Mac Apps

Hi guys, Ive been away for a while (family stuff, knee surgeries, life), and am feeling the need to write again.
Because of that I'm shifting from a MS based computer to a Mac.
My problem is that when I check the app store there are literally dozens of possibilities, and without actually testing them I don't which to go for.
Not only am I looking for something I can use for submissions here, but also in self publishing.

LibreOffice maybe? Works pretty well for me. Not to mention the tasty price tag.

You could try Scrivener, which is available at literatureandlatte.com. You can get a 30-day trial, which is 30 actual days, not 30 days from download. Not sure what you're looking to spend, but Scrivener has good reviews. I'm looking into it myself and have the trial version.

There's also Pages, which I think comes with most Macs. I have a Mac myself, but can't claim to an expert, so please check into that yourself.

Nearly anything will work to submit to Lit, because you can always copy and paste your text into the submission box and I'd think that for the most part the word processor wouldn't matter. Plus these days you can export to so many file types from nearly any word processor, and if you can't export to what you want, you can probably find a free file conversion program.

I switched from Pages to Scrivener some weeks ago. For short stories of a few thousand words or less, both work equally well, as would many other apps. Scrivener's strength lies in its ability to arrange and organize multiple chapter or series stories, to include notes and references, revisions, etc. It comes with an excellent tutorial.

You could submit directly to Lit from Scrivener (text cut and paste); however, it is not designed to format text for print or publication in the manner of a true word processor, so by itself it likely will not allow you to self-publish. Scrivener has a feature to compile a document into various word processor formats (excluding MS docx), on the assumption finishing touches will be applied in the word processor.

Neither Scrivener and Pages. I have also used LibreOffice on Ubuntu, and found it quite satisfactory.

Note that Mac OS includes a handy little dictionary/thesaurus that can be easily invoked from many writing and editing apps.

visioneer said:

Scrivener has a feature to compile a document into various word processor formats (excluding MS docx), on the assumption finishing touches will be applied in the word processor.

Click to expand...

Scrivener will do .docx and .doc.

Thanks, Bramblethorn, for the correction. Scrivener can import, and compile for, MS docx and doc. It is the Apple Pages file format it cannot import or export.

Of course if your motivation is to be doing more writing to share, you should be in a PC Word world--the publishing industry is.