A host of technology solutions exist for writers. While the simplicity of pen, notepad, and/or typewriter carry a certain romance, the job of creating a novel like However Long the Day is much improved by software.
Here are five tools I used to create the interior files of However Long the Day. I will write another post sometime soon about covers, and the tools I used to tweak them. Note that the links below are for your convenience. None of them are affiliate links, meaning I have no financial incentive in mentioning them.
Google Docs
I obviously use this every day during the writing process, but I use it just as much in the editing process. My primary feature requirements were: 1) decent word processing, with limited need for formatting bells and whistles; 2) cloud storage; 3) device independence; and 4) good version control.
After considering Word, Scrivener, and a host of other fiction-specific writing suites, Google Docs ticked all my boxes. For the most part, my experience has been pleasant. It excels at some of the most important bits (basic writing, cloud, version control), and device independence has been surprisingly useful. I put it on my list for moral reasons (my prior career drilled the importance of Software-as-a-Service into my psyche), but it has come in handy many times.
I have had a few minor problems in two areas. First, the system sometimes flags while editing large documents. It seems to bog down at 150 pages. Documents are dynamically loaded, so this issue doesn’t rear its head during writing, but it shows up at times during editing. For example, searching for all instances of a phrase can cause the browser to lag.
Second, the formatting is a little too barebones. Formats can’t be renamed, and custom formats don’t really exist in a meaningful way. This doesn’t really matter while writing. Docs has enough for everyday usage. But it does matter when producing a file (usually in DOCX format) to import into other tools.
Google Apps Script
Baked into Google Workspace, Apps Script is how I overcome some of the above issues with Google Docs. For example, I wrote scripts to ensure consistent formatting across my drafts. I also wrote scripts to assemble multiple documents into a single file in a logical way.
So, if I find things that aren’t explicitly supported by the Google Docs interface (and there isn’t already an available Add On), I can usually write a script to solve the problem. Sometimes it pays to be a software engineer.
By the way, the scripts are pretty straightforward. If you’ve done any amount of programming in any language, you should be able to figure out Google Apps scripting (which is all Javascript).
Text-to-Speech Plugins
I used several browser plugins to read my Docs aloud. This was vital during the editing process, as it helped me find typos and grammatical errors, but it also helped me find poorly worded sentences and paragraphs. Hearing your work read aloud by someone/something else is a powerful editing technique I would suggest to any writer. The use of automated systems removes the human bias from the equation (sometimes our minds see what they think they should see on the written page), and allows the reviewer to hear the text in different voices, and at different speeds.
I used Speechify for a time, but it went from free, to sort-of-free, to paid, in short order. I’m certain this happened because it’s very good. I may come back to it in the future (like when I start selling books and have a larger budget!).
I switched to Read Aloud, a Chrome extension, because it is free and does many of the things Speechify can do but is a lot less polished and stable. Also, changing the voices can be a hassle, and the workflow can be a bit jenky. But, it’s free, and did the job well enough for me not to dread going through the process again.
Vellum
Vellum is a typesetting system that imports DOCX files and allows the user to prepare print PDF’s and a variety of ebook files. I prepared my print interior PDF’s with Vellum, as well as all of my ePub files. The system gives you a significant amount of control over typesetting decisions, but not absolute control like you might get in Adobe InDesign or Affinity Publisher. This was sufficient for me, especially as it simplified the manuscript -> prepped files -> printer/distributor workflows.
And their customer service is excellent. I had a minor typesetting issue, and they responded with a workaround in a matter of hours, and pushed out a fix in a matter of days.
I wish I could have reduced the font size of the running header independent of the font size in the block, and I wish I could prevent some words, especially names, from being hyphenated. Other than that, it worked really well.
One word of warning: Vellum is only supported on Mac OS.
Inkscape
Inkscape is a vector graphics tool akin to Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Design, and CorelDraw. Several of my beta readers mentioned they weren’t familiar enough with New York City, and it would be nice to have a map at the beginning of the book.
I used Inkscape to create that map. Inkscape is a powerful system, and one of the best open source tools I’ve used in a production environment (I used it on occasion in my prior career).
In Conclusion
These are the tools I used to create the guts of However Long the Day. None of them were perfect, but they all did their job well enough to produce a book on par with traditional publishing standards.
One last comment about tools: find systems that work for your process and budget, use them for a while, and periodically revisit their effectiveness. It’s easy to slide into the rabbit hole of tool evaluation. I’ve avoided this by picking tools that meet my current needs and then using them for a while, usually long enough to actually complete a set of tasks. When I start a new project, I’ll reexamine my toolset to see if anything needs to be switched out.
As always, I’m happy to answer questions, so hit me up here or on any of my other channels.
