Best software?

[FledglingFountainPen]

I've had a historical fiction idea brewing for years, and I started during the May MuMoWriMo but life went insane and I abandoned it quickly. Time is a real problem for me. I've organised it so that from September I'll have one day a fortnight completely put aside for writing, which I think will suit me well - I'm all-or-nothing, I can't do 200 words a day every day.

In the meantime, I've put some steps into investing in my writing - made my home office workable so I have somewhere with no distractions, and invested in a cheap Microsoft tablet with a pen.

What software is everyone using? Just Word, or something fancier? Really interested to hear what works for people.

I write historical and I have previously used Scrivener. It's very useful for being able to move chapters around in editing, and has a lot of other extras which I didn't get around to using. But at the end of the day I was so used to writing in Word by that point that I was exporting it into Word to edit and decided I may as well just write the whole thing in there. There are a lot of authors who use Scrivener and love it though!

Thank you I'll look into it! That's very helpful.

Honestly I just use Google Docs! I've started making full use of the titles and subheadings to find what I'm looking for in my notes, but I've also always been one of those people who has a million poorly-named documents scattered all over my files!

I used to use Word but I went with Google docs for the ease of accessing it on different devices - a bit of cheeky work lunchtime writing

Glad someone else indulges in millions of poorly named documents. Spent half an hour looking for some notes a couple of days ago before finding it was in the document I had previewed first and rejected as the name was wrong. Duh!

Scrivener with ProWritingAid for editing.

Although I mostly write longhand in notebooks I also use a web-based app called Dabble to build a digital first draft. It has a low monthly subscription, in three tiers. I think I have the middle version. I find it very easy to add scenes or world-building/character notes as they come to mind. It’s a pretty basic app that I like for the word count and the inspiring quotes that appear whenever you open it.

I tried Google docs but I am sick of the sight of it after using it all day for work.

I’ve just bought a vintage typewriter to start typing up scenes for the feel of physically building a manuscript I can later edit with a pen or rearrange at will. It seems to suit me to have that brain-hand connection but it’s not a very time efficient way of working. The day job is all about writing web content on a laptop so it’s a relief to leave the digital world behind when I’m writing creatively.

I use Scrivener as I like to stamp the index cards with things like 'To Edit' and 'Finished' - I'm quite a visual worker, so it really helps with my editing.