I just queued up the next chapter in my self-indulgent, crappy story for a Friday morning release and it got me to thinking about all the helper monkey software that I use.
For basic writing, I started out using a word processing program. It was okay while the story was less than 20k words, but as soon as I cleared 150k, the file got out of hand. It became too difficult to move around, and it would take a minute or so before the check-as-you-type spell checker would catch up with what I was writing. The other issue was notes. I was keeping a separate file for notes. All kinds of notes: outlines, missing details in chapters, characters, etc. Even keeping track of the notes was becoming a hassle.
So, after the story had already grown out of control, I migrated to new software. I tried a bunch of different packages, but I settled on an app called Scrivener. This made it very easy to chop things into chapters, keep notes, track status, and even file away research. It's one of those how-did-I-live-without-it apps.
As you may have guessed, I'm using OS X. While it has a system wide spell checker built in, there's no grammar checker. Most apps don't ship with one either. The best solution I found so far is Grammarian X Pro. It's not the slickest thing I've ever used, but it does get the job done. Also, it has an offline dictionary and thesaurus, which are critical for me as I am usually unplugged from the net when I'm writing.
Scrivener + Grammarian does a decent job of catching the big ticket errors. And Holly Logan, who has been kind enough to edit my miserable story, is the best spell and grammar checker ever. Still, it's nice to have some automated tools to weed things out before handing off to a real person.
Even after the text passes under two sets of eyes, there's still a good number of errors. What I'm finding is the best tool for this is text-to-speech software. Before anything gets posted, I actually listen to the story while reading it simultaneously. It's amazing, but obviously wrong things just pop out when you do this. Things that when you just read the text, even when another person just reads the text, you might not have seen.
So, what are people using for software? Is everyone using Notepad, or more sophisticated stuff?
Comments
Writing software
I admit it, I'm a reverse snob, and stick quite faithfully to the various Microsoft products. I use various versions of MSWord, depending on the computer I'm using. MSWord does contain a grammar checker, although the things it does sometimes are laughable, or annoying, or both.
Then I open the file with Wordpad and resave it to get something that's acceptable by the program on this site. I used to use MS Works, which didn't give me nearly the problems posting. However, I switched to Word about the same time Erin switched the site around, so I'm not sure just where the problem lies. With me, most likely.
After that, I bounce things off my crew of crack(ed) proofers and editors, they do a little of both; and are worth every cent I pay them! ($0.00001)
After that, I only have to make a few corrections after I post the story. :(
Karen J.
"A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to want to take it off you."
Francoise Sagan
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Helper
I like to use Roughdraft, which is a free word processor for Windows that's barely over 1Mb in size (it fits on a floppy!). It only uses .rtf documents, but that's just fine. It's fast, as you would expect anything that small, and was created with writers in mind. It has quite a few features, but its greatest two, in my opinion, are its ability to get it all organized into a attached tree, and it can have up to a hundred tabs. I can flick between chapters, outlines, research -- whatever I've created -- in a hurry. It has a spell-checker but no grammar checker. It has an Internet on-line dictionary/thesaurus link built-in, but you can download a free dictionary/thesaurus that will work with it from WordWeb.
I usually do the real writing in Roughdraft, than dump it into Word for the final grammar check, or at least I used to on my old computer. This one came without Office, and I'm too cheap to buy it, so I use OpenOffice, a 90Mb freebie, which has a local dictionary and a somewhat cruder but adequate downloadable grammar checker. AbiWord is also a free word processor that has a grammar checker, but for some reason, that beast ran like an old dog on a cold day on my dual processor x64 XP Pro.
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi
Roughdraft
I had been using Wordpad before I saw the (yours possibly) recommendation for Roughdraft in another topic. I have switched to it since it is a smarter Wordpad with some nice functionality. And like you I switch to OpenOffice for spell checking when complete.
I actually prefer not to have any spell check or grammar check turned on when I am writing content, as I find it distracts me too much.
Software
It depends on which of the boxen I'm using at the time.
I have a M$ box that I use Office 2k Platinum with, though I find I sometimes go to Open Office and write there. Seeing as it's Java based, I can use it on my Linux boxen.
On any of the Linux boxen, I use Open Office.
With Open Office, I can export to rtf and edit successfully on any box.
Helper apps can be messy. It's bad enough with a GUI overhead, then add something in Java, then add something like Doze Office, or Open Office then, then you can add the TSRs for Spelling and Grammar and....
2+ GHz with 512MB RAM starts to act like a 486 33-sx with 2MB RAM
Not surprising. It gets even better if your video is incorporated on the MoBo and shares System RAM. That 64 MB of Video that you aren't using is squandered, because you're only using about 2MB of it, but it's reserved RAM for Video.
If it's truly shared RAM, then all but about 8MB is available for system use, but TSRs are still there. then you have to remember the AdWare blocker and cleaner software, the Popup blocker software, the antivirus software and the....
I miss my 8086. Sometimes I think I got better performance with that.
SS
I've got a headache.
I just use Open Office which, being free, appeals to my strong miserly instincts. (Actually, rather by accident, I have MS Word which I only use for downloading MS Word things people send me - although Open Office will also suffice for that.)
I tend to go back over what I have written in a spasmodic, quite cavalier fashion. Changing and revising as drink or fancy takes me. Hopefully improving it.
Until now I have checked impatiently for obvious typos, said a silent prayer, and then copied it (Ctrl + C), clicked on any button that seemed vaguely appropriate, and posted it here. Once posted, I have looked to ensure it isn't printed back-to-front or upside-down or in any way that would impair its legibility. Until now the transfer seems to have resulted in neither of these two disasters/arguable improvements.
Should I be doing more? It seems all right to me but maybe it doesn't to other people. Am I living in a Fools' Paradise? And if so where are the other fools?
When I started I couldn't even manage this but Erin was always on hand to help although I am sure she roundly cursed me and my intellectual inadequacies on a regular basis.
What am I missing? Or am I, like all idiots, a recipient of The Gods' special benevolence?
Hugs,
Fleurie
Same old story
I too started with a word processor; I was using Pages because it came with my Mac. I started out with each chapter in its own file but eventually that became unwieldy, so I combined them all into one big file. That turned out to have its own problems. Yadda yadda yadda, I too ended up discovering Scrivener and wondering how I'd ever lived without it.
Oh, and the built-in (or occasionally on-line) dictionary and thesaurus have replaced my paper ones for the most part.
I don't use a grammar checker, though. Some version or another of MS Word I was forced to use at work had one built-in; I found all its suggestions to be condescending, insulting, or just plain stupid so I turned the damned thing off and have never wanted anything to do with one since. I'm sure Grammarian X Pro isn't that bad but I've still got a bad taste in my mouth from that experience so I'm not inclined to give it a chance.
As for text-to-speech, I find that the voices in my head sound much more realistic, but maybe that's...
justme
P.S. Your story is neither "crappy" nor "miserable." I can't comment on whether you feel like you're indulging yourself by writing it, but whatever you're doing it works for me.
Text-to-Speech
Text-to-speech on the mac is decent, but it is pretty bad for reading stories. So, on that front, I agree that mentally hearing the story is preferable to the machine voice. The problem I have is that when I'm reading the story, my brain seems to clean up obvious errors, and when I hear the story in my head, the characters do to. When I read along with the machine voice, I still correct things in my head, but the machine voice doesn't, and it makes some things jump out at me.
Writing software...
I started off on OpenOffice.org under Linux; but I wasn't satisfied with the HTML or XHTML output from that, so I wrote a Java program to extract the story and mark it up into clean XHTML, complete, ready to paste into story submission forms in my site (where there's CSS support for stuff like subtitles) and into generic sites (specifically this one), and plaintext.
I moved onto the Mac, but just carried on doing the same thing with NeoOffice.
But I got frustrated with the limitations of OpenOffice.org's Master Document as a way to manage an entire project, and last year switched to (and paid for) Ulysses, an authoring software for the Mac. It let me keep everything in one place, at least; but its HTML export was weak too. The basic problem is that in using the Cocoa Appkit text editor tool, it's locked in to RTF as a basic underlying format, and that sucks, because it basically has no concept of document structure.
Anyway, I wrote my own XHTML exporter plugin for Ulysses which did its best to interpret a structure from the text. It was fun learning Objective C too; though I did also need some external post-processing scripts to finish things off to make paste-ready versions.
When the recent upgrade of Ulysses broke my XHTML exporter, I decided to give Scrivener a try; which didn't really exist when I had bought Ulysses. It shares the weakness of being based on the Cocoa Appkit text editor, and thus can only usefully produce plain text or RTF. However, it does also embed SmartyPants and MultiMarkDown as an export filter, which means I can produce very nearly paste-ready XHTML from it without any coding of my own, which is a definite improvement as coding takes me away from writing. I also like its fullscreen mode better. Just last weekend the trial period ran out and I paid for my copy. :-)
I still kind of miss OpenOffice.org though; the project organisation side of things is weak, but the editing environment itself is quite nice. And free is good too, as is portability to other platforms. I can't use Scrivener on my Linux box. :-(
I have also recently taken to doing some writing using my phone; a Nokia E70 with a fold-out querty keyboard and a wordprocessor sufficient to the task of writing and editing individual chapters for importing/exporting from Scrivener.
HTML export really isn't a
HTML export really isn't a big concern of mine for a writing app. I'm pretty sure that Scrivener has an export function for this, but I've been exporting to plain text and running it through a simple perl script. I realize that picking up Objective-C or even simple scripting isn't an option for everyone, but if you can do it, I say go for it. Make something simple that does exactly what you want.
I did take a look at Ulysses when I was looking for stuff, and I just couldn't figure out the interface. CopyWrite is another decent app, but I would give the edge to Scrivener on the Mac.
Application choice for editors
It's very interesting to note that the three of you who use Scrivener (the Admiral, justme, and Rachel) all are quite good writers to begin with and apparently don't feel the need to use a proofreader/editor. While the Admiral does use Grammatica Pro (which I may need to investigate again -- early versions were full of technical glitches), you have no real need to share a manuscript across platforms.
Since I edit and proof more than I write these days and I'm on a Mac, and since most of those I edit for are Windoze or Linux users, Word is the de facto app of choice, since it robustly supports the Track Changes feature across platforms. Proofing and editing for someone else without using Track Changes is simply a royal pain. I agree that Word's grammar checker sucks big time -- it's wrong more often than right for anyone with a decent grasp of writing English. The other big problem with Word is its total inability to export a document ready for posting here or most other places online.
Anyway, it would be great if any of those apps designed "just for writers" actually supported a Track Changes feature which allowed document sharing between either multiple authors or authors and editors, preferably across platforms. Until they do, they will never become mainstream software, IMHO.
It *is* nice to see how many folks here do use Macs!
Amelia, Member GEBP
"Reading rots the mind." - Uncle Analdas
"Reading rots the mind." - Uncle Analdas
Grammarian isn't the
Grammarian isn't the friendliest piece of software ever, and you need to spend some time tailoring its absurd number of grammar rules to your preferences. Even though it's not perfect, it has two things going for it- first off, there's really no other game in town on the mac. The other thing is it works everywhere. You can use grammarian to spell and grammar check just about any text anywhere. And I mean everywhere, input fields on web pages, word processing apps, even the names of folders in the Finder. Also, like most grammar checkers, sometimes it just suggests stupid things.
On the topic of editors and tracking changes, this is something that Scrivener won't do. It will do versioning, which I think is just great, but it's not for collaboration. When Holly sends me her edits, she sends me Word documents, and I've installed Word in Parallels Desktop strictly so I can read all of her valuable feedback. It would be nice if Scrivener could do this, but then you'd still have to find a common file format. Even though Holly sends me RTF documents, I don't have any other apps (including TextEdit and NeoOffice) that can read all the changes. It seems to be Word specific.
editors...
In fact when I was using Open/NeoOffice, only one of my proofers/prereaders would even deign to sully their own computers with a copy of that software, and with that person we'd make use of the revision/collaboration system (aka Track Changes I think), but everyone else would only deal with the HTML or plaintext versions and send back emails with quoted sections and their changes, so the advantage of the massively multiplatform openoffice were negated.
It did also mean that the exporter stuff I had to be write had to be convenient enough to use every time I produced a draft of a chapter; it wasn't a one-time finishing process.
That seems like a bit of an oxymoron. :-) Anyway, it seems to me OpenOffice.org should be able to answer that requirement rather better than Word, which actually isn't very multiplatform. (On Linux you have to run it under windows emulation, and while the Mac version is quite *nice* it also lags behind the Windows version, and document compatibility can be just as much a problem with that as with OpenOffice.
affordable
Being new at this posting gig, it has been a real learning experience. I was using a bargain bin program but soon found out why it was in there in the first place. Right now Open Office 2.2 since a new update has come out. Not perfect but at least I can afford the price of free! Still for proofing switching formats is a royal pain. One uses MS word 2003, another word perfect, and the last Open Office like me.
grover
Um, a Word from the cheap seats
I was weaned on Word Perfect and a very nice shareware, PCWrite. This was in the fall of 1990. Sis and I went halvesies on a Packard-Smell 386sx in January of 1991.
We have had WordPerfect 5.1 DOS up through WordPerfect 12(?) for Windows 95\98/XP Pro.
My sister - the Evil Blonde - loves Word Perfect as it is far better than MS Word for composing and organizing a news letter. It's reveal codes funtion is miles ahead of MS Word. She received formal training on MS Word and Excell as part of her training at the bank and as we both work there, we both use lots of Billy Gates stuff.
I use MS Word 2002 which I paid a bundle for but at a huge discount from the mortgage the farm price you usually pay as I got it with my Dell in June of 2003. This was to get MS Publisher and for compatablity reasons. I use MS Word as is is ubiquitous and the track changes feature is very nice. This keeps Itinerant sane -- a handy thing when he has to read my stuff in the raw.
Use what you like but realize the less common the program/platform the more likely there will be a *trade off*. On some sites, strip the bejezzers out of your story in terms of fancy formating and the like as they often cause headaches posting.
Have fun.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
A long long time ago, your mother should know...
Oh, *that* long ago I was using Impression Publisher under RISC OS on Acorn machines. I was also technical editor on our college SF/Fantasy magazine, and used the same software to do the design work.
<cough>Subtitles</cough>
Yeah, that was a mistake. :-} The rest of it was just fussiness with wanting to get the HTML to be well-formed and structured and nice typographically.
Metapad is main
I use just a simple FREE text editor. Metapad. And then the most dangerous piece of editing tools Microsoft Word.
IMMORTAL
- JOHN 3:16 (KJV) BIBLE
I use a couple of tools ...
I stick pretty much with the standard Windows programs, plus my eyes, and someties read aloud, to see how different punctuation can changes a sentence or paragraph.
As for Software, I do most stuff in WORD 2003 with its grammar checker, and dictionary as well as spell checker.
But I also use Word perfect 10, for which I have the full blown OED ( Oxford English Dictionary ), not just the abbreviated version that came with it.
And I try to work in Rich Text format, as that is the most portable between the two word processors.
I don't think I could stand to try and work in Notepad. It is just that, a bare text processor, with little utility once the note gets beyond a drabble.
I send everything back from WORD, because of its Track Changes feature. As Grover and the Admiral have seen, I always send back a tracked and commented version, AND a clean edited version to my authors.
Holly Logan
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
Track changes is nice
I've had some proofing done by Holly and track changes is very nice.
The comments it allows a proofer to insert can be educational. Her clean edit and marked up versions are handy. I appreciate any feedback from my proofer/editors as I learn from it.
-- My *beast* is MS Word 2002, though I do have WordPerfect 12 --
I was introduced to it by Itinerant who uses it at the insistence of Amelia_R as it makes comparing changes in a document much easier. Janet Nolan has done considerable proofing for me and also uses a version of Billy Gates monster. Each of these kind folks has their own style of proofing but they all make good use of change tracking.
Whatever wordprocessing program you prefer, if it has a convienint way to show the changes from one version to another, it is a big help.
Do yourself a BIG favor and save frequently and to different media. I ususally do two of each as as *save as* -- I almost never use save as it is like Russian Roulett with your data. I also do either a working draft on a good-ole floopy or to an external USB HD or even burn a multisesion CD-R. A USB Flash drive is fine too. Anything to save my retyping it all.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Backups
I'm pretty overkill about backups. I backup my work to a USB Key Drive, my iPod, a spare desktop, and this is all in addition to my backup server that keeps a week's worth of nightly backups. And once a month or so, the backup server gets dumped to DVD and tossed in a fireproof safe.
Which, you know, is the minimum anyone should do.
yeah, backups are good
Why the talk of backups now; it is to late. Some people deal well with tech and some don't, period. (You know on some machines with windows 'restore' means go back a day or three and get rid of the new program that is slowing you down. On some machines the same word means wipe out everything. I guess those 'some people' knew that.)
I have recently started emailing things to myself about every time I finish a page. Free, last about forever, and safer than a safe (I hope.)