Which Program Do You Use To Write Your Books?

[Jayne]

call me old fashion but I use the Word 03. My daughter put the Word 07 on my computer and I hated it. I'd spend more time searching then writing and it wasn't always compatible.

[PhishStyx]

Originally Posted by Nathan Campos

Humm, the last time that I've used WordPerfect was on Windows 95.

I use Word Perfect 11. They're up to 14 now, but I've been too lazy to get the new one.

I also use Microsoft Word. I'd really like to use Open Office or other open source software but I had a few problems when I tried. It might be because I'm using a Mac - but far more likely because I'm doing something wrong!

Word does seem very compatible with most computers though, be they Mac or PC.

[J. Dean]

Either Word or TextEdit, depending on whether I'm using a PC or my Mac.

[Lemurion]

I currently have Word 2007, Open Office, Abiword, RoughDraft, and yWriter installed on this computer. I write most of my fiction in yWriter and then later transfer it into Word. My Linux machine has Open Office and a VM with Word installed.

[David J. Guyton]

I use Word 2007 but boy do I regret that. Avoid it. There's not even an edit button.

When they totally change something, they need to just call it something else...like they should have done with the new Dodge Charger.

[pietvo]

Originally Posted by Heather Parker

I also use Microsoft Word. I'd really like to use Open Office or other open source software but I had a few problems when I tried. It might be because I'm using a Mac - but far more likely because I'm doing something wrong!

Hi Heather,
When did you try Openoffice.org? (The Openoffice.org people insists on that form of the name). A couple of month ago it had serious problems on the Mac, but I haven't noticed these any more with the latest version.

[ondabeach]

If ePubs have already won the battle of the eBook formats then how can you go past Sigil. It's free, it's open, it's part of this community and it works directly with ePubs.

[Moejoe]

I flip flop between all kinds of things, but at the moment I'm using the always awesome Atlantis Ocean Mind. Small footprint, only a couple of MB download, cheap to buy, has brilliant typewriter sounds and can output directly to ePub with multi-level TOC, has an overlong sentence feature and loads of other goodies

If you're on Windows this is the no1 word processor in my opinion.

http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/*

*I am not affiliated in any way with Atlantis, I just think they rule!!!

[Tony_A20]

I've used many word processors and specialized writing applications over the years, and the one I have used for my last six books is OpenOffice Writer. It does everything an author needs to do! I've even used it over the last month to to prepare books for ebook publication because it has HTML output capability.

OOWriter can output directly in PDF format as well as read and write to a dozen or more file formats commonly in use. The only problem is a minor one, it takes a bit of time to understand everything OOWriter can do, and customize it to provide a comfortable writing environment, but it's only a one-time job.

The biggest trick is to understand that OOWriter is a "Style" based application, and a writer has to take the time to create custom styles for pages, paragraphs, headings, etc. if the provided default styles are not enough. Again, it's a one-time job.

In addition, on my 32 inch monitor (writers need lots of room to work) I use i-Finger thesaurus and the Oxford Concise Dictionary, which provide hot-key/mouse click access from Writer, as well as several open files of notes. I also find TextAloud is very useful for proofreading. You can see why I use such a large screen.

For PDF books, I write and format the manuscript in OOWriter, export it as a PDF document, then us Adobe Acrobat Pro for meta-data and any specialized finishing touches.

I stay well away from any MS applications.

Tony

P.S. For html, xhtml, xml work on e-books I use Webuilder.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Tony_A20

I've used many word processors and specialized writing applications over the years, and the one I have used for my last six books is OpenOffice Writer. It does everything an author needs to do! I've even used it over the last month to to prepare books for ebook publication because it has HTML output capability.

OOWriter can output directly in PDF format as well as read and write to a dozen or more file formats commonly in use. The only problem is a minor one, it takes a bit of time to understand everything OOWriter can do, and customize it to provide a comfortable writing environment, but it's only a one-time job.

The biggest trick is to understand that OOWriter is a "Style" based application, and a writer has to take the time to create custom styles for pages, paragraphs, headings, etc. if the provided default styles are not enough. Again, it's a one-time job.

In addition, on my 32 inch monitor (writers need lots of room to work) I use i-Finger thesaurus and the Oxford Concise Dictionary, which provide hot-key/mouse click access from Writer, as well as several open files of notes. I also find TextAloud is very useful for proofreading. You can see why I use such a large screen.

For PDF books, I write and format the manuscript in OOWriter, export it as a PDF document, then us Adobe Acrobat Pro for meta-data and any specialized finishing touches.

I stay well away from any MS applications.

Tony

P.S. For html, xhtml, xml work on e-books I use Webuilder.

The PDF creation feature is one of the things I like best about Writer, it makes creating ebooks for my reader extremely easy. It also allows me to see exactly what my ebooks will look like on my reader so I can identify formatting problems and correct them.

I agree about Writer being style based. Due to my experience with MS Word, I was not a fan of styles and tended to avoid them (I looked for a word processor that didn't use styles and that is how I happened upon Jarte [I mentioned it earlier in this thread]). It wasn't until I started using Writer that I found styles to be useful.

With Writer, styles don't get in my way and they allow me to consistently format my ebooks, and achieve affects automatically that would take a great deal of work without styles. Also, mass formatting changes across my entire document are easy to achieve via styles and allows me to easily experiment to find the way I want to format my ebooks.

[ctol]

Originally Posted by David J. Guyton

I use Word 2007 but boy do I regret that. Avoid it. There's not even an edit button.

When they totally change something, they need to just call it something else...like they should have done with the new Dodge Charger.

I use Word 2007 and find it to be a wonderful word processor. I do all of my forms of writing in it. I think the ribbon bar works quite well. IMHO, once you get used to it you can actually write faster. BTW, this in not a personal attack at all, but unless you have edited your ribbon bar, look on the far right corner of the home page, there is a label clearly marked editing. There should be the three main editing commands Find, Replace, and Select.