it ($34.95) after fooling around with a free trial for a few weeks.
http://www.softwareforwriting.com/pagefour.html
It allows you to create Notebooks, which are essentially folders, and inside that you can create as many folders and documents as you want. All of that is displayed in a sidebar, and you can open as many documents as you want in a tabbed format (like Firefox).
So you can have your character notes up on one tab, your outline on another, and your story on a third without having to go from one Word document to another.
It saves in .rtf format, which is good.
It's also a Windows program, which is better, since we can't use Scrivener (drool).

[Gabu-kun]

For blogging I've found Windows Live Writer to be pretty sweet. Works just like Word, easily plugs into Blogger and is a hell of a lot better than posting through the web interface. Thanks to the tech preview it even has word count :)

For my writing, I've been primarily using OneNote for years now. The multi page flexibility lets me scatter my snippets and thought-gasms all over while still keeping them organized within the Section that my story resides in. Being able to share a Notebook across multiple machines (work, home, lab) is a huge plus allowing me to capture inspiration no matter where I am. Also, if you're using Windows Desktop Search it indexes your Notebooks.

I find it invaluable for keeping snippets of all the interesting things I encounter across the web. Cutting and pasting it into OneNote retains the link you originally pulled it from and you can even print entire web pages to it. On several occasions an interesting picture started ideas percolating in my brain pan. i just threw it into OneNote, added some comments regarding my initial thoughts and stored it away for further ruminations.

On a Windows platform I have yet to find an alternative that's as feature rich as OneNote. Funny that it was originally created for the tablet PC market.