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Writing tools

Office 365

My netbook died the other day, almost four years to the day that I bought it. Writing-wise, it’s one of the best purchases I ever made, second only in usefulness to Microsoft Word.

Because I write on two PCs (the netbook and the desktop), and I co-write with another writer who also uses two PCs, we like to keep the software we use in sync. My co-writer and I decided that rather than stay with Office 2007 on my new netbook, we’d upgrade all our PCs to Office 2013.

We ended up upgrading to Office 365, and linked our accounts so that we could share files.

At the same time I’d been toying with starting a journeyman writer blog for writers like us who aren’t beginners any more but aren’t necessarily published writers. They’re consistently writing, may or may not have an agent, and are looking for things like tools and just general information about what happens next. Everything from that dreaded second book, to rewrites at the request of someone else, to the tools that we use and backups and managing files.

I have also noticed that many writers use Apple. The ones who blog about it seem to, anyway. Yet there are a lot of us out there who use Microsoft. Some by choice—I’m one of those—some for whom it’s all they’ve got. But there’s not much out there for Office users, even though I think that most writers probably still write in Word.

Journeyman Writer will be a while off yet, we’re both too busy, but given that we ended up going for Microsoft Office 365, it’s too good an opportunity to pass up to share what we learned from our upgrade. Other writers are no doubt going through the same experiences we are. If even one other writer finds it useful it will be worth it.

We’re keeping it separate from our regular blog, and our regular fortnightly blog takes precedence, but we’ll try and make it semi-regular. Hopefully in the off-weeks of the main blog.

Things I’d like to cover.

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