This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's caller has a common New Year's resolution. That resolution, that goal is to write a book. Now listen, when I say common, I am not making light of that at all. I think it's a great idea to write a book. I'm a fan of writing books.
I have no objection to the right New Year's resolution. However, I've also learned to never encourage someone to write a book who doesn't want to. That was a very bad habit of mine for a long time. I thought because I want to be an author. I want to write books.
I assumed everybody did. And I quickly learned that that wasn't the case. Often I would meet somebody who's like, "Oh, I've got an idea." I'd be like, "That's awesome. "Let me tell you everything I've learned. "Then I'll start checking on you every week "to see how it's going." And then as I said, I learned that's not a great idea.
However, if you do want to write a book, it is a valiant goal that you will find, I believe, to be meaningful no matter what happens with it. That said, this is Side Hustle School. So we are all about practical, helpful tips to make things easier. The caller today is wondering about software and tools. So I'm gonna give him three recommendations, at least three, including the software I have used to write my last three or four books.
Unfortunately, it doesn't do it for me. I still have to actually write the books, but it's helpful. I will also talk about the least useful software, something you will definitely want to avoid if your goal is to be creative. All right, all that's coming up in this episode after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Alonzo from Pensacola, and I just started listening to the show earlier this year.
I've been trying to catch up by listening to the show in monthly batches. You've featured several people who write romance novels or software guys. What about nonfiction books? I'm looking for the best tool of software to make the process as easy as possible. Should I just open a blank page in Microsoft Word and start writing, or is it better to work from an outline and use the tool or software to guide the way?
Thanks. [Music]
Alonzo, what's good, man? Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for the question as well. I'm excited to hear about your nonfiction book.
As mentioned, I'm a big fan of writing books as well. So here is something that pretty much every author will agree upon. Authors like to disagree about lots of stuff, but I'm pretty sure just about every writer is gonna say, ultimately, you do whatever works for you. That is the one hard and fast rule is everybody's got their own process and such, but if something works for you, then that's the answer, ultimately. In fact, if we go back, Shakespeare famously used just some pretty basic text formatting software found in Apple computers before I think he eventually switched to Notepad, which offers the ability to use bold, italics, some other common markdown formatting.
So if he could do it right back then with a previous generation computer, surely we can too, right? And now in an awkward segue from Shakespeare to myself. Well, Alonzo mentioned using Microsoft Word. He said, should I just open Microsoft Word and to a blank page? I actually did that for my first two books.
I mean, I use Microsoft Word to write my first two books. Then I switched to a tool called Scrivener, which I have used ever since. So it's Scrivener, S-C-R-I-V-E-N-E-R. It was Mac only, but now there's a Windows version as well. It makes outlining much easier.
It allows me to work on different sections of a manuscript without losing my place. In other words, you don't have to write page one, page two, page three. If you were outlining, it often makes sense to work on a different section and then kind of figure out where it goes. Scrivener costs about $50. It comes, as I said, for both Mac and Windows.
It has a 30-day trial where you can check it out and see if it's for you. You could also look at Ulysses, which is Mac only. Focused writer, which is Windows only, and any other number of options as well. You might consider, in a separate category, a tool like Evernote, Notion, or Google Docs. I use all of those in different ways.
In addition to Scrivener, some of them are better at storing information, whereas I think Scrivener or another outlining tool is better for writing. And of course, as I said, remember tools are just tools. Like your goal is to find what boosts your creativity instead of getting you bogged down into minutia or a whole bunch of cool features that you don't really need. I think cool features are sometimes detrimental to the creative process. And then finally, here is the most unhelpful software.
Are you ready for this? The most unhelpful software is Facebook. And not just Facebook, but anything that is like Facebook, which of course is widely available for every computer, including the one in your pocket. You may want to turn that off. In fact, I would recommend you turn it off and turn off your notifications.
Perhaps even your Wi-Fi or your phone access. Not forever, of course, but two blocks of time that you are devoting to writing. Do whatever you can to create the environment that's going to support your work. I think that is by far the most universal, but also true advice. Okay, Alonzo and everybody else out there who's trying to write a book.
Listen, I think it's a good thing. I'm not trying to talk you into it, but I would love to support you in the process if that's you. So let me know how it goes. sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're gonna continue to feature these questions, this kind of interaction throughout the rest of the year because people liked it so much last year, and I did too.
Be sure you're subscribed. We've got a new episode every single day. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
