May 6th, 2004

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Words
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A Writer’s Tools

I originally happened on Darren’s blog while looking for sites concerned with writers and the writing life. I assume that people who read this space regularly have similiar interests. To that end, a one-sided discussion of writing tools.

These are the tools I use:
An old laptop - I use an old IBM ThinkPad that I bought used. I like the fast, crisp keyboard, and the fact that the screen is close by. The machine has a couple of development tools on it, and SQL Server 2000 (developer version), but nothing much in the way of games or diversions, so a 10 Gb hard drive is big enough.
A text editor - when writing simple or HTML-enhanced text, I use a straightforward text editor, like Notepad or Crimson Editor. I’m working in Crimson Editor right now. Crimson has one oddity: when it wraps a line, it inexplicably breaks before punctuation, so you often end up with a line that starts with a period or a comma. If you can live with that, it’s an excellent editor, particularly if you do any programming on the side.
Microsoft Word 97 - I have little use for the gee-whiz features of newer versions of this excellent word processor. I write with a monospaced font (Courier New), and a simple single-spaced style, easily converted to double-spaced for submission purposes. Word 97 is plenty powerful enough for this. Not to mention the fact that it runs faster on this mildly anemic old machine.
Coffee - I am at my best and most creative in the morning. Coffee enhances that for some strange reason. When I sell my first book (when, not if) I’m going to buy an espresso maker and drink cappuccino in the morning.
A dictionary - In a measure of just how much things have changed, I use an online dictionary. I’m a good speller and have reasonably large vocabulary, so I don’t use it more than once a week or so. Yes, it’s an American dictionary. I have taken to writing fiction with American spellings on the assumption that I will be targetting the American market. I still use Canadian spellings everywhere else.
Possibly because I write software to pay the daily bills, I believe that a tool should not become an end unto itself, but should instead be as simple and transparent as required. Nothing should get in the way of the writing.

Comments: 9 Responses so far

Sue
May 6th, 2004
9:38 am

I would like to add a style guide to your list of tools. I don’t use it very often, but occasionally I need to confirm what I think is correct grammar or punctuation. It’s nice to not have to wonder if I’m right.

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Meghan
May 6th, 2004
9:50 am

Started to comment here, but was yammering on a little too much for a comment box, so I posted at my site. http://www.oldmaninthecrosswalk.blogspot.com

Thanks for sharing.

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Dean
May 6th, 2004
10:19 am

I took the liberty of fixing your link, which was busted (that’s a technical term for ‘broken’). Works now, tested OK.

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Darren James Harkness
May 6th, 2004
12:11 pm

I found the new format for comments in Word XP to be extremely helpful. I just finished a book [ Apache Essentials, http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1590593553/staticred-20 ] on which I had two editors (technical, copy), and the bubbled comments were a huge benefit for going through the editing process.

At work, I do help development; we make use of RoboHelp and Homesite to do our authoring, and always have the MS Style Guide handy for reference.

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Meghan
May 6th, 2004
12:32 pm

Cool, Dean. Did I mistype? Writing puts me in a right brain mode, not the best for spell checking…

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Dean
May 6th, 2004
1:46 pm

Yes, you’d missed a letter. I think it was ‘olmaninthecrosswalk’.

URLs are not the easiest things in the world to proofread. The fact that the words are all run together throws the eye off, and that is the reason that people who write software tend to use names like ‘i_printer_page_buffer_count’ or ‘i_PrinterPageBufferCount’ rather than ‘i_printerpagebuffercount’.

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Todd
May 6th, 2004
7:00 pm

Try Metapad for an alternate text editor if the punctuation break thing bothers you. It has everything that Notepad should, and a few things that MS would surely never have thought of, like a transparency mode.

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Martin
May 6th, 2004
10:29 pm

Wow! I didn’t know there was a difference between Canadian and American spelling (despite having spent a year in Canada)…

I do pretty much the same thing–I’m English, but I have to write in American.

And I’m a technical writer, not a creative one. (This reminds me of something that the late Dennis Potter said in the last interview before his death–”Putting “television” in front of “writer” is like putting “processed” in front of “cheese”.”)

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Dean
May 7th, 2004
6:33 am

Canadian spelling is an odd mix of British and American spellings.

The biggest one is ‘ou’ instead of ‘o’ in a large number of words, ie ‘colour’ rather than the American ‘color’.

Canadian spelling is generally closer to the British, but there are things like ‘connection’ rather than ‘connexion’. I must say, however, that I’ve noticed the British ‘x’ less and less. That might be because I haven’t been looking for it.

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