[PUBLIC POST] Tools of the trade
Apr. 26th, 2016 05:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljwrites posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
go_writeWhat do you write with? What's your workflow like? Is there particular software that you like to use for certain purposes, or do you prefer writing in longhand and transcribing to a computer later on? Has technology affected your writing process in any way?
I have a mix of processes. Generally I like Scrivener for its ability to organize snippets of writing and to keep all my research in the same place, but its lack of mobile options means I use Evernote a lot when I'm away from my computers. I'm also fond of longhand writing when I'm in libraries and on public transport. This means I have a lot of scattered notes and bits in different places, all of which I swear I'm going to transcribe to my Scrivener project someday.
A major boon for research purposes is Zotero, a citations database program where I can organize my citations and take extensive notes, with search and tag functions available for later reference. Like Scrivener via Dropbox and Evernote it's all synchronized online, meaning it's automatically backed up and available on whatever machine I log into.
The availability of cloud and synchronization technology like Dropbox, Evernote, and Zotero made things easier in some ways and gave me peace of mind in the form of automatic backup, but I also have a lot of paper notes that are one careless placement or a house fire away from getting lost forever. Better get to it, I guess.
I have a mix of processes. Generally I like Scrivener for its ability to organize snippets of writing and to keep all my research in the same place, but its lack of mobile options means I use Evernote a lot when I'm away from my computers. I'm also fond of longhand writing when I'm in libraries and on public transport. This means I have a lot of scattered notes and bits in different places, all of which I swear I'm going to transcribe to my Scrivener project someday.
A major boon for research purposes is Zotero, a citations database program where I can organize my citations and take extensive notes, with search and tag functions available for later reference. Like Scrivener via Dropbox and Evernote it's all synchronized online, meaning it's automatically backed up and available on whatever machine I log into.
The availability of cloud and synchronization technology like Dropbox, Evernote, and Zotero made things easier in some ways and gave me peace of mind in the form of automatic backup, but I also have a lot of paper notes that are one careless placement or a house fire away from getting lost forever. Better get to it, I guess.
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Date: 2016-04-26 08:43 am (UTC)On the computer I only use Scrivener, unless I'm trying to copy something into Scrivener, in which case I copy it to Notepad for Windows first and then cut from there to paste into Scrivener to strip the formatting because otherwise something will go sideways. Except when I have no choice but to work with docx files, in which case I use LibreOffice, which frankly sucks but then Microsoft Word sucks harder (not least because it not only costs a substantial sum, where LibreOffice is free, but is now on a pay-per-period rather than a pay-once-and-have-done). Or when I'm fiddling with HTML, in which case jEdit is my fave. So much better than Notepad for Windows or any Office product, at least when it knows it's working with HTML instead of plaintext. And I do like playing with raw HTML rather than WYSIWYG HTML output; much easier to get what I want that way.
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Date: 2016-04-27 12:37 pm (UTC)Does Shift+Ctrl+V work for pasting without formatting? I think I used it for Scrivener when my home computer was a Windows machine, but YMMV. I hate how hard it is to get this option to work on a Mac.
The pricing policy for MS Office sucks, yeah. :( I found LibreOffice to be a decent alternative but lacking in compatibility for delicate mission-critical formatting. (Which doesn't matter in most fictional works, of course.) I also got MS Office 2013 free through my school, though it's not my go-to for fiction writing.
I love text editors geared toward coders, with the syntax coloring and especially the ability to work with regular expressions. I've used EditPad and NotePad++ on Windows. It's been a while since I've done HTML or other coding work, especially since FanFiction.Net now accepts the .odt or .doc files that I can export from Scrivener projects. When I do have coding work to do again I'll definitely watch out for JEdit.
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Date: 2016-04-27 03:38 pm (UTC)Yeah, I was messing with Evernote a bit last night and I like it. Rec most definitely appreciated.
Shift-Ctrl-V? Never heard of. Shall have to try! Thank you!
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Date: 2016-04-26 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-27 01:08 pm (UTC)Pages seemed nice enough on its own, but trying to work with .docx files on it as I had to do for work was horrible. I think I would have liked it much better if I could have used the native .pages format.
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Date: 2016-04-26 04:21 pm (UTC)For official work, I use Scrivener for its scene/chapter organization - haven't managed to make great use of its outlining or research collecting features (yet?), but when I'm scrolling through 80k in Word looking for the right scene, I remember why I do novels in Scrivener.
But also like you, the lack of mobility has become an obstacle. After I set up my Dropbox folder to sync with my documents folder, it was amazing to realize that I could access anything anywhere, on my phone exactly the same as my computer - except any work in Scrivener. I mean, it's there in case of hard drive crashes, but impossible to work with. So I've taken to using Word for everything non-novel. It's also nice to be able to send files to my writing club buddy or anyone else without going through the exporting, or accidentally making edits in the doc and then having to copy them back by hand into Scrivener.
For notes I'd already been using OneNote for a while, ever since they finally launched for Mac and their iOS app came up to par. I always wanted to get into Evernote because it's not Microsoft and all the cool kids are doing it, but I came to hypothesize that everyone's brain must work better with one or the other, and OneNote is the one my brain likes.
[The tabs across the top. I neeeed the tabs - across the top and down the side. It's so orderly. It's so beautiful. Haha.]
And OneNote becomes a go-between in a sense; I can refer to it whether I'm working in Scrivener or in Word. And I use it for everything else in my life, with the same phenomenon as Dropbox - access anywhere. What a crazy time for information.
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Date: 2016-04-27 02:51 pm (UTC)There are parts of an old project that I literally could not have done without Scrivener. I switched out the scene orders over and over again for one 10K-word chapter, something that would have been exhausting at best and a disaster at worst on Word but was so easy on Scriv. I could even save several different scene orders as collections to see how different versions of the chapters worked. It gives me an adrenaline rush just thinking about it, and I look forward to working intensively with the software again. (I get adrenaline rushes from weird and geeky stuff, needless to say.)
For all its justly-praised merits Scrivener hasn't adapted to the mobile age, as you point out. It doesn't even play all that nicely with Dropbox, if the multiple conflicting versions of the main project file are any indication. Has that happened to you? I don't think I've experienced major glitches from all the conflicting versions, but it's annoying nonetheless.
OneNote is one of those apps I dabbled in and wanted to get into, but Evernote caught me up during a period when I didn't have access to MS Office. And now in most likelihood I'm too entrenched to ever port over. Evernote in good enough that I don't actually want to leave, but it's almost boring in its unobtrusive competence and there's always the possibility of overrunning my free quota hanging over my head. Plus it's awfully... green. Evernote is the spouse I find fault with but ended up building my life around, and OneNote will likely remain the one that got away.
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Date: 2016-05-03 02:38 pm (UTC)Scene order collections is something to remember... I've switched things around quite a bit as well.
I typically only use Scrivener on one computer, so I haven't run into issues with conflicting versions so far. But from the few times I've left a Word document open on my computer, edited something on my phone and then forgot to refresh the open document, I would not want to deal with that with a large Scrivener work.
I LOVE your OneNote/Evernote analogy. And "it's awfully...green." I had a very good laugh.
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Date: 2016-05-03 04:28 pm (UTC)EverNote really is solid yet stolid. And OneNote has actual multiple colors, which is definitely a plus. XD
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Date: 2016-05-03 06:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-05 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-26 09:10 pm (UTC)Recently, I started to use a spreadsheet to keep track of word counts, story summaries, and story status(wip/complete/oneshot).
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Date: 2016-04-27 03:10 pm (UTC)How does the LibreOffice-Google Drive process work? Do you save the files on your hard drive and then upload them to GDrive, or do you copy and paste new parts into a Google Document? I liked LibreOffice back when I used it, it just made sense and had some good customization options.
A story spreadsheet sounds like a great idea for those who are juggling a lot of different projects. I know a friend who might benefit from one. (Although maybe xe has no problem keeping track of everything in xyr head. I, on the other hand, am often hopelessly confused when xe starts talking about xyr projects.) When I participated in a NaNo-like event back in July 2014 they gave us a spreadsheet to keep track of writing times and word count, maybe I should repurpose that for my current project.
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Date: 2016-04-27 04:25 pm (UTC)GDrive process- I keep a shortcut to my GDrive folder on my desktop. I can save directly into the folder or drop files into it. This allows me to have a copy on my hard drive and a copy synced to the cloud.
Spreadsheet- I can remember the plot details of old wips. I just can't remember what I named the files. New inspiration hits, new file created, and soon I have 5 slightly different versions of the same story. January 1, I went on an organization kick and everything is straight... so far.
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Date: 2016-04-26 10:26 pm (UTC)--
I mostly write on my computer, using FocusWriter (free). Until very recently, I used Zenwriter, having somehow gotten over two years worth of free trial (instead of two weeks). Zenwriter's fullscreen was better, but Focuswriter lets me keep several documents open at once and can be resized if needed, which is very useful.
I also sometimes write in Notepad (or similar). I always hardcode my HTML anyway.
On my phone I use Writer (also free), but it hasn't been working so good lately, I think I might have too many files in the folder? Idk.
For editing, I supposedly used yWriter5 (free) and now use yWriter6 (free too), but I am bad at editing and so have not gotten quite so much use out of them yet. I do like being able to say where scenes are and store those locations (+ important objects + what characters are in what scenes etc) outside of notes, though.
I've made extensive use of the "convert to format" option in Calibre (free) to turn projects into epubs with chapter formating so I can read them as "books" and not "that shitty draft I spend a year banging out".
APPARENTLY I AM HELLA CHEAP (also I have four different wordcount tracking spreadsheets, lmao)
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Date: 2016-04-27 04:21 pm (UTC)You may be cheap, but you sure are effective at it lol. I don't use minimal or note apps anymore except to save snippets of writing, but I did use plaintext editors for years to write fics and those all look like neat options.
I think you might be right about the problem with Writer, lightweight text editors could get overburdened if you have too many files. Or maybe your phone's performance in general is compromised, or maybe it's a memory problem.
yWriter looks really interesting, if I used Windows at home I would totally give it a test drive. *sadface*
I used Calibre for my own e-book reading and conversion needs, it never occurred to me to use it for my own projects! Awesome idea!
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Date: 2016-04-27 08:38 pm (UTC)yWriter pretty useful in that the import function is super easy to sue and if you follow the conventions, it will even divide your text into scenes and chpaters on its own! And when you export it, it's got every new chapter beginning on a new page. Then off to calibre I go and zoom, here I have a an ebook version of my project!
Having it be a "book" is super helpful to see things different, with the format switch.
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Date: 2016-04-29 08:12 am (UTC)I'm also getting an ebook reader once I've put this thesis to bed (knock on wood), and it'll be an absolute pleasure to load my own manuscript to it for reading! #goals
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Date: 2016-04-29 09:36 pm (UTC)EREADERS ARE AMAZING. And having your own novel on it really helps it feel like AN ACTUAL BOOK OMG.
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Date: 2016-04-27 04:34 pm (UTC)Thanks for the info about Calibre. I haven't tried that one yet.
Off to check out fic.
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Date: 2016-04-27 09:19 pm (UTC)I find it very useful, especially when it comes to having ebooks on both an ereader and a phone at once.
I hope you like it!
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Date: 2016-04-27 11:20 pm (UTC)Plume Creator</>
Storybook
Tiddlywiki
There's probably more, but those are the ones I can still remember.
The programs that have the lasted the longest with me are LibreOffice, FocusWriter, and yWriter.
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Date: 2016-04-29 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-29 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-30 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-30 10:38 pm (UTC)Tiddlywiki, I found helpful at organizing info- scene descriptions, item descriptions, major and minor characters. While looking though other tiddlywikis, I saw someone who used it for a choose-your-own-adventure type novel.
Con-I remember spending too much time playing with how it looked and worked. Currently, I have the program deleted for the 3rd time. By the end of the weekend, I will be on 4th try with it.
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Date: 2016-05-01 09:43 pm (UTC)Thank you for the explanation. Does tiddlywiki work offline? I can't seem to find a definite answer either way.
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Date: 2016-05-01 10:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-05-04 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-27 06:22 pm (UTC)I'm actually one of those weirdos who can't seem to write ANYTHING longhand, anymore--I even take just casual notes into a note on my phone or on my laptop. And with longer things, I'd just be lost without the ability to cut and paste, move things around, all that stuff. People who write fiction longhand baffle and amaze me.
-J
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Date: 2016-04-29 07:58 am (UTC)I see you've migrated completely to the digital age. :) From what I've heard, those of us who do write longhand use it to write first drafts, and for some the inability to edit is actually a good thing because they can stick strictly to content generation at that stage.
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Date: 2016-04-27 09:15 pm (UTC)I use a whole lot of programs and systems, depending on what I'm writing. Fic nearly always goes into Google Docs. Original novels, Word and Word Online. (If I save the file to Dropbox, I can use my Office subscription to edit it in my browser at work when I don't have more pressing duties.)
I've tried several times to use Scrivener, but although I like it a lot, I just can't get my head around it. And it's not as portable as a cloud-based word processor.
All that said, I'm also Team Longhand -- especially when I'm stuck on something, switching to pen and paper forces me to slow down a bit and think about the work differently. Even if I just write a couple of paragraphs by hand before switching back to the digital version, it helps build momentum. (Plus, I just enjoy the act of handwriting.)
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Date: 2016-04-29 08:03 am (UTC)Do you use Google Docs for fic so you can share with beta readers?
And yeah, much as I love Scrivener it really needs to step up to the cloud and mobile age. There are alternatives like yWriter, but I have had no indication they're any better on the portability front.
Another one for Team Longhand! It's nice to know handwriting isn't a dead art yet. That's a really good idea to switch even briefly when you're stuck, I'll have to try it myself.
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Date: 2016-04-28 04:48 am (UTC)...But then sometimes I think "lol, I'll add a 63verse folder to miscpernshorts.scriv and write a couple thousand words of genderbend" and then I. Well. Do not do that. Instead I end up having to move the whole thing to a new project and that is kind of annoying. But I love how it lets me play around with subfolders and stuff. Because sometimes being able to put each chapter together in its own folder is AMAZING and I love being able to see my scene list all laid out like that and it's really the best.
OTOH, every now and then, Scrivener accidentally eats my files or becomes unopenable, to the point where I have had to open my damn fics from the command prompt to figure out what has gone so badly wrong.
But for certain projects, you just can't beat a hand-drawn handwritten tumblr mockup for demifiction in sort of an AUSJesque vein. And of course GDrive is better if you don't have consistent access to one machine or want to share things.
One thing is I actually enjoy Scrivener's ability to open two things side-by-side and compare them without having to open them sequentially or switch back and forth. I've used that twice recently. Once in putting together my notes for something, because I needed both an original work and someone's mondegreen-filled misparsing thereof (and then I needed to consult the mondegreen-filled version while writing the scene it's described). And once to make two scenes hit roughly the same beats and make sure my phrasing was just similar enough to make it sort of echo weirdly, to make it clear to the reader and to a character involved in the situation that these two scenes were meant to be compared to each other.
So yeah, Scrivener for the... something other than win. Scrivener a large fraction of the way! I love Scrivener but now and then it really does irk me quite a lot.
And I love things which autosave. Usually.
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Date: 2016-04-29 08:25 am (UTC)Someday soon, someone is going to combine the best features of Scrivener and GDocs and make a completely shareable, portable, fully mobile-supported platform where people can storyboard and collaborate in real time, and they'll blow Scrivener and maybe GDocs for certain applications out of the water. It may be that one of those online collaboration tools out there does this, but nothing I've seen so far is nearly as good at the structuring and organizing aspect as Scrivener, not to mention those small but unexpectedly useful functions like the split pane.
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Date: 2016-04-29 08:15 pm (UTC)ETA: Okay, so, this might work. GDocs can be made to sort by title, so naming the scenes "aa beginning scene" and "ab they go into space" could work, and just have different documents for each scene. However! I don't see a way to share an entire folder at once. It'd be a lot of work to then share each thing and then have both people create identical folders to put them in. Splitpane could be achieved with a workaround (two browser windows).
The metadata for this is going to be a LOT of work, which Scrivener would do for you instead of you needing to do it manually, but GDocs could totally be made to act as a hierarchically organized project folder. Yep. But the work to put it together unless I can figure out how to share a whole folder at once... ugh.
*pokes around some more*
Ooh! It's possible to share a whole folder at once, apparently! Hey, can I put together a test of this system and you can tell me if it makes sense from your end? Might be kind of a lot of work to go between scenes, though... but now I'm really excited and want to see if this works out. I'll make the thing and share it with you, anyway, and if you have time you can poke around and see if it makes sense as a way to collab in the future.
(Also, hi! :) Good to see you, too!)
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Date: 2016-04-30 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-04-30 06:12 pm (UTC)Of course it'd be a bit of work to make that splitpane with the current scene...
Thanks for poking around. I don't know if I'll do this again because it is a lot of work to set up. GDocs isn't really made for mass-creation of a bunch of similar documents. To create a new document takes an extra click and then there was the naming thing. (This project, on my computer, in Scrivener, does not have scene names.)
(And note for anyone intending to copy me: I opted to preface scene names with aaa, bbb, ccc, etc, rather than just a, b, c. If I'd used single letters, adding something in the middle would be awful; you'd have to rename everything after it. This way it's possible to, e.g., add in a bbc or bbd or bbe in between bbb and ccc. I did feel that prefacing titles with eee made them seem excessively excited.)
Yeah, this is not exactly Scrivener. It's sort of the same features but not nearly as user-friendly.
By the way, did you get a single email notif that the whole folder was shared, or did Google spam your inbox with separate notifs for every scene?
Anyway, thanks for helping test this!
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Date: 2016-05-01 04:58 pm (UTC)I got a single notification for the whole folder.
No problem! Interesting concept, and interesting AU too.