Writers reference books, by Terry Freedman

Introduction

Observe any specialist, and they know exactly which tool they need for a particular job. I’m always amazed at how a car mechanic can insert or remove a screw in a place that’s obscured by a section of the engine. They suddenly whip out a sort of right-angled screwdriver. (Who knew that such things even existed?)

Writers, too, should know what tools they need, and how to use them.

Identify what your tools are

Obviously you’ll need a word processor (or, if you are old school, a typewriter) of some kind. But how about a more specialist tool just for writers? I’ve tried several over the years, and I tend to find them a bit too fully-featured for my needs, but some people swear by them. For example, I have used Scrivener for writing books., because it’s great for outlining, and keeping research links and references in one place. A free program for organising and writing a novel is yWriter, which I have tried out but not used beyond a cursory examination.

How about a spreadsheet, for organising your deadlines and invoices? I have tried various specialist tools for doing these kind of writerly things, but none of them has managed to beat a spreadsheet as far as I’m concerned. But that may well be because I’ve been using spreadsheets for years, and am confident about my ability to get them to do what I want.

Learn on a need-to-know basis

Software these days is usually so replete with features that I suspect that half the time even the people who sell a particular program are not familiar with all its features. A statistic often cited is that 80% of people who write with Microsoft Word use only 20% of its features.

It’s pointless trying to learn how to use every feature, unless you’re studying for a qualification or accreditation in the application of the software in question. A more useful approach is to learn on a need-to-know basis. For example, if you decide it would be handy to be able to automatically insert the filename of your document into the document’s footer, search the Help for '“insert”. One of the options will be “field”, and you’ll be able to take it from there. (Or look up how to do it on the internet of course.)