There are beta products, programs that store research information beside your text, templates that make navigating novels simplified, and meters (God, how I love a good chart) to tell us if we’ve hit our word count for the day, week, or month. But how do we know which program is the best? And what is a good program for a beginning writer or a bestselling author?
The quest for the best program for all writers leads to one basic
need: Writers want to know what program is going to draw us away from the struggle
of outlines, chapters, plot structure, and character bios, while also marking where
we love the story and the places where we anticipate work.
This quest is why I have a friend who actively searches for the
best program all the time. She tells me about downloading these one-word named
applications (names no one can pronounce until you’ve heard an expert say it)
and she uses them for a few days or weeks, and then the search is back on for a
“better fit.”
When we chat about these “writing tools,” she speaks about
them like she's looking for the Holy Grail. It's as if she expects some magical thing to
happen when her world and this ideal program's world collide that will suddenly
force words to spew out her fingers and everything will read polished, error
free, and rich with characters and plot.
I don't have the heart to tell her, although I must for the
sake of The Writer’s Code, that there is no better writing program than
sitting down in the chair every day and actually writing.
If a program works to draw you to your chair, then great. If
it isn’t getting you writing because you’re fiddling with the settings and
reading a 200 page tutorial on The Greatest Writing Program Ever Created 1.0,
then forget it.
You must keep in mind always that you do the work.
Not the program.
If the program or app or gadget eases the process then go
for it, you have my full support. Just don't spend more hours looking for, downloading, and figuring out how to use the program, than you do writing with it.
As for me, I chart ideas on the
computer (MS Word) or I make a spreadsheet (MS Excel) about my plot, my characters, short story titles that arrive in the middle of the night, just to keep it all organized. Then, inevitably
some driving force urges me to put an actual pen, (you know, with ink), into my
hand and write my plots, my research notes, etc. in front of my face. I like to
have something tangible to flip through when I'm actively typing my fiction work rather than
toggling between documents which is what I do with my freelance writing. That's me.
The real key in all of this is that the best writing program
is whatever works for you. The end goal, after all is not to have the
best app, it’s to have written (past tense) something really worthwhile that
you love. Otherwise all of the downloads and product reviews and celebrity
endorsements mean nothing. Don’t let the search for the best program delay you in
reaching the finish line with your writing.
Share your thoughts in the comments below. Feel free to
gush about a program you like or tell me who makes your favorite pen (I’m on a
zebra pen kick myself).
I've tried them all and you're correct about the best writing tool is YOURSELF (no pun intended.)
ReplyDeleteOther than that, I can't live without Evernote on my phones (I'm up to three now) and itouch and ipad and on my computers, since I'm always coming up with ideas in strange locations.
Any program which lets you write, lets you save, sometimes print and maybe one which will correct spelling is nice to have, but it all comes down to what you put in the program. Scrivener might be nice, but dear Dog stop telling me what to do and when I try to compile a text, where's the rest of this goofy shit coming from? /endrant.
Try this: sit down with a pad of paper and a pen. Write. If you like it, type it into a computer.