The Writer's Technology Companion

Tools, Tips, and Technology for Productive Writers

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Entries for the ‘Tools’ Category

NaNoWriMo Interview: Sonja Faust

Sonja Faust is a romance writer living in North Carolina. This year she’ll do NaNoWriMo for the fifth time, after completing the challenge successfully twice. She’s published two short stories, “Love in Shadow” and “Cat in the Mist” with WildRosePress and is currently enjoying publisher interest in her first novel, completed during NaNoWriMo last year. Sonja […]

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Moving to Linux: Scribus for Writers

The proprietary software world also offers many tools for desktop publishing (DTP) from entry-level programs such as Microsoft Publisher to high-end applications including Adobe’s InDesign and FrameMaker or Quark Xpress. Adobe’s product are aimed at related but subtly different markets. InDesign is the product of choice for graphics professionals creating print materials such as flyers […]

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Moving to Linux: The New OpenOffice

So, you’ve gotten your text, which is surely the twenty-first century equivalent of “Common Sense”. Back in those days, you would have sent your manuscript to the typesetter for printing; nowadays, you have something just as good inside your Linux box (PDF export). But how to utilize it? A word processor, of course. OpenOffice has […]

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NaNoWriMo Interview: Trisha Bartle

Though she hasn’t won her first two tries at NaNoWriMo, Trisha Bartle isn’t letting that get her down  –  this year she’ll try her hand again, hoping that the third time really is a charm. A freelance feature and commercial writer, Bartle is also an award-winning short fiction writer. Read more about her and her work at […]

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Moving to Linux: Working with Text (Part 2)

In the last installment, we examined how to compose and check your writing using the Linux tools txt2tags and aspell. Let’s assume that you’ve used these tools now  –  used them quite a lot. You now have several directories and sub-directories filled with dozens of text files. How to organize all of this text? Don’t worry, Linux has […]

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Moving to Linux: Working with Text (Part 1)

As I highlighted in my last post, plain text is an excellent medium for writers to begin their process. Actually, in many cases, plain text is a perfectly acceptable format for writers to end their process in as well, but for now, let’s assume that you’ll be moving your words to a different format such […]

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Add “Print This” to Your WordPress Blog Posts with WP-Print Plugin

This is a guest post by Stephanie Stiavetti from Wasabimon. Stephanie has agreed to write a couple of posts for the site while I’m busy moving and getting ready for NaNoWriMo. Please welcome her to the site, and do yourself a favor by visiting her site too! I visit a lot of blogs as a part […]

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The Writer’s Skype Toolkit

One of the unlikely tools I end up using all the time as a writer is Skype. For the uninitiated, Skype is a voice over Internet application, allowing you to chat with other Skype users for free just like you would over the telephone. In fact, for a small per-minute charge, you can even call […]

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Call for Participants: Writers Who Have Participated in NaNoWriMo

To celebrate National Novel Writing Month in November, I would like to feature interviews with previous NaNoWriMo participants about the techniques and strategies they used and how well they worked. The interview will be a set of several questions that you can answer by email. If you participated in NaNoWriMo before, whether or not you […]

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Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May”: Tips for Collecting and Organizing Ideas, Part 4 — Organizing Your Thoughts

Image by ecstaticist via Flickr The hardest part of any project for me is getting my notes and captured thoughts into some sort of usable format. That’s one of the reasons why I like conputerized note-taking systems like Evernote so much  –  it organizes for me by creating notebooks and allowing me to tag each entry. But Evernote […]

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