The 7 writing apps I used to start and finish my book

There is a two -decade famous age Paris review An interview with Haruki Murakami which is, one of the most famous novelists in the world, the details of his daily routine. He wakes up at four in the morning, works for five hours, goes to running, reads, goes to bed, then repeats it again. Accuracy and repetition are the point.

I am not Haruki Murakami.

In addition to my work in Immediately, I am writing novels – my first lung is today – and while I was impressed by Murakami’s commitment to an unstable time schedule, I found that I issued my best work when I constantly rethink about routine procedures and processes, most of them, most of them, how I am writing. In the modern era, this means what the program I use.

What I am about to describe will be a nightmare for anyone who loves all his tools to work harmoniously. All of these applications are separated and do not interfere with each other in any way. Many of the things they do excessive and intertwined. I assume this process is the opposite of friction – but this is exactly the point. I am not sure that I think ambitious creative work is borne by a completely effective work.

These, instead, a journey to transfer work through different parts of the programs, depending on what you need or how you need to interact with it. Just as it can inspire or challenge new ideas or challenge new ideas, the transfer of work through different writing environments can be this transformation of your text. What I am about to detail is less than the specific parts of the programs, and more how to change its approach depending on what the work needs.

At least, that is what it is for me. It might be for you too.

When I start writing a book, I need to collect my thoughts literally. It is the fun part – when the project is all the capabilities, before the painful matter is it in reality. I will find inspiration in the things I read, watch and listen to; Ideas will come to me while riding the metro, when I can’t sleep at night, and sometimes even in the middle of the meetings.

Everyone has specific uses of their notes applications, and there is a lot available. The bit antibiotic / deformed is that I use two different. It serves each different purpose.

I use bear For structured ideas such as personality drawings or objective concepts, I benefit from the system of light signs of application to survive. To get completely loose ideas, things are usually affixed to Notes And do not worry about coordination, context, whatever – I know that it is saved somewhere. (In fact, I have a very negative reaction to how the notes appear, but this is where my partner prefers to share groceries and passwords, so I am stuck with it.)

The important thing here is not that these applications are good or especially designed for any purpose. I just have a different environment to open on my phone, depending on the type of idea that I need to save. One I use it when I am thoughtful, and another when I need to reduce something quickly. And in the moments I need to save something very fast, I will not use the Notes app at all – I will only send myself.

Nothing about the bear or notes interact with each other, and in the end, it will have to transfer any useful text from it. They both coincide with desktop applications, so copying and pasteing things to a new place is a somewhat painless process, if not boring. This, for me, the value of notes applications: combining ideas scraps, so that you can turn them into something useful later.

I don’t stop writing down when I write – in fact, this increases only when the book begins to crystallize and really live in my mind. But the place where I spent most of the time focuses on the deliberate, and the actual writing was in IA writerMy minimum, the zero word processor who chooses. This was the program that I opened when I sat to do a tired work for the new writing.

I have tried a handful of other applications, but this is the application that I have continued to return to, although it costs $ 50 for mobile phone and last $ 50 if you want to release the desktop. If we look back, this is an ridiculous amount of money to spend it just because I love the virtual letter of the application. (Nevertheless, when you spend more than 100 hours looking at something, $ 100 looks less terrible.) The first draft is the most difficult part, so anything you can do to reduce this process is worth it.

I have almost fully formulated on the iPad-not any of the advanced models, but the starting levels of Apple with the keyboard attachment. I just wanted a device dedicated to being a writing tool. I wrote my first book on the Chromebook that was very slow to browse the Internet useful; in the end, I had to send it to the E-Woaste when it was very slow to open Google documents.) On the iPad, most virtual apps, and other things I installed were the Kitrle App and some PDF readers. No games, no broadcast services.

I know some writers who work from start to finish. I am a little more messy in that I am writing without a request at all. This becomes a problem later, because the most important part of the narration is the structure. So at a certain stage, when I had enough written words (usually about 60,000 words), things were transferred to several differences Google documents So I can start separating the scenes and seasons. If the IA writer is to get words on the page, the documents are the place where I finish and start reviewing a book. This is where it becomes a readable story.

I don’t have much to say about Google documents that you don’t already know. It is a text processor that I used more than others throughout my life, so it is also the most knowledgeable and most convenient. We use Google Documents throughout the day in freedomSo writing a book in it makes him feel like a work, and it is somehow acceptable: Now, we have to do a job.

This was when things became a little strange. Google documents face a difficult time with writing that exceeds its length – that threshold, which has found, about 15,000 words. So my book was separated into large sections, and I created an index associated with all seasons, and also as a Google document. On this point, I am outside the iPad and go back to a laptop; The surfers contain open tabs for each documents from the seven separate documents that include my draft.

For me, the review is not equal to finishing the first draft, but it is an organizational challenge. On the one hand, you should continue to balance things in the sentence, paragraph and the level of separation; On the other hand, you cannot lose sight of the entire structure of the book. The spread of the manuscript across many different documents was proven.

So I installed ScrivenerOne of the few applications that I know is already built with writing books in mind. (What says that the majority of the creative writing that we do take place in the programs designed for the workplace?) If the ideal of the program in the past decade is easy, scrivener tends the other direction by designing something for energy users. It is a program that gets more effort to prepare it, make it your own, and make it eccentric so that the dodges feel the second nature. Even the way scrivener – the use of multiple parts, the solid establishment structures, and the intensity of high information – looks like a Windows program from the late nineties / early.

I admit, I just customized the light (the first thing I did is to switch all user interface elements to a better letter). Until then, it was useful to use the application to regulate and reorganize the seasons. Through customized descriptive fields, I managed to create stickers to easily sort the classes according to the viewpoints of the characters and track the required departments. Scorner also allows you to imagine your projects, seeing everything that is visually placed like index cards on the cork panel is very useful when you try to weave five plot lines. This really helped me sequence and form the book.

The thing is: I actually hate writing in Scripner, so everything has moved to Google documents to finish (again, scattered across several different documents). I made another round of reviews with my agent, then I sent it to my editor, it was exported to a document.

As much as I find Microsoft Word Very clumsy, especially on the Mac, it has become necessary to finally transfer a full manuscript there. Word is the industrial standard for the publishing industry, and I was not about to ask the editors to absorb my desire for less ugly words. (It also seems to be regardless of the duration of Google trying to solve its interim operation with the Word track changes, the decisive objects always end up being lost in translation.)

After two rounds with an editor, we finally felt that the manuscript was good to go to production. First, I went to the copy editor. This started with the word, but then the interior of the book was placed and I had to look at the proofs in Adobe AcrobatAnd that contains its own suspension system and which you endured because all the authors are brave.

A lot of time passes while producing the book, then begins to hold meetings on selling the book actually. This is the least preferred part of the publishing process, because I was forced to think about advertising and marketing, and I am not sure anyone chose to write imagination because their desire is “to please the market.”

In any case, there is another application that I was using – in the recommendation of David Peres – is Pure 3. Previous versions of craftsmanship, which I have never used, were fully -featureable production applications. This third repetition turns it into the writing environment first, with a lot of productive bells and its second neighbors. This was ideal for managing all pre -publishing obligations, which involve writing copies of marketing, planning events, and interviewing interviews. With Craft, I spent a very easy time at the top of the deadlines, and I found that it was less stained than similar tools as the idea.

So, if you are following, the journey looks like this:

Bear / Apple Notes ➡ IA writer ➡ Google Documents

There are some things common to all these applications. First, they all have reliable versions of the phone and desktop. I do not use each one equally, but it is good to reach the text regardless of where I work. Second, each part of the programs is built around a basic strength, rather than trying to be good in everything. Scorner is the only stranger here, because it suffers from the aperture feature, but you can also make it work for you if you put the elbow fat. (There is a complete sub -culture for SCRITENER users and tampering – Many friends recommended online Jaime Green sessions.)

I have a third book under the contract, which means that I am committed to doing this entire process again. Well, no this The process, exactly – if you learn anything, it will have to re -invent everything myself while writing, and this means trying a lot of new programs. Even if it is possible to create the perfect app, which can capture a journey to write a book from pregnancy to publish, I am still not sure that I will use it. The boundaries of each tool forced me to be thoughtful. I made me friction asking, at every turn: What does the book now need?

The workflow is to complete things efficiently. Embrace chaos is how to write a book.