Thank you to everyone who participated in this poll.
I’ve summarized the results here and added my thoughts of what they mean to me.
I’m happy to see I have a cross-section of readers even though I focus on mystery writing. The “Other” section included non-fiction (2), women’s contemporary, children’s (2), historical fiction (3), young adult (2), flash fiction, saga, memoir, sci-fi, paranormal and blogging. This tells me my blog has enough variety to interest many types of writers, so how could that not make me smile.
The data above tells me not to focus writing advice on a series just because I write a series. It’s probably a good idea to keep tips focussed on all categories.
So this one surprised me. I write on a MAC and thought most writers do. Guess I was mistaken her. I don’t think I’ll blog about writing on a MAC much.
Here again, I thought more writers would use Scrivener. It’s my writing software of choice, and I can’t imaging not using it. I do use MS Word when I submit my work to others.
Most people filled in the other category here. Using “nothing” was a popular answer, followed by Excel. I use Excel for every novel I write to keep track of details, ask my self pertinent questions about each scene, and to make notes. I wish there was a better way to do this, but I didn’t see any in the survey results.
This one is nicely balanced. I think many authors, regardless of how they are published, struggle to get the word out about their novels. Mystery Mondays is my way of helping other writers network their art.
Thank you for participating in the poll and giving me lots to think about when it comes to future blogging.
Thanks for reading…
Creative Story Editors 
Kristina, about Word vs Scrivener: here’s what I’ve found. If you are fairly new to writing (the last eight years) you probably use Scrivener. But if you’ve been writing for 20 years, you probably stick to Word. I started on Word Perfect, and it was tough moving over to Word (which is not as good for writers, in my opinion.) I’ve looked at Scrivener, and decided that after 11 books, I already have a good system going on Word that works for me. Interested to hear what other oldsters say 🙂
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I agree with Mel. I’ve been writing for over three decades and am happy with Word. I do have writing friends who’ve converted to Scrivener but they both told me it’s a bit of a learning curve.
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Like Melodie, I was using Word-type software before Scrivener even appeared. I was a journalist so Word was something that I used every day. I tried Scrivener but it didn’t fit with the way I worked – and it gobbled up some of my writing. Thank God for Dropbox. For compiling things I use a pre-Scrivener writing programme that is a little old-fashioned yet does things that I could never get Scrivener to do. Maybe I never gave Scrivener a chance.
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Great insight. I use MS word more than Scrivener, depends on the project. I like that more and more of the editing programs work well with MSWord.
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Hi Jean, MS Word is probably the market leader and it’s worth it for other programs to work well with them. It’s certainly the software to use for submitting your work. I find the spell checkers catch different errors so I run it once in Scrivener and again in Word.
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Yes, I’ve noticed that about the spell checkers too. So I run Grammerly and Ginger. I’m terrible at spelling and a bit Dyslectic, so I probably over kill the spelling thing. LOL
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I haven’t heard of Ginger. I’m going to check that out. I don’t think you can overcheck a novel. Typos are our enemy.
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I like that it will read back to me what I’ve written. That sometimes helps when I’m having trouble with a piece.
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Melodie and Roland. Thanks for commenting. I like new technology and programs, so I don’t mind spending time learning them. The feature I like best about Scrivener is that the chapters and scenes are listed on the side where I can see them and move them around. I put the characters initial as the start of a scene title so I can tell at glance who as the point of view. I also use the notes section on the screen to capture reminders while I”m writing.
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I did try Scrivener and even took a course in it, so I know how to use it. But it totally does not work for me. I also wrote a couple of blog posts on it and 2 years later they still get a lot of hits, so people must find the Scrivener debate interesting if nothing else. I also have been a journalist since 2003 and started on a PC (no Scrivener version at that time). I use a Mac now but I’ve got my word system going just fine. I guess whatever works for us, right? Those interested can find my Scrivener posts here: http://wp.me/p3yeUA-kI and http://wp.me/p3yeUA-l3. I think the biggest misconception new writers might have about Scrivener is that it’s magic. Nope! Still have to write the book 🙂
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Judy, I’ll check out your blog. I do find it very interesting how different we all are with our writing tools. And sometimes I wish I had a magic computer that wrote for me, but mostly I love the writing part.
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Kristina, the writing part is the magic. No question.
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Interesting results Kristina. Nice to see that you have a cross-section of readers. Thanks for sharing.
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Hi Norah, I was very happy to see that too.
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