(Archived) Tips for writing books in Evernote

[AK7 9]

Though I'm aware that Evernote isn't meant for writing books, especially books requiring references - though I do wish it were otherwise! - I am finding it more convenient than either Word or Scrivener for this purpose.

 

How so?

• The elegant, minimalistic simplicity and high responsiveness of the single note screen.
• The ease of linking to other documents in Scrivener.
• No corkboard feature as in Scrivener, but chapters can still be easily shuffled around by keeping a "parent" note showing all the separate notes (i.e. chapters) as a list.
• My parent note has this, with tick boxes next to the separate chapters. These tick marks are filled in when I finish the first draft, the second draft, complete the final draft, etc.
• The killer advantage is Evernote's integration across platforms, which allows one to work on a PC at home, then seamlessly transition to a laptop or tablet at a cafe/while traveling. This is much clunkier with Scrivener (to say nothing of separate Word docs) where you have to take manual care of updates across all devices.

The only weakness (and a pretty serious one, unfortunately) is the aforementioned lack of reference/citation support, or even of an exceedingly simple "Link to location on single note" that is accomplished in two lines in HTML.

 

So my ad hoc solution is to link to either the Internet link, or just insert a symbol (*) if it is a footnote.

 

On the other hand, with journalistic books - my book is a journalistic (non-academic) non-fiction book - having too many footnotes is a bad habit anyway. So I suppose that's the silver lining.

 

Anybody else using Evernote to write stuff more substantial than just articles and blog posts? Any particular tips you wish to share?

[GrumpyMonkey 4,319]

Though I'm aware that Evernote isn't meant for writing books, especially books requiring references - though I do wish it were otherwise! - I am finding it more convenient than either Word or Scrivener for this purpose.

 

How so?

• The elegant, minimalistic simplicity and high responsiveness of the single note screen.
• The ease of linking to other documents in Scrivener.
• No corkboard feature as in Scrivener, but chapters can still be easily shuffled around by keeping a "parent" note showing all the separate notes (i.e. chapters) as a list.
• My parent note has this, with tick boxes next to the separate chapters. These tick marks are filled in when I finish the first draft, the second draft, complete the final draft, etc.
• The killer advantage is Evernote's integration across platforms, which allows one to work on a PC at home, then seamlessly transition to a laptop or tablet at a cafe/while traveling. This is much clunkier with Scrivener (to say nothing of separate Word docs) where you have to take manual care of updates across all devices.

The only weakness (and a pretty serious one, unfortunately) is the aforementioned lack of reference/citation support, or even of an exceedingly simple "Link to location on single note" that is accomplished in two lines in HTML.

 

So my ad hoc solution is to link to either the Internet link, or just insert a symbol (*) if it is a footnote.

 

On the other hand, with journalistic books - my book is a journalistic (non-academic) non-fiction book - having too many footnotes is a bad habit anyway. So I suppose that's the silver lining.

 

Anybody else using Evernote to write stuff more substantial than just articles and blog posts? Any particular tips you wish to share?

Hi. Thanks for posting your thoughts! If you want footnotes, I recommend using {{footnote here}}, because Scrivener will be able to translate these into footnotes for you.

[jbenson2 2,147]

Here is a link from a very prolific writer, Paul Thurrott, on his reasons for using Evernote and Microsoft Word.

http://winsupersite.com/article/paul/evernote-word-writing-141902