Writing tools for the PC.
Tobias Buckell is talking about Scrivener again, a completely cool writing application for Macs only. Of course, he’s actually asking for Windows equivalents to Scrivener, but that just shows the poverty of the landscape on the Windows platform.
I’ve got an edge recommendation for any writer who works on more than one machine: Google Documents, formerly the Writely word processor. It’s relatively barebones, but I love it - wherever I work, on whatever machine, even one I’ve never used before, there it is, documents and all. No syncing, no trusting a thumb drive (or having to remember it), nothing that gets in the way of the writing. Oh, and every single edit you ever make is saved and versioned.
I find that Zoho takes too long to load, anywhere but my home connection. Also, I trust Google’s infrastructure.
There’s a 500K limit on doc size, which means chapter-by-chapter management for novels, and no headers or footers (since it prints from a browser window, you get the browser header/footer whether you want them or not). Manuscript format means saving as Word or RTF.
Sure, you’re trusting Google with your data, but a) they’re not going to steal your work and publish it themselves, and b) do you really think you’re going to have more reliable storage than they will?
I’d still take Scrivener if I could get it. Or ZenGobi, (www.zengobi.com). Hell, I’d take TextMate.
I never, ever thought I’d be jealous of all the great software available on the Mac and not on the PC. An unforeseen consequence of running Unix under the hood - creative programmers want to work on it.
Mar 15, 2007 at 10:55 am
Ryan Freebern says,
I am totally loving Google Docs for my writing these days. It’s so simple and straightforward, no extraneous stuff — it lets me completely focus on just getting the words down, which is really what I need. I second your recommendation.