Absolutely. I think I've said that several times, haven't I? My point was just that a full aversion to Word was not going to serve an author well, as they would have to use it if they pursued commercial publication.
I'll defer to your experience. Once I have a publisher interested in my work, I'll insist they add $140 to my advance to cover the cost of Office .
Well there is a MASSIVE difference between 'writing' in Word and later doing some editing and back and forth in Word.
Yup. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be disagreeing with that? The original post that prompted my response (the response you found so hard to take) was about "using" Word. I guess you interpreted "using" as meaning "using for writing the first draft". I assumed it meant "using". Like, at all.
Not to mention 8 years ago... And this is a topic guaranteed to degenerate into a stupid religious war of Microsoft is God/Microsoft is Evil Incarnate.
You can get Photoshop and Lightroom for about the same from Adobe. It's a necessary model for them (software companies) as not that many people are upgrading anymore, especially a word processor.
There are still times when I need MSOffice for work, so I keep a subscription. But more and more, Google Docs is handling everything I need, which is nice since I now have a Chromebook. I will also use Libre Office on it from time to time. It may not be much longer before I don't keep the MSOffice subscription.
I have had no problems using "track changes" from .odt to .doc, but more importantly, I use in line comments much more often.
And then back and forth? Like, get a Word doc, translate to Open Office, make changes, translate back to Word, get more changes, translate back to Open, make changes, translate back to Word, etc.? It's been a while since I tried - maybe it's gotten better! In terms of in-line vs. track changes - I don't know your role, are you an editor as well as an author? My editors generally use a combination of both, but expect me to send my revisions to them with 'track changes' turned on.
At the moment I'm using open office as it is free to use and allows me to save in both MS Word or PDF files to be accessible for others.
For most documents, the back and forth between OpenOffice or LibreOffice and MSOffice is fine. But for some documents, with a lot of formatting, commenting, and the like it doesn't always translate correctly.
I guess if people have an editor to clean up the mess then Word could be usable. But for someone like me who has to write the full book, with a tiny amount of help on editing etc. I cannot imagine how it is possible, especially when structural or other changes are needed. And keeping track of a plot(s) must be a nightmare. I am fortunate that Scrivener does all of this for me in one program.
I use Scrivener as well, and I love it. I think you could write a book easily enough in MSWord, though. The two published authors I know who have contracts with big publishing houses both use MSWord for novels. I tried to get one to look at Scrivener, but he basically wants something that you just open and get a blank page to type on, nothing more. I think he'd be more likely to switch to a simple text editor than anything, but his editor likes the MSWord document. I've done a couple of Anthologies that I edited in MSWord, the last one well over 400 pages, and there was no mess to clean up.
So how do they keep rack of scenes and what was said in earlier scenes ? How do they track what happened when and where ? How do they keep track of interweaving plots ? They have to read back through the whole document ? It's bewildering.
Those who love Scrivener love it a LOT. I've tried it and it didn't work for my brain. But other people's brains seem different. I'd say it also depends on on your writing style (I would think Scrivener would benefit people who take a lot of notes, do a lot of planning, and maybe jump around as they write?) and even genre (if you're writing a ten-book epic fantasy, you probably have lots of information to sort and keep track of. Less so if you're writing a single-book YA novel).
I usually have a pencil and paper outline of interweaving plots, or a table I set up in Word. As I write, I jot notes at the end of the document to keep track of changes I need to make later. If I need to check something, I just do a search in Word - I wouldn't need to re-read the whole document! But mostly I just remember. I think you're writing spy/intrigue type stuff? For that, I would probably want more notes, but I'd still tend to use Word - I've used it's 'outline' function a bit and it works okay. I mean, people have been writing novels for a long time... I don't think John le Carre used Scrivener! It's a tool some people find very useful, but I don't think it's essential.
Funny thing is, for many years writers wrote novels without any word processors at all. Then, when word processors first came about, for many years none of them had any kid of scene tracking or other features associated with programs like Scrivener, and yet novelists kept writing novels. The idea that you can't write one using MSWord is bizarre to me. EDIT: Ninja'd by @BayView
I don't take a lot of notes, I don't do a lot of planning, I don't jump around much when I write, but I do use Scrivener.
