This Week’s Topic is:
What word processing program do you use to write your manuscript, and can you share one handy trick you’ve learned in that program that has helped you while you write?
I just did a whole post about this topic last week for my blog. You can read the long version over here but in a nutshell:
As a Linux user, I’ve used OpenOffice and then LibreOffice most extensively. I wrote, edited and published two books using the basics of Word. It’s simple and the ctrl+f and replace functions are certainly handy when searching for undesirable words, specific characters, replacing town names etc. But Word is limiting in that I had to have multiple documents open (storyboard, outline, character sheets, edits doc etc.) while writing which caused switching between tabs rather frustrating.
I tried Liquid Story Binder briefly but wasn’t terribly impressed with the GUI or performance of the program. This might have been because I ran it in WINE and that in itself causes all sorts of problems.
A week ago I tried out yWriter and couldn’t get it to work. After hearing many good things about Scrivener, I discovered they have a free Linux beta version. I downloaded and started using that with my WiP. I managed to import my current work and all additional documents. The best part about using Scrivener is having ALL my documents related to my story in one place. Despite what many have said, I found Scrivener user friendly and easy to get the hang of after doing the tutorial.
I don’t think I’ll be going back to Word after using Scrivener.
What programme do you use to write and why?
