[W.F. Lantry]

Hey, folks,

I made a casual offhand comment about getting rid of Word, and some people have asked me about it. Instead of replying individually, I thought I'd put it up here. Of course, I've developed this to fit my unusual situation, but the method is flexible and customizable to individual needs.

In brief, I write everything on a distant site. When I'm done, I copy and paste the text into an email to Kate. Et Voila, all is saved in three places: her email, my outbox, and the original site. Easy, quick and simple.

More detail: if you go to wordpress.com, you can set up a free blog. It takes maybe five minutes. Make sure it's set to Private, and it's password protected. That way, no one else can see anything. You can even leave the address lying around, and no-one can get in... which is actually more secure than Word on your local machine.

Wordpress is very simple to use. If you get confused, it's easy to get detailed instructions. Example: google 'set wordpress blog to private.'

For an actual text editor, I use ultimate tinyMCE, but most people get along just fine with the default editor. It's clear and uncluttered.

There are many advantages to this method, beyond getting rid of word and saving in multiple places. If I'm browsing the web and find something that may be useful, I use the 'Press this' button and it auto-posts to the blog. I can post a snippet by email. I can even be walking in the forest, have a hint of an idea, and speak the phrase into my phone, and it autoposts in text to the blog. Not having to carry around those thoughts all the time is freedom itself.

Having it up online and available has saved my bacon many times at readings. If I want to change what I'm going to read, everything is available on my phone. If I'm reading something in the evening I wrote that afternoon, it's right there.

It's also convenient writing in a single interface: the web browser. In the old days, our desks were cluttered with books: thesauri, several dictionaries, reference texts, books of poems, you name it. Now, we can put all these things in tabs in a single browser: no more fumbling for books, flipping through pages, looking around, looking away from the actual work. It allows us to focus fully on composing. We don't even need to shell out, back and forth, to the slow to respond editor.

I suspect most of us do something like this already. Some will always prefer pencils. I used to be among them. But this method is far simpler.

Hope this helps,

Bill