I don’t get the chance very frequently to talk about my actual writing process. How did I manage to write a 444-page book? (The answer: it was originally even longer.)
Well, today’s post isn’t going to be about that necessarily. It won’t be about my dedication, commitment, how to slog through the boring middle parts, how I got the idea initially, how I dealt with such a large cast, or any of that jazz. It’s going to be about how I wrote it.
I use a writing program called Dabble. I’ve used a lot of programs through the years; I was there for the up and down of OpenOffice, I used the default Word program (back when they actually came with computers and was free), I gave Scrivener a try, I’ve handwritten bits and pieces, and, of course, I did my time with gdocs. GoogleDocs. You may have used it for work, or maybe you’re a writer, too, and still use it.
Gdocs is what I used most recently before switching to Dabble. And a lot of its perks can’t be beat. The primary one is shareability—you can invite people via email (and then control how much access they have) or make a handy dandy link for anyone to use, too. There were neat customization options, too. I liked writing with a pastel orange page background. Also, since it was web-based, you could sign in and write anywhere that you trusted to be logged into google.
That last one was the most important one for me. I wrote and write across a variety of machines, so not going through the time-consuming angst of emailing the latest updated version to myself repeatedly is something I’m happy about. (I did do that, too, once upon a time. Never again.)
But gdocs and I have beef. Serious beef.
Alright, maybe it’s a little my fault for throwing an 84k chapter into one document. (Yes, chapter. I know my past sins. I will not discuss them.) That’s probably not what it was prepared to handle. That said, it’s fucking Google. It can handle anything and everything. It already does handle most of the internet at this point, happily and greedily at that.
Gdocs tends to chug at around the 20k mark, I’ve noticed. My then-betas and I timed it to be about 15-20 minutes to load that monster doc. Frankly, for modern internet and Google, of all hosts, that’s pretty damn ridiculous.
I’ve gotten past my sins of writing super monstrous chapters*, but as a writer, there are times when I simply do need everything in one doc. Exporting to pdf, epub, or mobi, for example. Editing for cohesion and formatting. CTRL+F-ing my way into readability. Gdocs is simply not it.
*do not look at the five-digit wordcount of a couple of how to kill gods & make friends chapters, but in my defense, they’re like barely five digits
So now it’s time for me to gush about Dabble!
Dabble is a web-based writing program, much like gdocs is. It doesn’t have nearly as many bells and whistles, which can be a good thing, given how easily writers are distracted by formatting fun things. And it is designed with writers in mind! There are scene cards, wordcount stat tracking (it even syncs up with your NaNoWriMo during November!), separate sections for you to write about your plot and characters and worldbuilding, and most recently, commenting and co-authoring, which are things a lot of people use gdocs for.
You can’t change the font or font size. You can’t change the paper color. (It does count it by pages and words for you, but there are no section dividers; it’s endless scrolling.) You can get a link to share for others to read, but only read, no commenting or editing.
There are a lot of other features missing compared to gdocs, as well as a lot of other features that Dabble does have that I simply do not use. (I already don’t use the scene cards…)
But the biggest thing here? Besides being web-based and thus accessible from anything with a web browser?
It can handle words.
Dabble separates chapters by scenes, and chapters can be separated into parts if needed. Each manuscript or project has its own folder. I have a lot of very chunky folders in here, and I can’t remember any cases of chugging, taking obscene amounts of time to load, or any other glitch or issue. Hell, I put my blog posts by year into Dabble and separate it out weekly, so that’s 52 x 300-word-minimum, and those beauties are perfectly fine.
Dabble is not free, however, unlike gdocs. I feel like that will be the biggest barrier to those who would think about using it. There are monthly and yearly options, plus I think three pricing tiers (if you care about stuff like grammar checks). I have the premier plan paid annually, which is $144.
However. There is a super secret (it’s not really secret) way to get 50% off that annual bill, and it’s repeatable. How? Participate in and win NaNoWriMo! (I think you also get 20% off just for participating? But I am here to win.) Winners of NaNo always get all kinds of writerly goodies, but the half-off of Dabble has consistently been my favorite since I started using it. So that puts a year of writing program usage at $72. I can personally swing that.
(Reassurance: even if you stop paying for Dabble, your writing will still be accessible. You can view it, and copy & paste it elsewhere. You simply cannot edit it in-Dabble or continue writing it here.)
There are no lifetime options just yet, nor are there affiliate links so even if I convince you of the simplicity and convenience of Dabble, I’m getting nothing for this. I simply really love this program and want others who may be struggling with options to know about it.
