Another reason I haven’t attended the RT convention.

I definitely agree with you about the various word processing programs. I’m glad there are alternatives to expensive programs like MS Word.

I also have to agree that we writer types are, if not crazy, quite different!

though at times, life has a way of spoofing on one.

Yeah, I agree that fonts should be easy on the eyes. both on screen and on paper.

I love whacking at my keyboards offline, I can’t stand online word processor. the internet here can sometimes go offline. As for open office, it’s still in the incubation period.

I use my USB key when writing, that way I won’t lose anything. LibreOffice is a decent software. MS Office is pretty darn expensive.

word processors are supposed to be tools that make a writer’s work bearable.

To be a writer one has to be crazy to a degree.

*wanders away shaking her head*

Sadly, right now I live where the internet is terrible. Watching videos on the web is a PAINFUL experience. It can literally take 40 minutes to watch a 15 minute video. So that won’t work for me as of yet. A while back, I tried Open Office, but Open Office choked when the MS got to a certain size and eventually, a 100K word novel gets to that size.

As to default fonts, all too often that default font is Times New Roman, which I think is ugly (a highly subjective opinion, of course) but which also gives me a headache, which is an objective observation that applies to me. What I want is the font I like and that is easy on my eyes on screen and on paper.

I found that Scrivener did a pretty good job of getting out of the way of my writing process. I’m very used to working with documents in chunks, as Scrivener assumes will be done. What I struggled with was compiling the documents so it was formatted the way a novel needs to be formatted for US publishers — which the Scrivener template is not. I do a fair amount of printing out and then editing on paper, so I need to compile often, both in case I want to print out what I have so far and so I can check and log my nightly word count as well as save off nightly copy.

It’s the compiling bit that didn’t work for me. I couldn’t make it output the way I need it to. The last thing I want is to be trying to prepare my final document on the deadline day and fighting it. That would be a nightmare and a business disaster.

However, I am confident that these are all things I can overcome. Just not when I’m in the middle of a project! I’ll try again when I start the next one.

If you do use Scrivener, I’d love to know how it works out for you!