Hello everyone, I hope you are having a lovely holiday! I was wondering, what software do you all use to write and keep notes when researching? I struggle with keeping track of everything; I use Notion for notes and quotes and standard Word or Google doc sheet to write, but it's not great. Years ago, I had a subscription to Scrivener, but from what I remember, I wasn't impressed. Thank you.
I use a note tool on my phone for small tidbits. For heavier research I try to rely on my memory, but that tactic has failed spectacularly. I think I may need to create a dedicated folder system and use open office for collected text research material.
There's a thread here asking a similar question: https://slashdot.org/story/22/12/26/193244/ask-slashdot-what-note-taking-app-do-you-use My favorite response is this: "Email. I email my note (shopping list, whatever) to myself from my computer, and my phone's imap client picks it up, so now I have my note in my "private cloud", full-text indexed, searchable and organized by date."
I do all of my research as well as character sheets, etc. in OneNote. I do my writing by hand using fountain pens, then transcribe it into Word.
My memory is failing significantly lately . I'm also writing non-fiction so I rely heavily on quotes. I need to find a better way than a messy Notion doc.
Thank you, I'll check out the thread. I can't use email, I get too many emails as it is, and I developed a negative response to any new email; it's either work or spam.
I like the idea of fountain pens! I have a notebook where I write some bits, especially when I'm away from a computer. But it's not my main source. I quite like the commonplace book system, similar to what Ryan Holiday uses (he writes quotes on index cards) so I suppose I'm looking for something similar to this but digital.
I keep notes in Evernote, usually do my writing in Google Docs, and for plotting I use a nice software called Plottr. And it has a Snowflake template which is what I'm currently using, though I haven't compelted all the Snowflake steps so I can't really say I'm using the method. I'm partially using it I guess. I like Google Docs because it automatically saves your previous versions, and it's easy to download versions as PDFs or in whatever form you want to a folder on your computer. Plus it has an amazing spell checker, better than what I've used elsewhere. I suspect that's because it outsources spell-checking and grammatical suggestions to databases or whatever, rather than doing it entirely through your own computer, and that increases the power and reach of it, but it also raises issues of privacy. It means my story is being seen by software that connects without my knowledge or explicit consent to external sources, and of course it also stores it in some form of Cloud. It may well also be scanning it for keywords and sending alerts to the NSA or elsewhere. I mean, it is Google. It's becoming a surveillance state, and there's basically nothing we can do about it.
I do everything on WordPerfect X6 and QuattroPro (Corel's Excel equivalent). "Scenes I Need" summaries go in redline at the bottom of the ms; I delete each one as I get to it and write the scene for real. Research notes go in a separate WP doc, or if I'm keeping track of various characters and their attributes, I use a QP spreadsheet. I do up my characters' family trees in Legacy 9, for stories where that matters. I've also been known to open a new file on my calendar software (I'm still using Lotus Organizer, which you can't update anymore, darn it) to keep track of my lead characters' movements. I've tried other specialized writing programs, but it just made for duplicate work. Especially as I format my paperbacks in WP as well.
