Tools of the Trade

As a writer I use Text Edit for all my first drafts, that's on Apple, Mac OS 10.7.5

I use it because, I hate MS Word! 

I don’t why, I just do. It’s just so a Baroque. Too frilly and ornate.

Okay, okay, in the end, for the final draft, I do have to go there...

All this has to do with my process: I usually write big, long books, complicated books. I break my draft down into chapter files so I can ping pong back and forth when I’m working, and not scroll a gazillion miles through a Word Doc to find the chapter I’m looking for. That's always a fun thing to do. Maybe that’s just me. Everybody has their own process.

The good things about TextEdit?

It's simple, easy to use.

It's great for reading aloud… you know text to speech. Oh Fiona, you have my heart.

But the latest version.. or next to latest... has a lot of bad things and a lot of weird things going on.

Somehow, the menus are different than every other program ever made!

Oh, and how I wish there was a word count. But that aside, this is what really bugs me now:

After opening about 20 files, or ping-ponging back and forth between a lot of files, I invariably get the message that the document cannot be saved. (I forget the error message #). WTF? It's a text editing program...

And for some reason, after an undisclosed amount of time, TextEdit automatically locks my file. What am I not writing fast enough?

Okay, let’s try save as... WTF, there is no save as...

Revert document? Let’s try that…

Oh no, my hard drive is spinning out of control, my thighs are catching on fire.