What word processor/writing software do you use?

Hi Jumping Jack,

I'm sure you'll get replies here, but check this recent thread out - it touches on this question, too.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35306

I like to format the page to aproximately the size of an actual novel rather than standard A4. For some reason it helps me to visualise the story better if I'm writing straight onto a novel page, or at least feel like I am. I hope that makes sense.

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To me? Sorry, No. . Unless you just mean the usual formatting with 25 lines double-spaced, and 1" margins.

I can't say what to try only not waht to try. New Novelist is a waste of time. Actually there's nothing to beat MS word but type writing software free downloads (or such like) into your search engine and you should find free trials easy enough.

If you turn on "document map" in MS Word it allows for a listing on the side. Not sure if that's what you mean. I use it to show my chapters and subchapters so I can jump around in my story when editing.

In MS Word, look at the View menu, and choose Document Map.

Use the Section command to begin each chapter on a new page.

Use a Heading style to name the chapter. MSWord does exactly what you want.

Given you a Rep point to ease the pain, JJ. You'll find it by left-clicking on USERCP at the left end of the blue line at the top of this thread.

JumpingJack said:

*switches on document map*
*adds a heading*
*watches word do exactly what he wants it to do*
*bangs head on table*
I knew that was there! honest!

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Software

I recently bought a new laptop. It's made of mahogany and was built around 1840. I can take it anywhere, and it never needs plugged in or recharging. With it, I use Luddite Word Processon 4.0. Namely, lined paper and a Penmate Duo Expert mechanical pencil loaded with .05mm 4B lead.

When the time comes to transfer things to the computer, I pick a word processor. Traditionally, I've waffled between the latest version of Word and WordPerfect. I have Word 2007 and WordPerfect X3, but Word 2007 is a huge change in the gui, and it's all I could ask for, so I'm using it full time.

I just learned, duh, that it's possible to read my first draft into Word using a dictation program. It's faster and more accurate than my lousy typing, so I'm trying this now, and so far it's working very well.

But I really wish you could still submit things in longhand. It's the wetware that counts, not the software.

lol

Jamesaritchie said:

But I really wish you could still submit things in longhand. It's the wetware that counts, not the software.

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Provided that hand-writing is legible, right? Do you mean with a quill? That's funny.

I tend to worry more about what words I use.

caw.

Medievalist said:

In MS Word, look at the View menu, and choose Document Map.

Use the Section command to begin each chapter on a new page.

Use a Heading style to name the chapter. MSWord does exactly what you want.

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I always save each chapter into a new document, because if you are not careful your one document will get too big and glitch like mine did, but that was before I discovered the fact that you make them separate word documents and save them all in the same folder. Furthermore, you can go to Insert, Page Numbers, Format and type in the page number so it coincides with the other separate word documents and it don't start back over from 1, got it? This way, you will never lose your writing to excryption; believe me it sucks royally!

Jamesaritchie said:

...a Penmate Duo Expert mechanical pencil loaded with .05mm 4B lead.

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A mechanical pencil! You futurist you!

quill

argenianpoet said:

Provided that hand-writing is legible, right? Do you mean with a quill? That's funny.

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I have written with a goose feather quill I cut myself. That's Luddite Word Processor 1.0. Works just fine. Gives you time to think while dipping, too.

Shoot, if Shelby Foote could write all those long Civil War books with a dip pen, who am I to say it isn't the best way.

Shadow_Ferret said:

A mechanical pencil! You futurist you!

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I know. Sigh. I have written with a goose feather quill. Still do every now and then. Or with a steel dip pen. And I love glass dip pens. I have even made my own paper, my own ink, and written stories by candlelight and by lantern. Though this extreme was largely to get a sense of what it was really like for one of my characters to sit down and write letters.

And I have several thousand woodcase pencils, nearly all Ticonderoga #2s, the traditional pencil of the writer (Though I prefer the black over the yellow), but my poor old hands are barely functional, so I had to upgrade to a more modern writing instrument for day to day use. The Penmate is very light, has a custom grip, and doesn't hurt my hand.

Wow, longhand? ahhh, those were the days. The days when no one, including myself, could read a single word I'd written down. I'm cursed with "bad penmanship", struggled with it all my school-girl days until I learned it was not fixable.

Thank heavens for keyboards, and typing 90wmp

longhand

MidnightMuse said:

Wow, longhand? ahhh, those were the days. The days when no one, including myself, could read a single word I'd written down. I'm cursed with "bad penmanship", struggled with it all my school-girl days until I learned it was not fixable.

Thank heavens for keyboards, and typing 90wmp

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You just have to slow down and draw the letters. There are still a decent bunch of pro writers who do first drafts in longhand.

To my mind, the 90wpm, or even 40wpm, the writing keeping up with thoughts, is one of the biggest disadvantages of a keyboard. First thoughts are seldom the best thoughts. Other disadvantages are the easy of cut and paste and editing in first draft. These are great things for final draft work, but I think they all hurt first drafts.

Slowing down, writing neatly, ten or twelve words per minute, lets my mind stay way out in front of my hand, which is where it belongs.

My handwriting looks like I dipped a spider in ink, set in on fire, and let it run across the page. So that's out.

I'm aware that calligraphy is an art, and that some people prefer handwriting for any number of valid reasons, but man, it has no romance for me. I always think about medieval monks, who spent days painstakingly laying out a page, drawing the Latin characters, painting the illuminations, months and months of work for a book maybe nine people would read. I suspect if you showed, say, an 11-th century Benedictine monk Microsoft Publisher, he'd run screaming into the 21st century and never look back.

As for word-processing software. It depends on which machine I happen to be using. On Windows XP, currently I use the beta of Office 2007, since the GUI is a major step forward. When I'm running Linux, it's OpenOffice Writer 2.0. And when I'm on OS X, I use TextEdit, which is surprisingly well-endowed in the feature department.

My word processing needs are fairly minimal. You can do Standard Manuscript Format with TextEdit alone.

-JM

When you take paleography classes, they make you begin by preparing your own ink, quills, scraper, liner, and vellum. There's a clear line of inheirtance between the ms. and layout and the digital screen and layout that's somehow comforting to me.

Oh believe me, I don't actually write at 90wmp ! I type as slowly as I would write by hand, because I have to think of the words. Muscle/tendon issues keep me from holding a pen for more than 5 minutes at a time, with an hour inbetween - that is not condusive to writing! I wish I'd developed as a left handed writer as a kid, that would have solved the issue.

But no - speed does not make for good writing, only speedier copying after edits (which I can manage by hand for the most part) I find when I'm reading my work for edits, it must be via printed page.

argenianpoet said:

I always save each chapter into a new document, because if you are not careful your one document will get too big and glitch like mine did, but that was before I discovered the fact that you make them separate word documents and save them all in the same folder. Furthermore, you can go to Insert, Page Numbers, Format and type in the page number so it coincides with the other separate word documents and it don't start back over from 1, got it? This way, you will never lose your writing to excryption; believe me it sucks royally!

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You can also use a Master Document, but this is not something to be indulged in by the faint hearted; they love to become corrupted.

Medievalist said:

When you take paleography classes, they make you begin by preparing your own ink, quills, scraper, liner, and vellum. There's a clear line of inheirtance between the ms. and layout and the digital screen and layout that's somehow comforting to me.

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Very true. I am, however, quite grateful I don't have to go out and butcher a pig every time I need a sheet of vellum.

And backups! </obvious>Backups of computer documents are insanely important.<obvious/> I usually rotate between a pair of external hard drives and a number of flash drives, and I also make burned CDs every so often. I also make a point to save an extra copy in RTF format, in case the main document becomes corrupt.

That was another thing about handwriting that always bugged me. If you have a proper backup scheme and your computer dies, it's a pain, but not the end of the world. If you've written the magnum opus in a stack of notebooks and somebody spills a pitcher of beer...not good.

-JM

What does document map do and how do you get it to work.

I tried to find a quote from Neil Gaiman which would have complemented this thread, and in particular Jame's posts, wonderfully. After ten minutes of fruitless searching, I can't find the damn thing, so I'll paraphrase wildly.

"When editing Sandman: Book of Dreams, one of the things I kept noticing was that stories which should have been 2,000 word things were coming to me at 6,000 word things. This is something, I realized, which is in part because of the use of computer's to write."

It was a comment in defense of why Neil writes his books and stories out by hand.

I have to admit, I agree, with him and James. My handwriting is not a beautiful thing (although it's legible, which is leaps and bounds beyond my handwriting a few years earlier) but it is a good way to get a story down. The short story in my signature right now, "...And Paint Me Beautiful, When I Die" was written entirely longhand, because I wanted to make sure I could do it. If I'd written it on the computer, I know it would have come out a great deal longer.

I find that I consider things more solidly when writing by hand. By hand, I have no idea how many words per minute I do. On computer, if I'm jazzed and the temperature is good (if it's too cold, my typing goes to hell) then I can do easily 100wpm. I'm very fast. I don't see any way in which this is a good thing.

I typically write with a Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine tipped black pen, because it's comfortable and they're wonderful pens.

I also have a collection of very lovely fountain pens which I'm very fond of. You can do worse than writing with a solid Waterman 52 flex-nib pen.

I have a friend who writes in Word, but who first formats all his pages to 5"x8" or 6"x9" to make sure that he's writing in "novel-pages," which drives me nuts. What good is it? Since every publisher is different, you're not setting yourself any kind of standard at all. It's why I keep an eye on my wordcount but don't especially care what my page count is at anyway. I can send my page count all to hell just by changing my type font, but my word count will stay the same.

That said, when it comes to computer work, I use Word2007. I adore that program. It looks beautiful, it's comfortable to use, it lets me pin my current manuscript at the top of the "Recently Used" list, which is wonderful. It means that if I need to open a half-dozen other documents, my novel doesn't get bumped off the list and result in me having to go look for it.

I still maintain, however, that if you wrote by hand and perhaps by typewriter (manual? electric? Doesn't matter to me. I prefer electric) then you might find yourself eliminating some problems that may exist in writing. It's one of the purest ways of ensuring that you eschew surplusage.

Monks

JonMoeller said:

I suspect if you showed, say, an 11-th century Benedictine monk Microsoft Publisher, he'd run screaming into the 21st century and never look back.


-JM

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I sure hope not, just as I dearly hope Shakespeare wouldn't abandon his quill. I think there's some pretty solid scientific evidence that Shakespeare was largely what he was, and those monks were what they were, and that a big part of the reason why both have last so long, is because of the instruments they used.

I

The Tempest would have been an eight-hour play if Shakespeare had used a Word Processor, and what would that have improved?