Tools of the Trade

I've posted this in another forum and it ended up being very helpful to me. Well... up until someone got really offended when I said I don't suggest using Microsoft Word.*

I was wondering if people might share what practical tools they use for writing, especially writing for long periods of time. We talk a lot about what to write and how to write it, but I’m talking something a little more practical. I’m talking tools of the trade. What hardware do you use for your writing? (Yes, a pen and pencil counts) For example, what keyboard do you use to ensure you can type effectively? How do you ensure you don’t lose your work?

We can even go as far as how do you select the type of music you listen to! (Note, I said how you select your music. I don’t think it really matters what you’re listening to.)

I'll answer my tools of the trade if people show interest.

*If you are really curious as to why I don't recommend Microsoft, it had nothing to do with whether it's a good or bad program. Microsoft Word is better far than any open source software, for example LibreOffice or OpenOffice, and it is universally accepted. My problem is that Word is not $69 per year better. If your main fuction is a double spaced, twelve point font, Times New Roman with the chapter headings being centered, how do you justify the $69 for just basic functions that are even in notepad! And many issues with formatting can be overcome by just converting to PDF.

Now if your work or school requires you use Microsoft office, or your editor is insistant that they only accept Microsoft formatted manuscripts okay then. But that's my case, and apparently that's offensive... I guess Microsoft Office is some people's identity or something.

 

For software, I use Microsoft Word 2019 because a few years ago I got a deal on Office 2019 as an outright purchase, not a subscription. But I also have on my computer LibreOffice and SoftMaker Office, and I don't think Word is significantly better than either of those. I use LibreOffice Writer to create my book covers.

For hardware I have a Dell Inspiron desktop computer, a Dell 24" flatscreen monitor, and a Dell keyboard. I started out with a Dell wireless mouse but it died a couple of years ago and I replaced it with a generic from Amazon. To "ensure" (which is actually impossible to do) that I don't lose my work, I have a Western Digital MyCloud external NAS (Network Addressable Storage) device on my home network. Mine has two drives, set up as a redundant array so if one drive goes down, the data will be mirrored to the other.

That's about it. You asked about writing, not formatting, so I won't digress into desktop publishing programs.

 

I do everything on the most recent version of Scrivener, which backs up to the cloud constantly, saves to my SSD every couple of minutes, my system backs up all of my writing to an external drive every day and I manually back up everything to a second external drive every week, which winds up in a fireproof safe.

I'm not losing anything.

 

I'm with you on avoiding Word. I'm starting to gravitate back toward Nisus Writer Pro. If you look really closely you can find rough edges. On the whole, it's pretty useful. It's native format is RTF, which is only one step back from ASCII in terms of longevity.

I wish Devonthink had a corkboard view. Curio is very attractive and I keep thinking it should be my go-to for planning a story.

Right now what's working is OmniOutliner, notes in Devonthink, and writing in Markdown, Nisus, or Mellel.

 

This might seem a little weird, but it works for me. I use a text editor/word processor called VDE. It has all the necessary features for the kind of writing I do, and saves in .txt or /.rtf formats. It runs under DOS and uses Wordstar commands. I have a USB drive containing VDE and DOS system files that I use to boot any one of two desktops and two laptops into DOS (five seconds) and run VDE. I always have all my files in one place, and I back everything up often to a hosting company server.

The two desktops are on the same desk, each with its own monitor, one Windows 10 and the other MX Linux. Having them both lets me look stuff up on one while I'm writing on the other. One of the laptops resides on the kitchen counter so I can write standing up when I get tired of sitting and the other goes with me when I'm away from home.

I'll never rent software, so Word isn't an option, and the clones like LibreOffice are way too full-featured for my needs. I figure if I run into a publisher who demands Word files, I can email the file to a friend and have him/her convert it and send it back.

I rarely listen to music while writing.

 

I have LibreOffice on my linux laptop.

I use Scrivener on my Macbook and I also have SoftMaker, which I like and I got as a one-off purchase (I have not tried their linux version). For finalizing a book file, I use Vellum.

 

Do you find that Scrivener 3 takes longer to compile? I have both versions, but still use the older version because it compiles quicker. Now I don't compile every minute or anything, but I do like to export it as a pdf to see what it looks like and look for minor edits in paperback settings.

 

Your notions about Word are similar to my own about Apple products. Yeah a Macbook works great, but not $1,300 for a 13" screen great .

Mobility via cloud is gold; I use a lot of different PCs. Without internet I'll toss something onto a rich text, Libre, or .txt, while Google Docs is the main first draft vehicle. Scrivener is for the revision phase since Google Docs chugs at volume. I have also just began using Google Sheets to track actors and places.

Other occasional tools include caffeine, scented candles, and rainstorm noise from Youtube. In other words anything that shuts up the rest of the brain.

 

Tools I use is yWriter for planning and early drafts. Libre Office for compiling a final draft and additional polishing. I use Hemmingway Editor since I'm a bit wordy and I find Grammarly and ProWriter AI more artificial than it is intelligent. It feels like it sterlizes my work.

 

For those who aren't familiar with SoftMaker Office, it's an office suite from Germany, fairly mature, and in many respects more compatible with Microsoft Office than LibreOffice. SoftMaker Office is available for Windows, Linux, MacOS, and Android. It's available as a one-time purchase (affordable) or subscription but, for those who don't need all the bells and whistles, there is also a completely free version called FreeOffice. It requires registration to get an activation code, and that's valid for installation on up to five computers. FreeOffice is available for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. FreeOffice offers (by my estimation) about 80% or perhaps a bit more of the functionality of the paid SoftMaker Office, so it's more than adequate for someone who has been working in a text editor. It can save in multiple formats, including Microsoft Office formats. If I remember correctly, FreeOffice also includes direct export to PDF and EPUB.

 

Since the original post said pencil and paper count, I should note that I get a lot of good out of a TWSBI Vac 700R fountain pen. There is something about handwriting that fosters creative thought. I'm a digital fellow in most respects, otherwise.

 

Same experience here re: handwriting. The story flows better that way for me. I have a number of fountain pens!

 

It seemed that way to me initially, when I contemplated switching. Now, I have stayed with Macbooks for years because they last and continue to function at a high level for much longer than my Windows laptops ever did. When you figure in how often I upgrade versus how often I upgraded my Windows laptop, the price difference is no longer an issue.

 

To each his own. That universal standard of quality is definitely a bonus. For PCs I think it can depend on if you buy for now or for the future. I purchase laptops with 'gaming' specs (~$800-$900 CAD) so they'll make the 10 year hump or longer, and they easily do. If an aspect of the hardware does end up bottlenecking its performance, I can just upgrade that alone. Hard disk drives vs solid states are a good example of that.

I don't trust super thin net-book sized PCs, though. The heat exchange is suspect on those. It's likely Macbook has perfected it at that size.

The operating system will eventually be the reason I go to Mac, if ever. I'm not a fan of MacOS, but Windows is becoming less bearable with every installment. They only released 11 to integrate ads directly in the UI.

 

Good point. I have a gaming desktop that runs Windows, and I build those to last a long time. With incremental upgrades from time to time, my last one ran for almost 12 years. My current one is three years old and runs everything on high settings.

The last two Windows laptops I had circa 2008-2012 were HP piles of absolute shite. Two years was pushing it on those computers--the performance grew progressively worse and I started having hardware issues. They were relatively compact and thin for the time--I'm not sure how easily upgradable they were. I'll never buy another HP product of any kind. I went from those to a Macbook that I kept for six years and never gave me any problems. I finally upgraded to the 16 inch model.

I do like MacOS a lot better than Windows. It works great for my workflow, and when combined with my iPhone and iPad, it makes for a great toolset.

I also like certain flavors of Linux quite a lot and still run Linux on an older Lenovo laptop I have.

 

I'm pretty unfussy - I use MS Word through an Office 365 subscription, on an Asus Win10 laptop that's going on about 4 or 5 years old now. I primarily have the Office subscription because I'm a power Excel user for both work and personal stuff, otherwise I think I could just as easily use Google Docs to write. I don't skip around my manuscript or write out of order, so anything that essentially puts words on a page works fine for me.

I used to use a flash drive to back up, but now I just sync my WIP file to Google Drive.

My books are all ebooks via KDP Select, so I just use Kindle Create to make and format them directly from the Word doc.

 

For anyone who might want software for an iPhone that's compatible with their desktop or laptop, SoftMaker has finally released the beta version of SoftMaker Office for iOS.

The mods don't like us to post links on this site, but you should be able to find it with a Google search. I have the Android version on a Samsung tablet and it's infinitely better than the mobile version of Microsoft Office.

 

I used to use yWriter but have switched all of my writing to Libre because of the grammar check program in it.

I'm not understanding why so many writers are paying for software programs when the free ones work well for the job. True, using the free ones probably means setting up the file system for your projects but that doesn't take long.

 

I loathe software that imposes its file preferences on the user. I have a filing system on my computer, so when I want to save a file I want to save it where **I** want it to go, not where some software developer wants to put it in order to make you dependent on them and their "cloud" for your work. To put it rather inelegantly: screw that. And I agree completely about paying big bux for programs when there are so many free and affordable shareware programs available. WHY people shell out so much money for these programs is a mystery to me.

BTW, in an earlier post I mentioned that I have Word, LibreOffice Writer, and SoftMaker Office TextMaker on my computer. I also have shortcuts to WordPad, Collabora, and Jarte on my desktop, along with a shortcut to the on-line version of Apple pages. I have purchased and downloaded the Ashampoo Office suite, but I haven't installed it.

I'm a bit of a software junkie. Each program typically does some things better than the others, so I like to have a number of "arrows in my quiver" (as they say).

I'm still searching for a program or app that can do a decent job of converting a .DOCX file to .EPUB. You wouldn't think that would be all that difficult, but apparently it is. There are lots of programs (other than Word) that offer EPUB export, but none of them work very well. Microsoft offers a free-standing EPUB converter -- that's absolutely atrocious. Calibre produces files that aren't terrible, but the process is painful. Not even remotely intuitive, and the user interface is -- at best -- clunky.

 

If you like the story planning features, it takes more than one application to replace either yWriter, Scrivener, Storyist, or any of that genre.

On the other hand, Scrivener doesn't have a mind map, unless you want to count Scapple, and it doesn't have a timeline. It seems there is always a call for more than one tool.

 

A frustrating gap in the spectrum, isn't it? My favorite word processor (Mellel) does a mostly great job of creating epub files. It gives you control over the spine, for example. However, inline graphics are referenced in the manifest as filename without the required path. Some readers don't care, others, like Apple Books, won't display Mellel's inline graphics without a hand edit of the manifest in the epub.

It's a very simple hand edit, but not something that should be required.

 

Simple for you -- you know how to do it. I, on the other hand, don't even know what the "manifest" is, let alone how to edit it.

And you touched on another issue I've discovered: not all readers read the same. Some time ago I did a side-by-side comparison by using the Microsoft epub converter, LibreOffice Writer, Softmaker TextMaker, and something else to convert the same manuscript chapter to epub, then I opened each one in three or four different readers.

To my dismay, aside from the fact that NONE of the conversions was spot on for things like italics and bold face, I also found that the same files displayed differently in different readers. Which, of course, actually made it impossible to assess which of the conversions was "best" -- because the one that was best in one reader was not the best in another.

 

Happiness for me with epub documents is BBEdit. Rename the file from whatever.epub to whatever.zip. Then you can open and edit it with BBEdit. You get a left hand pane with the list of documents in the epub, and as you click around the right hand pane is ready to edit them. When you're finished, rename the zip file back to the epub extension.

But I agree. It's a nerdy way to fix epub documents.

Almost everything in the presentation of text is left at the discretion of the device. All the creator gets to do is provide hints. I believe that's why Affinity Publisher has no plans to support epub export.

The best I've seen is the Mac-only Vellum. Yeah, I know. Expensive and Mac-only. I have a friend who says he understands I like Macs, he just doesn't understand how I brought myself to shred my man-card so I could buy them with a clean conscience.

He's a very good friend. I think.