Time saving software
March 2, 2008
I love spending time writing, but I’ve had to experiment with software to help with that.
Note - I don’t know which of these work with Mac’s 
I’m not on a Mac, so don’t have access to testing that at present. Let the readers know though in the comments if you like
Blogging:
Blogjet is a great way to write blog posts from your desktop - it lets you do everything but add more categories, which is my only complaint. Its got a great spell checker, you can set up pings and more (and its multi line, which means you’re not fighting with setting them up line by line in your trackback box in your wordpress admin area).
Another option is a project called ‘Qumana’ - similar, but with a differnet interface. Its got built in advertising, which i don’t use, but its very good.
Writing:
By far and away, there are brilliant pieces of software out there - and I use several of them.
Wordprocessing
There are several dozen wordprocessors out there - and for the purposes of this review, I’m listing wordprocessors alongside packages with more functions. Not because I wanna confuse you, but because I use each of them in different circumstances.
Rough Draft - Rough draft is a great little, lightweight wordprocessor. Think of it as office without the bells and whistles. And its free. About the only ‘con’ I can see to it is that its never been updated, which isn’t a bad thing neccisarily. I generally use Rough Draft when I’m writing one off projects - or just want to BLITZ.
YWriter - Ywriter isn’t JUST a wordprocessor. Its a wordprocessor with lots of brillaint little tools - a storyboard, chapter arranger, chapter listing. It saves and loads as RTF, which is Word compatible, and it is, quite honestly, the first free ‘non word’ word processor I ever used. I wrote three of my books in it, in fact, and its about the best tool I used till I found Liquid Story Binder. I’d like to emphasise though, that its not because Liquid was ‘better’ - but because there are functions in Liquid that I love - which I’ll explain in a minute. Ywriter is one of the best FREE wordprocessors I’ve ever found.
Liquid Story Binder - first up, its not free. It IS very cheap though - at only $50 or so, its a great investment. Liquid Story Binder isn’t just a wordprocessor, and goes BEYOND Ywriter. It adds a great functions such as a gallery, MP3 listing and player, and more. Its under active development and has a lively email based discussion list - and the suggestions that are made seem to be slowly intergrating.
Other tools
I’ll do a longer post on this, but honorable mention goes to two pieces of submission tracking software.
Winsamm - a free download that lets you track manuscripts. Does exactly what it says on the tin 
(popups on the website)
Incredibly similar, and by the same guy that ‘did’ Ywriter is Sonar. Again, the differences are miniscule, and its free.
Do you have any writers tools you’d recommend?
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