How effective is Notebook a...
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How effective is Notebook as a writing tool?by AutumnMoon - 09:59PM, Dec 18, 2007 |
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I’m searching for software to better enable me to work on a book. I already have the Notebook software, but haven’t really invested much time in learning it.Would I be better served looking for or using a good Word Processor, or does this program work well for most people? |
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I love the program! It's great for organizing all the research around a book. The clipping service is phenomenal. I have tabs for all my characters, for suspense ideas, for synopsis, plot. I don't actually write in it, but I transfer over the individual chapters. Notebook has a feature that lets me see if I'm overusing words or phrases. I just discovered Notebook about six months ago and I wouldn't be without it now. you will need a word processor though. When you're ready to submit your work to an editor or agent, you'll need it put together in good form.
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I find Notebook to be an excellent writing tool, for all sizes of writing projects. One of my primary uses for it is writing a long, complex novel in which the point-of-view character changes from passage to passage (or you might think of them as subchapters), & in which I'm sometimes not sure from the onset where a given passage will ultimately end up structurally within the chapter or even within the novel. Sometimes I just want to do a what-if: what if I placed this lengthy passage here instead of there? This was a real pain in the hind end to deal with in a traditional wordprocessor -- having to cut & paste all over the place. But in Notebook, I can simply use put each lengthy passage (subchapter) on a separate writing page, and move them around willy-nilly whenever I decided that, say, this passage told from Ophelia's POV needs to go before instead of after this other passage told from John's POV. Then, when I get done with the writing of a given chapter & am satisfied with it's structure, I can put the whole thing together onto one Notebook page or export it to a wordprocessor for final formatting or whatever. I can also keep all my notes for the novel in a separate section of the notebook, & thanks to the program's excellent indexing function immediately find everything I have to say about any given character or place, whether within the novel itself or in my notes. I've also used Notebook for shorter nonfiction writings, such as Wikipedia encylopedia articles or college papers which require a lot of source documentation. I'll take notes on a given topic using an outline page, including a source citation for each bulleted item. When I get done with my notes and am ready to write, I freely rearrange all the bulleted facts in the order I want to present them (complete with source citation for each fact), and when I'm done with that, copy & paste the whole outline to a writing page so I can get rid of the bullets & change it into actual reasonable, intelligent, well-referenced writing. It's not a replacement for a wordprocessor, but now I generally use the wordprocessor (in my case, the one in the full-featured free OpenOffice suite) for final formatting rather than for the main job of writing. The one essential writing tool that I need that Notebook is lacking, at least the version I have (release 2.1, v262) is a live word count. I can only hope that after the numerous requests for word count that people in this forum have made, that they've included that in the new release 3.0 that's already been announced. The announcements & press releases fail to say anything about it. Due to my need for portability (even more so than a laptop can give me -- I like to do a lot of walking, & it's tough to lug around a laptop), & also for live wordcount, my writing practice is now changing somewhat. I now write a lot on my Palm TX handheld with wireless keyboard using Documents to Go, which syncs to Word (which OpenOffice can read), & which also gives me -- guess what -- word count. But usually those are small working documents containing subchapters, which then get copied over to my Notebook for overall chapter & novel structuring. Notebook might not be ideal for every writer, because we already have our own workstyles. But for me, other than the wordcount issue, it's been great. (Too bad there's not a Palm version too, to also take care of my portability issue, but that would be pretty unrealistic for such a full-featured program.)
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Being a freelance writer, I use NoteBook as a project management tool to keep track of my research, collecting information, e-mails, links etc. and for everything related to the articles or write projects that I do. For this, NoteBook is great and have made my life easier.  However, for longer projects I use Scrivener as project manager, researcher and brainstormer, and then I output it to Nisus Writer for the final touches before I send it to the publisher. I could use NoteBook for this, but I do miss some features - like WordCount.
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I am using NB to plan the next project (book, play), research, characterideas, plotideas etc.
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Whilst NoteBook is excellent for planning a project, if it is specifically a novel then it might be worth taking a look at Scrivener. http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
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Just wish to ask: why Scrivener is better for novels?
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The reason I like Scrivener more than NoteBook for writing fiction is that (1) you can see the whole tale/novel if so you wish, (2) the Full Screen mode is the best way to avoid distractions, (3) labels and index cards/corkboard are a great way of dealing with structure, and (4) it has a live word/character count. At the same time, I feel more at home with NoteBook in my work on exams and academic papers, since integration between clippings, lesson notes in Cornell Note format, outlines, free writing, to dos interfaced with my cell phone, seem to me the most natural way of dealing with this composite task. Paolo — Last edited 01:23PM, Mar 30, 2009 |
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Before I purchased Notebook, I pounded the crap out of all the outliners, and related, that I could find. As I practise GTD techniques, I also looked at the new GTD product from the Omni group. Notebook is the best PIM (Personal Information Manager – gotta practise what I preach) around. It’s not the best outliner, nor the best writing tool, nor the best GTD tool. It is the best compromise. If you want one product to collect everything, Notebook’s the cat’s whiskers. It’s a pretty good outliner, a pretty good GTD tool, a really good note-taking tool, and a fantastic clipping tool.
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colleencoble
Member
05:10AM, Dec 21, 2007