Monday, November 30, 2009

Writing a novel with online tools

One thing I left off my last post on where to write was online tools.  Online tools as a category have several benefits and different ones bring different benefits.

I don't tend to write on one computer.  Often I will write during my lunch break, instead of leaving the building.  I can bring the document I'm working on a thumb drive, but most employers frown on using personal memory sticks on a work computer, for several reasons.

Google Docs is one place I've thought about.  It does have the benefit of allowing me to access it wherever I am, as long as I'm near a computer.  I can also share a read-only copy with my first readers, but they would have no way to comment in the same document.  That would be good or bad.

Google Wave offers some promise.  It has many of the same features as Google Docs.  The one drawback is sharing with first readers. There is (currently) no way to restrict another participant in a wave to prevent them from updating the original blip, or preferable, marking their updates (i.e. margin comments).  I could get around this by writing in one wave, and then cloning that wave for the first readers to be able to edit.  The other drawback is there is currently no way to print (that I've seen) from Google Wave.  Since printing it in a specific format is the final outcome (publisher have guidelines for this), this can be a big drawback.  I can probably get around this by cutting and pasting the entire document into a OpenOffice document.

One drawback I have not mentioned for online tools is the chance of it being stolen.  Frankly I don't worry about it much.  It's just as likely someone would steal a printed copy someone left lying around.  If someone steals the idea and makes a better story (or actually finishes a story, which I have yet to do), good for them.  Ideas are not copyrightable.  Plagiarism is another story, and I don't think that often ends well for the plagiarist or their publisher.

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