Tools of a Writer…
I read somewhere where only five to ten percent of folks that start to write a book finish their work. That’s too bad because the world really needs fresh viewpoints and creativity. We collectively benefit from people sharing their insight, interests and as Seth Godin now calls it, their “weirdness”.
The problem with Word…
Part of the reason people don’t finish the book they start, is because the task quickly becomes overwhelming when using a traditional word processor like Word. You open up Word and start banging away, and at about the 10,000 to 20,000 word mark, things start getting messy. And Word does not make it easy to keep up with plot points, characters, time-lines etc. You have to do that on a spreadsheet, on sticky notes or crib notes written in the palm of your hand. This is clumsy at best and completely ruins the creative flow of writing a book.
No, you don’t understand. I’m a ‘writer’, not a ‘re-writer’…
I recently received my 80,000 word novel back from my editor, filled with edit notes and comments. Things to fix etc. Now, I won’t discuss it in detail here (topic for another post), but I had no idea that writing isn’t so much about writing as it is about re-writing. And re-writing is hard work. Much harder than writing a first draft in my opinion. And I think the task of re-writing is tedious, if not impossible, when you are using Word.
So, faced with a mountain to climb and no visible trail up the side, I did what any normal person would do. I went to Staples and bought a case of extra-large sticky notes, one of those huge easel pads of paper (with sticky of course), markers, etc etc. Probably $100 worth of crap. Then I came home to my office and tried to “organize” my novel. All 80,000 words of it.
It did not take long to realize this was not going to work…
The walls of my office soon looked like a sticky note trade show booth. Colorful to be sure, but a freaking mess. But the problem wasn’t so much the wall of notes, it was still Word.
The problem with Word is that it is somewhat difficult to move chapters around. In my books, each scene equals a chapter (I like this style of writing). I wanted to balance the scenes a little bit to account for different characters points of view. This is not a fun process in Word, which is pretty much designed for linear thinking and writing. Great for banging out a stream of consciousness from the muse, but it sucks as a platform for putting the pieces of two months of writing together in a finished novel that I will be proud of.
Software to the rescue…
Fortunately, I am not the only one in the world to see a problem with Word. I did the Google search thing and found quite a few software programs for writing a book. I tried three of them. Writers Blocks which I did not like at all although I think it has promise. I also tried Snowflake but quickly abandoned it because while I see promise in the Snowflake method, I didn’t care for how the software worked. And lastly, I tried yWriter, which I fell in love with. This is the software I am currently using for my re-write project as well as a new project.
Why do I like yWriter? Because it lets you write in scenes. Each scene is treated as a separate file, and you can move scenes around as needed. Plus, it gives you the word count for each scene, and the total word count of scenes put together. What is nice about this, is that it lets you quickly see where your dramatic scenes arrive in your story.
It is a good program and I highly recommend it. Best of all, it’s free. That said, I am sure the creator would appreciate a donation if you like his work. You can get yWriter here.
Love yWriter. One of my favorites. Btw, love this web theme too.
Thanks Keiki. I am really enjoying using yWriter. The theme is from Elegant Themes, modified somewhat to suit my needs.