Any suggestions for writing environments for writing a non-fiction book?

Posted by Franz Grieser
Mar 18, 2007 at 10:19 AM

Cassius

>I’m about to start writing a book, if I can ever get the energy to be in a non-prone
>position. The book (I sure hope it’s longer than a pamphlet!) will have a very short
>bibliography (probably

< 10 items)), will have examples in the form of diagrams, but
>

probably will not include mathmatical expressions.

I also recommend Ideamason (I haven´t used Whizfolders so I cannot say anything about that). Depending on the length of the project, more precisely, on how complex your outline will be, you may want to use Notemap for outlining or a mind-mapping tool such as Mind Manager, Mind Genius or even Freemind for brainstorming. The outliner in IM is basic compared to Notemap but does the job. You simply have to add a new “idea” (i.e. a note) for each element of your outline. Handling these means a bit more manual work than in a “real” outliner and you cannot import an outline from Notemap or any other application (at least, I haven’t managed to get one in).

Inserting graphics is straightforward: Just drag them from the Windows Explorer into an “idea” window and place them. I usually only put place holders for the images in the IM file and replace them in OpenOffice.or Writer by references to the graphics files (I don’t want and need the images in the text file while I still edit it as this blows the file size up and makes working in the Writer or Word file slow). But you can keep images in IM and export them to Word or Writer.

One more thing: You should have a fast Windows machine for Ideamason 3.1, or a fast graphical adapter. IM3.x uses a lot of windows that make redrawing on slower machines a drag. On the 1.1 GHz PC I use for my work opening a new idea window takes 3-4 seconds. That’s why I always keep an empty idea window open for typing in new notes so I do not have to wait for the window to open.

Franz