NaNoWriMo Redux
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Yes, it’s that time of year again, boys and girls, the time when all of we would-be writers put aside sanity for the sake of a 30 day dash to 50,000 words: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). This is the marathon of novel-writing, to produce a readable 50,000 word story in a single month. Some of the truly crazy people have even begun fundraising for the Office of Letters and Lights, a literary non-profit intent on bringing the joy of writing and creativity to children of all ages.
To help you prepare, I’ve typed up some things you might find useful. It also gives me something to write about until November 1, when I’m allowed to start my story. First things first: Software. You might think you need characters and a plot and some inspiration first, but ask yourself what good all of that will do you if you have nothing to write it on? None, that’s what. (Unless you’re into dictation, but what you do in the privacy of your own home is none of my business…) So, software.
Unless you’re a Luddite (and if you are, you’re probably not reading this), you’re probably going to be recording your brilliant writings on some kind of technological wonder. For me, it’s a MacBook. Therefore (and because it’s my blog), I’m going to start with Mac writing software.
First, let’s look at what the MacOS already gives you:
- Text Edit
Text edit is a very basic, no frills rich text editor that performs extremely basic formatting functions. Not much to say about it, honestly. As with most RTEs, Text Edit allows you to specify italics, bold text, various fonts, a few different styles, etc. Simple and effective for the non-picky writer on a budget.
AbiWord (OS X)
AbiWord is cross-platform, so bonus for you Windows users who were lamenting my lack of love for your platform. AbiWord for Mac is no longer supported/updated, but it’s a decent early Word clone and fairly stable. I’ve tested it in 10.3 - 10.5.5 and no problems so far.
There are other office suites as well if what you’re looking for is a simple wordprocessing program — MS Office, NeoOffice, OpenOffice, Notes or GoogleDocs for that matter. But what about programs geared toward writers? Well, there are a few I like but there since they tend to be small developers, fewer of them are free.
One that I did some beta testing for back in 2003 is Jer’s Novel Writer. It was fun then, though a bit buggy, but it’s truly come a long, long way.
Jer’s Novel Writer
The next program is really aimed at students, but there are various pre-sets for different projects, one of which is a novel/book. Circus Ponies Notebook.
Notebook is an intriguing program. It has settings for almost anything, but what I’ll focus on for now are the novel/book settings. It’s organized with a series of tabs (seen on right side of “book”). These can be color coordinated and are set up to hold first draft, chapter divisions and a self-updating index. It’s dynamically interlinked and a nice choice — if you don’t mind flipping back and forth through pages. Not a bad place to start and the academic license is only $29.95.
A lot of writers really like Nisus Writer. There are two current versions, Express and Pro, which differ in cost by about $20.
Nisus Writer
Nisus is preferred by a lot of writers, but to me the mutiple options don’t justify the price tag as a writing resource. There’s also a steep learning curve in order to learn to master the various options. It’s not for me, but maybe it’s for you?
Scrivener
Scrivener is my favorite writing tool for the Mac. The ability to write out “note cards” and stick them to a virtual cork board to reflect on (all stamped and pin color coded) while writing my draft in the bottom half of the screen, the ability to group infinite items together while working — all of it just caters to the way my brain works. The fullscreen mode is quite impressive as well, making everything else literally fade away. For $40, my money is (literally) on Scrivener, far and away.
