inkstains

I'm a Mac user, though: this is important to me and to this explanation of my computering habits.

I like to work in Pages sometimes, but only if I'm sitting down and working on a long piece straight through and fact-checking later; it's easier to feel like I've made actual progress with it. More often than not, I'll paste my work into Pages to scroll around and look at what I've already written while working on it in my program of choice, TextEdit. I love TextEdit because it doesn't autoformat, it's super-easy to turn off it even recognizing misspelled words (while keeping it autocorrecting my most common typos, which I can set myself), and it looks great in a small window. Yet, if I want to do some tricky formatting, I can do it. I can have a pretty thorough spellcheck, fancy fonts, formatting, etc. For you Windows people, it's like WordPad and TextPad had a baby that looks like TextPad but is smarter and more capable than WordPad. (Because that clearly explains everything.) I like to use TextEdit in a small window, so when I'm writing short pieces, it feels like I'm making loads of progress. Also, TextEdit comes free with the Mac when you get it. Best of all worlds.

Yes, I have Word for Mac. Word is a program I use to check page length. Not even word count anymore. But people are always asking me "How many pages is it in Word?" like that's the most objective way to see how long something is. Whatever, people, I could just change my font size and have A MILLION PAGES! how would that be?

I think I tried yWriter once. Or something. One of those writing programs. I don't really remember it. I am very set in my ways ;)

So, in general, it's pretty clear that I like to use my computer for writing fiction whenever possible. It works better for me. However, I always try to have sticky notes and a wall in easy reach - if I get an idea that doesn't fit in the piece I'm working on at the moment, I want it on a sticky note hanging on my wall, dammit. None of this "make a file for ideas" nonsense - those get lost in my vast lack of organization. And really. STICKY NOTES. They're just awesome.