I write using two software programs: Microsoft Word and Scrivener. I’m not going to do a blog on how each program works, but I thought I’d go into some of my reasons for using both of them.
I started out on Word, and it’s an easy program to learn. Most agents, editors, and publishers request either Word (.doc) or PDF format. The newer .docx format can cause problems sometimes if the other person doesn’t have an upgraded Word program, but if you always save a copy as .doc, you’ll be fine. Word is pretty much the standard word processing program in use nowadays, I suppose, and I’ve really never used anything else since I started writing seriously.
If you have an iPad, you can download the Pages app and transfer files back and forth from Word to Pages without losing anything. I’ve done that numerous times when I don’t want to lug my laptop around, but still want to get in some work on the stories. When you’re finished on Pages, just email the document to yourself – it gives you the option to save as a Word document at that time. You can even download Pages to your iPhone, but really, why? It takes way too long to type a coherent sentence on the tiny little keypad – just stick to the computer and iPhone.
As an aside, yes, I am a Mac writer. I have an iMac for storing and working on the main files; my MacBookPro for most of my portable work; an iPad for those times when the laptop is just too big; and even an iPhone. I’ve written on a PC, and I’ll admit that your average writer wouldn’t really notice any major differences, so I’m not going to make an issue out of it or tell you that you have to have a Mac to be a serious writer.
Scrivener is a great little writing program that combines the best parts of Word with your corkboard or index card outlining system. It even has a corkboard background. You can divide each chapter into scenes, and can then shuffle those scenes around any time you want to. You can jot down notes for each scene, chapter, and the work in general. You can move chapters around just like you can move the scenes. There’s even a section for character development.
The way I work is thus: if I’m in the home office, I’m on the iMac using Scrivener. I type directly onto the main document (saving frequently, of course – we’ve all had the horrible experience of a computer crash or power loss that deletes an entire chapter!). If I’m working somewhere else, I’m usually lugging the laptop around, and for that, I use Word simply because it’s too much of a hassle to keep up with which Scrivener file contains the very latest version. Scrivener has the entire novel, you see. I could use Scrivener on both iMac and laptop, but I’m not one of those super-organized people who can remember exactly which file they were working on last. I started out with variations of “outlawsecurity.one” and “outlawsecurity.two” and it just got cumbersome and took up way too much memory, so I use Word on the laptop (and Pages on the iPad), and that way I don’t have to bother remembering. I email the document to myself, upload it to the iMac, and cut and paste into the appropriate section(s) of the main work in Scrivener.
I’m sure one (or more) of you smart readers is going to let me know of some nifty shortcut I can take with Scrivener to avoid transferring the entire novel each time – but until I get that comment, I’ll just keep cutting and pasting. And it gives me something in the old in-box!
What program or programs do you use for your writing? What are the strengths and weaknesses of that program? What program(s) have you thought of trying?