I’ve been playing with Buzzword since reading Dustin’s review. I like the design and wysiwyg feel, but the lack of offline access is a problem.

Google Docs is perfect for sharing and collaborating. I see that Dustin dislikes the screen edge to screen edge aspect of the experience. You can actually fix this by clicking on View > Fixed-width page view.

Alternatively, as I frequently do, I can point people to your reviews elsewhere with links. No particular need to reinvent what you’ve already written — unless you have some to add since last writing.

BTW, I’ll do a piece about your blog once it’s up. Sounds very interesting indeed. I’m sure we’ll have a lot to share back and forth.

The Writer’s Technology Companion is, essentially, the long answer to the question posed in this post. I’m doing software and hardware reviews, tutorials, site reviews, and so on aimed at covering the tools of writing — including everything that goes on before and after the actual “butt in chair” phase of the writing itself (e.g.generating and recording ideas, finding markets, promotion and marketing, making e-books and podcasts, even basic computer stuff like installing a hard drive or backing up).

I’ve written capsule reviews of Buzzword at lifehack.org. Twice. And I’ll write it up at Writer’s Tech Companion, too. But I could write it up again here — email me and let’s discuss it. I’m becoming something of a Buzzword evangelist, and that says something in itself, because I’m usually a “wow, look at all the ways you can do this” kind of guy. Buzzword has a lot of quirks (like, it’s an Adobe product and you can’t — yet — save to PDF or use fonts other than the 6 they provide. Of course, it’s Adobe so those fonts are *fantastic*, but it kind of throws off the WYSIWYG aspect when the fonts are replaced by Times New Roman when you send to document to someone…). But in the actual writing process, I find it really inspiring to work with.

Q10 is another play on the Darkroom/Writeroom/Liq. Story no-distractions theme. It runs locally, is free, and as I said, plays a typewriter sound with every keystroke (you can turn that off, though). I like playing with it, but I really don’t subscribe to the “formatting is a distraction” school of thought — I write expecting to be read, and italics and bold and otehr formatting are part of the way I structure what I’m saying. It’s not at all useful for me to leave that for the revision phase.

I’m pleased to see user endorsements of Open Office and Google Doc’s, which I’ve written about on several occasions — and use from time to time. As I haven’t followed Google Doc’s closely, I’m particularly grateful to learn about the new features, particularly page numbering and citations, which I need in much of my own writing.

While I am aware of Buzzword, I haven’t really investigated it yet. Must do so — and must post some screenshots here. UNLESS, Dustin, you would be willing to do a guest post of a Buzzword review???

q10? I’ve never heard of that one — and I troll the internet for alternative word processors all the time. Can you shed more light on that?

In my own experience, I’ve found that Adobe’s Buzzword inspires me — it’s neat, elegant, nice to look at, and easy to use. On the other hand, while I use Google Docs once in a while, I’d hate to write a book, or even a long article on it. It’s more “in my way”, somehow, and that glaring white page from screen edge to screen edge puts me off. I like q10, too — I like the typing noises, which make me want to type really, really fast. But it doesn’t do formatting, which means I don’t use it much — I use section headings and bulleted lists and the like a lot to organize myself while I write. Word 2007 is a fine all-around tool; I use it for lots of stuff, but it’s not inspiring in the way Buzzword is — not for me, at least.

Don’t get me wrong — if I have to write, I use what’s available. It’s a little self-defeating to get so invested in one tool that you *need* it to do your work. But given a choice, I think most writers will tend to gravitate towards certain tools that work best for them — and that their choices aren’t always, or even mostly, driven by practical considerations. So much of writing is psychological, why shouldn’t our preference for certain tools be too?

Almost all my other writing nowadays is done in Google Docs. I find that for 99% of what I need, it works perfectly. The ability to move from machine to machine seamlessly is important, and I find myself spending a lot of time in different libraries working on documents. I love that I don’t need to bring my work with me on a USB stick! It’s always available, waiting for me on the web. Also, over the past year, I’ve worked on a few collaborative projects in Google Docs. The capabilities it offers for people to simultaneously work on a document are unparalleled. It makes collaboration easy and fun.

For those times when I need more powerful features, I’ll use OpenOffice. Honestly, though, I find myself using OpenOffice less and less as Google adds more features to their online software. I actually wrote a term paper in Google Docs for a college course I’m taking this semester, complete with page numbers and citations. In previous courses I’ve used OpenOffice, but Google has implemented some upgrades since then. I’m amazed at the speed they’re adding functionality.

I think the only reason most people aren’t trying some of the Word alternatives is because they’re locked in to the .DOC format. Or they think they need it, whether they truly do or not. Luckily, I’m pretty format-independent.