I’m an author and I wrote a 970,000 word autobiography and then edited it to a 97,000 word memoir all in a text editor. Only tossed it into a word processor when it was down to tweaks and expansions, in order to add fonts and other formatting. (If I had the freedom to not use MS Word, or to care whether the final product looked good in MS Word, I might switch somewhat earlier but I detest Word in particular).
What does Scrivener do for you?
I always used to say to my kids when they were writing homework, “content first, then formatting”, but in a modern word processor, style is part of structure. For example, when I write a report, or a user guide (in Word) I use Outline Mode - write the headings, then the subheadings, then the paragraph headings, etc - then fill in the content - but just deciding that something is a heading is the same as formatting it as such.
I wouldn’t recommend a plain text editor for most everyday writing purposes - plain text editing is mostly for geeks to open config files, or write scripts.
Finale (desktop pro music notation application)
I use this app two or three days a week, preparing professional sheet music for the weekend service. For the most part, I am taking songs from the hymnal and rearranging them to fit on a single sheet and adding chord notations, along with any embellishments my wife wants to add.
It’s like Photoshop for sheet music, with a steep learning curve and hundreds of fiddly little tweaks you can make, but it can handle symphonies and the output is the gold standard in the music publishing industry.
Once you figure your way through the jungle (and get a small midi keyboard) it is a breeze to work with.
Forscore (sheet music app for iPad)
Beautiful app. I can put music on my iPad from any source, as long as it’s in PDF or some other reasonable format. I make all kinds of cat scratches on it using Apple Pencil, and I flip my pages using a bluetooth page turner I tap on with my foot.
Scanner Pro (pdf scanner for iPad)
An amazing photo copy app. Just photograph the document and it will do all of the stuff needed to de-skew and increase contrast. Very nice.
It’s how I get much of my sheet music into Forscore.
First: 970,000 words? :eek:
I thought my first draft of 145,000 was bad. You must have editing powers from the gods.
Have I told you about my Lord and Savior Scrivener? You’re either going to really regret asking me this or be glad you did. I made screenshots!
Where to begin? It’s feature deep. I’ve been using it exclusively for a couple of years to write fiction and I still don’t know about everything it can do. My favorite features:
Split screen mode - can do vertical or horizontal and adjust the spacing, and even hotkey save the spacing arrangements, so for example when I’m comparing two drafts I want an even 50/50 split screen but when I’m just dumping excerpts from my main text into a scrap file, I set it up at 1:3 or 1:4. You can compare any two documents, including the same document to itself.
The binder and inspector panels - collapsible little panels to the left and right, respectively, the binder organizes your manuscript into separate documents - so I have a main MS folder which each has a respective chapter folder, which each has a respective scene doc, which only seems unnecessary if you don’t know how the Compile feature works. But I do. So it’s perfect, actually.
The inspector panel has a notes section, including a space for synopsis (which shows up on your index cards on the Bulletin Board for an easy document summary when you’re storyboarding) it saves snapshots of your drafts, and it allows you to keep multiple notes, including notes for the entire MS, notes for that individual doc, and any other tab of notes you feel like creating (I have a notes tab for ‘‘Worldbuilding’’ for example.) You can also tag stuff and create custom labels for the individual docs.
Compile - Scrivener is built not just for writing docs but for publishing them as well. So you can take anything you wrote and export it for any format (including standard publishing MS format) in any font with any chapter/chapter title/heading structure you want. So far my favorite use of this has been to create Kindle ebooks to share with my beta readers, complete with Index.
Corkboard.Your manuscript, in a nutshell. Can easily rearrange sections by drag & drop and of course edit the synopsis text.
I could go on.
Also, if you don’t love purple, that’s not default – everything is customizable including the color and default settings for the editor.
I’ve gone back to using a plain text editor as my first tool of choice for just about any writing (even for forum posts, sometimes). Word Processors are too distracting. I may not actually be a perfectionist, but I try to be a perfectionist and instead of concentrating on my writing, I tend to place too much focus on presentation style.
I learned to type on typewriters because I was too poor to own a printer and I’m not even sure there were printers for my 2KB TRS-80 MC-10. My typewriter wasn’t a fancy, correcting IBM Selectric something or other; it was a Royal with fabric ribbon and heavy, manual keys, and it caused me to write well the first time.
Going back to my archaic, formative habits has been a major productivity booster for me.
Also, when I’m on Windows, yup, NotePad++ is my go to tool (BBEdit on my Mac, of course!)
My own list:
•QuicKeys (macro app)
• GraphicConverter (for everything up until I need Photoshop)
• Photosweeper Lite (for identifying and getting rid of duplicate pix that may not have duplicate names)
• GrandPerspective (what’s eating up space on the hard drive and where does it hide?)
• Toast (so much nicer than the silly built-in “burn folders” thingie)
• Timbuktu (yeesh what am I going to do now that they’ve folded? freaking TeamViewer?)
• Audio Hijack Pro
This is an interesting discussion which I would like to continue - but to avoid hijacking this thread, I’ve spun off another:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=795896
AutoHotkey - If you do repetitive steps in Windows, this is a huge time-saver. For example, if you use a computer to interface with scientific instrumentation that is used for repetitive work (connect to sensor, read sample, output data, input data into Excel, use Excel macro to massage data, repeat 100 more times), you cannot live without it (there are other macro tools but I believe this has the best documentation and user support).
Maybe this is stretching the notion of “app” all to hell and gone, but… Adobe Creative Suite. Just gets better with every update, with the mega-leap of fully integrating all the major tools several years ago. It’s even affordable to mere mortals these days.
Very small stuff? EverNote and Trillian.
When I started with it, I just followed prompts to enter my current stats and goals, and it provided a daily calorie goal with a bunch of nutrition details behind it. It’s free. Install it and see if it can help you.
Damn, I could use that…but it’s a Mac app. Is there anything similar for Win7 that does the same thing?
I second VLC media player… it is the second thing I install on a new pc (first being an antivirus of some sort).
Then I grab http://www.irfanview.com/ for my photo needs. It’s free, has drop and drag capability (I learned on ImageMagick which requires you inputting coordinates) and does just about everything IM can do but quicker (I still use IM for compositing or making a .gif).
I use the LeechBlock add-on in Firefox to limit my online timewasting at work. You can use it to block sites during part of the day (e.g. from 9am-5pm), after a certain amount of time (e.g. 15 minutes), or both (you’re allowed only 15 minutes on the site between 9am-5pm). I set things up to allow myself only a brief social media break and brief reading the news break during work hours. I also blocked games and the SDMB altogether during work hours. LeechBlock can be circumvented fairly easily so it wouldn’t be much good at preventing kids from accessing sites they’re not supposed to be on, but it’s great if you need a little help limited your time on certain sites.
Can anyone recommend a good timer? I’ve also been using the Simple Timer add-on to remind me to get up from my desk and stretch regularly, but it seems to no longer be available and has become erratic since I last updated Firefox.
There seem to be plenty of other timers out there, but most do not seem to have the features I want. I want to be able to set it to run for 45 minutes (work time) and then 5 minutes (break time) and save this setting. I want a visible countdown that’s easy to read so I know how much time I have left. I’d also like it to have a noticeable but not too obnoxious pop-up notification when time is up, preferably one that doesn’t go away until I click on it. If I’m focused on something I tend not to even notice a pop-up that only appears for a few seconds and then goes away.
I’ve been using it for about three and a half years now and it has been very helpful for me as well. It took me a little more than two years to lose the weight – over 50 lbs! – and I’ve kept it off so far.
MediaMonkey - A while back, I decided to finally rip all my old audio CDs (hundreds of them) to digital files. For each song, I wanted a FLAC copy for archiving and an MP3 copy for general listening. I used EAC for a bit and it’s a good program (and free), but MediaMonkey has an interface that’s a bit easier/quicker to use and for the amount of ripping I was going to do it was worth it to pay the $30 for the unlimited version. It also searches online databases to add metadata (cover art, album, artist, studio, year, etc.). I’ve been ripping the CDs a little at a time, but I’m nearing the end–only a few more to go!
