I mentioned in an earlier post that I'm aiming at writing the entire novel without touching MS Word. In fact, my aim is to write the whole thing using only the free Google word processing document.
I got started on this path when I bought my new gaming rig. It's a high end Dell XPS and in order to bring down the total cost, I skipped the MS Office suite.
Sometime later I decided to start the novel. I had a couple of good ideas but when I went to write them down, I realized my dilemma.
So my first notes were all typed up in an email document that I just kept saving as a draft. Then I copied them into a .txt document.
As my outline grew and my supplementary documentation spiralled out of control, I realized that a set of .txt files was doable, but not efficient. Then I remembered a conversation I had had with a co-worker (ironically, an VP in the IT group). We were talking about the potential for net based apps like Google had begun offering, particularly for revolutionizing sharing and collaborating on the creation of documents across a chain of stores.
So I signed up for a Google account (that was a pain, since I didn't have a cell phone or a friend to refer me), pasted all my .txt files across and viola!
Since then I've expanded my vision - I would use free Google based software to facilitate the writing of the novel whenever possible. This includes the obvious use of word processor and the search engine. It also includes G0ogle Image Search, Googlemaps, and Google Book Search, . Most recently, I started using Blogger and Picasa (both are free Google apps) to manage this blog/diary.
I've read about some negative experiences with the Google word processing app, but most of them seem to be about old beta versions. I haven't personally experienced any issues yet, but plan to document each and every one of them here as I stumble across them.
At Christmas, my step-father came to visit and installed MS Office on my machine. Theoretically I could use familiar old MS Word to write the novel. It certainly would increase my productivity. But I like the idea of the experiment. I like the idea that I can get to my work from any computer anywhere. There's got to be a post-publication (heck, even in selling the damn thing) PR angle in there somewhere. And I LOVE the idea of supporting Google over Microsoft. So I'll keep up the Google experiment for the time being.