What tools do you use?

[Bob Crosley]

I thought it might be cool to see what people use when they write.

Mac or PC? Or iPad? Your phone?
Word? Scrivener? Or Notepad, or a paper notebook?
Where do you write?

[J4N3M3]

I use Scrivener on my PC. I write whereever I can whenever my muse doesn't abandon me. Alas, lately, I haven't written anything. too many other things that keep me busy.

[knmburton]

I use Q10. It's a free, no-frills word processor.

[tink]

I have Open Office but I kind of hate it. I use Google Docs more often than not.

[rsndn]

WriteRoom (version 2.5 because I *still* run Snow Leopard) on my mac.

iAWriter on the ipad, great for editing in the kitchen or on the couch.

All plain text format ofcourse. Lay-out is done with Bean in rtf format.

[Ryan]

I only write web pages. I use UltraEdit haha

[Bob Crosley]

I only write web pages. I use UltraEdit haha

UltraEdit was my GO TO editor back when I was doing HTML and PERL, back in the day. Loved that program more than a person should love a computer program.

[Ryan]

haha glad to know I'm not alone!

[Bob Crosley]

I've never taken a piece of non-fiction all the way to what I could call "done." but have dabbled. On the non-fiction side, I've written a magazine article or 2, and wrote a chapter for a tech book for a publishing company that went under right after I submitted the chapter. Of course.

I used a program I liked called Z-Write, which billed itself as a non-linear word processor. You could write a section of a story or article as short or long as you wanted. So if you had a scene in your head, you could dump it to paper in Z-Write, and then you could order these sections any way you wanted, tie it together with unified header and footer, etc., and then export a full document. It was pretty cool, and still out there, but the author hasn't updated it in over 8 years.

Scrivener looks like it's a mature version of Z-Write with a lot more features, but has that key feature of letting you get things out of your head onto paper and then organize, edit and change order etc., as you develop the story. I think I'll give it a try as it works the way my brain works. (but probably with fewer bugs)

And I like their 30-day evaluation model. You get 30 days of actual use out of it. If you only use it 3 days a week, you get 10 weeks, etc. before you have to pay.

[J4N3M3]

I've never taken a piece of non-fiction all the way to what I could call "done." but have dabbled. On the non-fiction side, I've written a magazine article or 2, and wrote a chapter for a tech book for a publishing company that went under right after I submitted the chapter. Of course.

I used a program I liked called Z-Write, which billed itself as a non-linear word processor. You could write a section of a story or article as short or long as you wanted. So if you had a scene in your head, you could dump it to paper in Z-Write, and then you could order these sections any way you wanted, tie it together with unified header and footer, etc., and then export a full document. It was pretty cool, and still out there, but the author hasn't updated it in over 8 years.

Scrivener looks like it's a mature version of Z-Write with a lot more features, but has that key feature of letting you get things out of your head onto paper and then organize, edit and change order etc., as you develop the story. I think I'll give it a try as it works the way my brain works. (but probably with fewer bugs)

And I like their 30-day evaluation model. You get 30 days of actual use out of it. If you only use it 3 days a week, you get 10 weeks, etc. before you have to pay.

if you happen to win NaNoWrimo you get the program for 50% off.