Writing in Plain Text
Writers love their word processors and so do editors, but there is another way to work. By using text files instead of word docs, you'll be able to do new things with your documents, to do old things more efficiently, and to save your work in better ways. Also, it's very easy to open plain text files in any word processor, so you can always have the best of both worlds.
Converting Old Files to New Formats
Anyone who has been writing for years is likely to have their work saved in a variety of different formats. Tools like Pandoc can help you to get everything into one, archival, easy-to-use format. This project also contains a small number of open-source scripts that are useful for writers to convert their files. Please feel free to request or contribute any additions to these.
Learning to Use Version Control
Many of today's word processors have a "track changes" feature which is useful, but fullblown version control software is even more useful.
Formatting with Plain Text
It sounds contradictory to the "plain" part, but with plain text there are a couple of ways to indicate formatting. Markdown is simple and easy to learn for basic formatting. LaTEX is incredibly powerful and moves beyond basic format to control typesetting, layout, figures, tables, contents, references, citations, etc.
Build a Repository of your Writings
Once you have a text file or group of related text files, you can publish your writings to a repository. A repository can be public or private and it will provide you with backup, version control, online collaboration, forked versions, and many other features
Tracking Work with a Database
One of the most important business skills a writer needs is the ability to manage the submission process. To facilitate the process, there are many different submission tracking software options for writers to choose from, but you can also build your own to suit your needs.
A Different Approach to Revision and Collaboration
This project includes Git for Writers which introduces the free and open source distributed content versioning system Git specifically for digital writers. Although Git is originally a tool for software development, it can be used to track history and open up the writing process for any digital formats that are plain text, including XHTML/HTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, and even templating systems in PHP (e.g., WordPress or Drupal).
But Git is more than just another tool, however. It suggests an entirely different model of revision and version tracking than track-changes features in word processors. Git and related services, such as GitHub, also offer a model of collaboration that is much more expansive and scalable than wikis.
Git for Writers is structured to support writers working alone, perhaps on different computers (e.g., a laptop and a desktop or wherever), as well as multiple writers working together. For each writing situation, **Git for Writers** offers a set of concepts, practical hands-on use of Git and related services, and three sample scenarios for how Git can change the way you write.