Tell Us About Your Writing Set Up

[Amontillado]

At work, our only note-taking app is (sound of herald trumpets) OneNote. A mix of notes and to-do items is a handy thing.

Unfortunately, OneNote has never been able to reliably find unchecked to-do tags. It's a widely reported thing that Microsoft just gets away with, much as it did with its kite eating tree of a Word feature, master document mode.

Rebellion is my specialty, fortunately. I can't install software on my company system but I can copy text files to Linux hosts.

And so, for the first time in my professional life, I installed vimwiki, which gives vim wiki powers.

Vim, for those who have a life beyond dot matrix printers, is a text editor. The text editor, some would say. Nine out of ten geeks who speak grep agree, vim is the undisputed king of editors. Except for emacs, of course.

I'm surprised how much I like vimwiki. It's fast. I can edit files outside the wiki if I want. It's ugly, by post-1970 standards, but it's very effective. My workday life is running fine in a text-only ssh session and vimwiki.

 

[hirundine]

I forgot to add that I keep a bunch of sticky notes and a pen on my trolley at work so that I can write down any ideas I have and then get back to working.

You would be amazed how many plot holes I've filled that way.

 

[defaux]

You would be amazed how many plot holes I've filled that way.

Filling plot holes with sticky notes might seem a bit flimsy...

 

[Tallyfire]

I have a laptop with Ulysses (Mac only), which I really enjoy. It lets me go full minimalist blank white page for free writing but also lets me quickly access my many notes… because if I don’t make notes on when/why/where the characters are doing what I quickly lose track.

You are not alone! I do most of my writing with pen and paper on my writing desk. I have a collection of fountain pens, stationery, and ink that I rotate through to keep things interesting.

Monteverde Innova Formula M, 1.1 mm stub nib, Diamine Oxford Blue.

So happy to see some fountain pens in here! I journal with fountain pens in a Hobonichi. Monteverde looks nice but I’ve yet to try them. My favourite right now is a Platinum 3776 with a soft-fine nib (such a delight!), but the Estie I just got is a close contender for that spot.

I'm surprised how much I like vimwiki. It's fast. I can edit files outside the wiki if I want. It's ugly, by post-1970 standards, but it's very effective. My workday life is running fine in a text-only ssh session and vimwiki.

Everything from fountain pens to… vim. Respect. I’ve resorted to Nano when confined to ssh. Vim always drove me nuts.

 

[Amontillado]

Everything from fountain pens to… vim. Respect. I’ve resorted to Nano when confined to ssh. Vim always drove me nuts.

You are too kind.

There are many paths to enlightenment. Nothing matters but the words. Nano is a great editor. I use it in the Mutt email application where Nano is the default editor. Nano is a monument to ease of use.

If you ever need to learn vim, type vimtutor at a shell prompt for a nice quick start.

 

[JT Woody]

well... i was outside, on my lawn chair at the table. big umbrella and a nice breeze. was out there since 11... then down came a big black spider with a yellow spot on its butt and i freaked out. i jumped up, snatched my laptop and ran inside (forgetting my house keys out there on the table). made my husband go out there to get them and watched from the window. the spider was trying to make friends with the little yarn animal keychain i had on the ring because when my husband picked up the key, he immediately dropped it and the spider spread itself over the yarn animal.

long story short.... i got my keys back, and i'm setting up a new writing spot on my couch
(1,412 words before i was so rudely interrupted)

 

[JT Woody]

i recently acquired my husbands old Lenovo IdeaPad.
I'm now sitting here with my document up on my laptop (one of the many tabs....), and the google doc with beta read comments on the IdeaPad. Now i can scroll through the comments and edit on the doc at the same time.

(I have dual screen at my job which makes looking at 2 documents at the same time super easy. hence me firing up the old Lenovo for at home-dual screen action)

 

[Amontillado]

Ok, things just got serious. I've got a cool new broadaxe tucked in my belt.

Mellel is my word processor of choice. By far. Your mileage may vary.

One feature I haven't make use of in Mellel is something called story points.

The idea is you can, if you want, build an inventory of characters and locations. Whether or not you do that, you can drop story points in your document.

Story points are pretty much bookmarks with extra commentary and you can list what characters and locations are involved with each story point. If you want. You don't have to get that detailed.

One of the things I like about Mellel is it's very future proof despite using a proprietary document format. You can export to docx, epub, pdf, plain text, and probably a couple of other formats, but Mellel's native format is very easy to read without using Mellel itself.

Tonight I wrote a few lines of Python. My little script will scan a Mellel document for story points, characters, and locations, and write a comma separated file suitable for input into Aeon Timeline.

But, of course, Mellel's story points are simplistic. You can set a date, but no ending date.

So, my script scans the remarks (comments) for each story point. If it finds a pattern like enddate(value goes here), it will add an enddate column to the output, filling in the value from each story point that sets it.

I can have story arcs, observers, participants, and any other event data I want fed to Aeon from Mellel.

Tomorrow, I'm going to add an Aeon tag to each line of the Mellel output, something like FromMellel. That way I can select just the timeline events that came from Mellel and delete them in Aeon. Re-importing from Mellel would then pick up timeline changes I made in Mellel.

Pretty cool, I think. What amount to comments in Mellel will build a timeline, no effort involved.

 

[Kintsu Kuroi]

Main machine - Linux with Libreoffice and scrivener linux beta which compiles to odt, which I convert to libreoffice or OnlyOffice to docx for Atticus.
I have a NAS for syncing my files, so when I stop working on the main machine, I use the -
Laptop - also running Linux with Libreoffice, and scrivener linux beta.

I used to have a mac, and would format using Vellum, but now I have Atticus. It'll do until something better comes along.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Laptop for living room and roaming, desktop in the studio for editing and compiling, notebook and pen for random notes and mental meanderings. When I first learned to use a computer, I had Corel Word Perfect, which I liked just fine. However, Word docs were favored by most of my professional connections, so I made the change.

 

[Kintsu Kuroi]

Laptop for living room and roaming, desktop in the studio for editing and compiling, notebook and pen for random notes and mental meanderings. When I first learned to use a computer, I had Corel Word Perfect, which I liked just fine. However, Word docs were favored by most of my professional connections, so I made the change.

I loved Wordperfect, such a fun program.

 

[Amontillado]

I loved Wordperfect, such a fun program.

I had all 40 Word Perfect function key commands hardwired into my spinal cord - function key alone or with shift, control, or alt. That was back when I worked in a State organization with WP everywhere. It wasn't my job to support Word Perfect, but somebody had to do it.

The craziest word processing experience I had was with Wordstar 2000. A software house I contracted for wanted to make sure I didn't leave any unreadable files behind. They made me code assembler in Wordstar 2000.

I had to use Wordstar 2000 for plain text source files instead of a programmer's text editor. It was gruesome.

No, wait, that wasn't my craziest word processing experience. I had one that was a good kind of crazy.

That State agency had a word processing department, an outgrowth of a steno pool. They had IBM Display Writer machines. Not the Display Writer software, but the dedicated machines that predated the software, the kind with 8 inch floppy disks that sounded like East German war surplus tanks running over loose manhole covers.

I wandered in one day for some kind of networking trouble and discovered they were manually converting Display Writer files to Word Perfect. Tens of thousands of files.

They were required to take continuing education. The instructor gave them a final class assignment to convert all those files. Just the idea made my brain bleed.

Earlier, I'd discovered they had an interface kit to connect a PC to a Display Writer. I wrote a little C program that plugged some keystrokes into the PC's keyboard buffer and launched the interface kit in file transfer mode. Hands free conversion, reading and writing thousands of documents from a Novell server.

I almost got busted, too. The instructor paid a surprise visit. Everyone got a case of stammers when the instructor took a close look at the Display Writer in the corner, screen going flickety-flick though document after document.

The instructor probably had thoughts of sufficiently advanced technology being magic, and never said a word.

Those were the days!

 

[Kintsu Kuroi]

I had all 40 Word Perfect function key commands hardwired into my spinal cord - function key alone or with shift, control, or alt. That was back when I worked in a State organization with WP everywhere. It wasn't my job to support Word Perfect, but somebody had to do it.

The craziest word processing experience I had was with Wordstar 2000. A software house I contracted for wanted to make sure I didn't leave any unreadable files behind. They made me code assembler in Wordstar 2000.

I had to use Wordstar 2000 for plain text source files instead of a programmer's text editor. It was gruesome.

No, wait, that wasn't my craziest word processing experience. I had one that was a good kind of crazy.

That State agency had a word processing department, an outgrowth of a steno pool. They had IBM Display Writer machines. Not the Display Writer software, but the dedicated machines that predated the software, the kind with 8 inch floppy disks that sounded like East German war surplus tanks running over loose manhole covers.

I wandered in one day for some kind of networking trouble and discovered they were manually converting Display Writer files to Word Perfect. Tens of thousands of files.

They were required to take continuing education. The instructor gave them a final class assignment to convert all those files. Just the idea made my brain bleed.

Earlier, I'd discovered they had an interface kit to connect a PC to a Display Writer. I wrote a little C program that plugged some keystrokes into the PC's keyboard buffer and launched the interface kit in file transfer mode. Hands free conversion, reading and writing thousands of documents from a Novell server.

I almost got busted, too. The instructor paid a surprise visit. Everyone got a case of stammers when the instructor took a close look at the Display Writer in the corner, screen going flickety-flick though document after document.

The instructor probably had thoughts of sufficiently advanced technology being magic, and never said a word.

Those were the days!

Wow, there are so many emotions right now, I would probably get banned for spamming the emotes. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Smitty91]

I write on my laptop within the confines of my bedroom.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

I loved Wordperfect, such a fun program.

I'm still holding out. The only complaint I have against WordPerfect is that if the document gets too big, it can freeze up and you lose access to whole chunks of it. This baffles me, because lawyers love it, and don't their "briefs" often get monstrous? You'd think having parts of their cases falling into a digital black hole would be something they wouldn't dare risk.

That said, I hear that MS Word will do the same with a big file. And MS Word doesn't have Reveal Codes.

 

[Catrin Lewis]

I had all 40 Word Perfect function key commands hardwired into my spinal cord - function key alone or with shift, control, or alt. That was back when I worked in a State organization with WP everywhere. It wasn't my job to support Word Perfect, but somebody had to do it.

The craziest word processing experience I had was with Wordstar 2000. A software house I contracted for wanted to make sure I didn't leave any unreadable files behind. They made me code assembler in Wordstar 2000.

I had to use Wordstar 2000 for plain text source files instead of a programmer's text editor. It was gruesome.

No, wait, that wasn't my craziest word processing experience. I had one that was a good kind of crazy.

That State agency had a word processing department, an outgrowth of a steno pool. They had IBM Display Writer machines. Not the Display Writer software, but the dedicated machines that predated the software, the kind with 8 inch floppy disks that sounded like East German war surplus tanks running over loose manhole covers.

I wandered in one day for some kind of networking trouble and discovered they were manually converting Display Writer files to Word Perfect. Tens of thousands of files.

They were required to take continuing education. The instructor gave them a final class assignment to convert all those files. Just the idea made my brain bleed.

Earlier, I'd discovered they had an interface kit to connect a PC to a Display Writer. I wrote a little C program that plugged some keystrokes into the PC's keyboard buffer and launched the interface kit in file transfer mode. Hands free conversion, reading and writing thousands of documents from a Novell server.

I almost got busted, too. The instructor paid a surprise visit. Everyone got a case of stammers when the instructor took a close look at the Display Writer in the corner, screen going flickety-flick though document after document.

The instructor probably had thoughts of sufficiently advanced technology being magic, and never said a word.

Those were the days!

First word processor I ever used, a borrowed set-up in grad school in the '90s, ran WordStar. Before I went down I had to take my 1.44kb floppies to the university computer center and get them converted to WP5.0, or I'd lose access to my long essays. Those files are still a mess, but at least they're readable.

 

[Smitty91]

I'm still holding out. The only complaint I have against WordPerfect is that if the document gets too big, it can freeze up and you lose access to whole chunks of it. This baffles me, because lawyers love it, and don't their "briefs" often get monstrous? You'd think having parts of their cases falling into a digital black hole would be something they wouldn't dare risk.

That said, I hear that MS Word will do the same with a big file. And MS Word doesn't have Reveal Codes.

This is why I personally prefer OpenOffice. I've never had this problem.

 

[Amontillado]

This is why I personally prefer OpenOffice. I've never had this problem.

Mellel! It's a beast for big files. Unfortunately, I'm not. At least I know my inadequate scribblings won't overrun it.

 

[defaux]

I have just migrated my NWT project into Manuskript, in an attempt to get it better organised. It's probably a bit basic compared to some other software, but considering up to now I have been drafting in a text editor, it suits me fine.

 

[Smitty91]

Mellel! It's a beast for big files. Unfortunately, I'm not. At least I know my inadequate scribblings won't overrun it.

Yeah, I used to write in Five Star notebooks all the time until I got my laptop.