I am writing a novel and its getting large (300K words) and way from finishing. things are also getting a bit messy with styles not properly defined etc. I am using Libre Office Writer and the Spreadsheet but wonder if I should be using a dedicated (Free) laptop based (I don't want cloud method). Being inexperienced choosing is a problem and would like some input from more experienced folk. I might be prepared to pay a small amount for updates. I work on a Macbook. Advice appreciated. Many thanks.
What are you using Spreadsheet for—outlining? Are you experiencing any particular problems that make you want to upgrade? I'm just trying to get a fix on why you want to upgrade. Or are you just wondering what the options are?
I'm just an old-fashioned girl who uses Microsoft Word and backs up everything on an extra computer, a thumb drive, and a external hard drive. (Losing eight hours of solid work twenty years ago rendered me completely paranoid about losing anything else.) Off to look up all the stuff you mentioned.
I used to use LibreOffice before my old Mac died like six months ago and I remember it fondly—in fact you've inspired me to download it again on the new iMac. But in the interim I switched over to Google Docs and downloading versions every so often, so if another computer dies I don't lose everything. Apparently Google Docs gets really laggy though with long books, it sounds like yours would probably crash it.
If it’s just the length of the document causing issues, and you otherwise like the program, I have two tricks that may help. The first is the automatic table of contents feature (disclaimer, I work in Word and Google Docs, but would be very surprised if Libre Office didn’t have a similar option) Label your chapter titles as headers/sub headers, and you’ll get an automatically generated, clickable table of contents to make it easy to navigate your document. The second is simply splitting off the end of your project into a separate document. You have one ‘master’ document with the bulk of your story, and one much smaller and more manageable document which you are actively writing in. Without knowing what you’re using spreadsheet for, it’s hard to give advice on that one.
I start in cloud (Google Docs) and convert to LibreOffice - but what isn't LibreOffice doing properly? Novel scripts potentially just need body copy + titles + footer + front page + a contents page - so really only a couple of styles and the vast bulk might be in 'Normal Text'. But is there something special to this project? The OP mentions spreadsheets (LibreOffice Calc?) - so I wondered if there might be more to it. LO does have some oddities. (Or is the OP about writing styles? I assumed it's about the text styles inside the word processor) Also it might be good to know how many pages and if this is for submission to publishers or if it's to be self-published. 300k words I guess might be 1200 document pages, so things like making sure section breaks are just 'centred' and not 'centred + indented' and all the rest might take a lot of hours. I'd be surprised though if there is a word processor that automatically/perfectly imports text that's been done in LO. Does the OP know how to set up macros for some of these tasks? They are sometime mentioned as a way to solve repetitive/bulk formatting - I hardly use them but for a 1200-page document I might consider it
