It's the first Wednesday of the month so it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group!
The awesome co-hosts for the July 3 posting of the IWSG are JS Pailly, Rebecca Douglass, Pat Garcia, Louise-Fundy Blue, and Natalie Aguirre!
This month's question is a technical one:
What are your favorite writing processing (e.g. Word, Scrivener, yWriter, Dabble), writing apps, software, and tools? Why do you recommend them? And which one is your all time favorite that you cannot live without and use daily or at least whenever you write?
Personally, I'm a Scrivener user for my longer-form work. I love how easy it is to move scenes and chapters around, something that is really important when you write in the rather chaotic way I tend to write. I know there are a lot of features of Scrivener I don't use - I've never been taught to use it properly, so probably don't really harness its full potential. If anyone has any parts of Scrivener they particularly like and want to share, I'd be keen to know what I'm not using...
For short fiction, I tend to just use Word because I don't need to move things around in the same way, and I don't feel like working in Scrivener adds anything to the process.
And that's probably the long and short of it... I used to like to handwrite first drafts and only move to the computer for editing, but these days I tend to hit the laptop right from the start because it speeds things up a bit for me.
What writing software do you prefer?
I've heard good things about Scrivener but I keep it simple with Word. I save each chapter separately so I can move things around pretty easily. I can't imagine handwriting a first draft. I probably wouldn't be able to read all my words with scratching out things and my messy writing. Though I used to write everything out as an attorney before there were computers.
ReplyDeleteI've been using Scrivener for a little while now. I know I'm barely scratching the surface as far as its features, but I'm happy using it for drafting. Parts of my manuscripts end up handwritten, but the bulk of them are done on the computer these days.
ReplyDeleteI'm sticking with Word, Kate. I can get into enough trouble with that ~ lol! Happy IWG Day!
ReplyDeleteHand writing a book would break my hand before the end of the first chapter. I don't know how people do it. I just wish Microsoft wasn't so annoying.
ReplyDelete(Ok- IDK if you meant the joke, but the 'long and the short of it' was funny.) I never thought of needing more that one processor for writing, but it makes sense that Scrivener would be a bit fancy for the needs of a short story, versus a longer manuscript. I know literally nothing about Scrivener, but hear so much good about it. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteI use Word as the first port of call, but really want to dip more into Scrivener as I can see that it would deal with some of my frustrations within Word. But as that's only in long-form writing, and I'm not doing that much at the moment, Word it is.
ReplyDeleteDebs posting today from Fiction Can Be Fun
Also found at Debs Despatches