Ah, writely, I love thee

[heidi]

I've spent the last half-hour writing scholarship award letters using Writely the newly revised writing/collaboration program that Google's been fine-tuning.
Writing is nice on it, the collaboration option is cool, but what I was most thrilled by was the ability to save as a PDF with two clicks - and it's so speedy compared to how slowly MS Word generates a PDF with the converter I've downloaded. YMMV, but it's definitely, IMHO, worth a try.

I can also see merits for it in RPGs. Even though I don't RP these days, even though this works differently from chatrooms, blogging or IMing, there is, I think, merit for it as something to try.

I also wonder if this might not also be a way for people to write and distribute fics to controlled audiences, without worrying about creating additional filters of one's flist. If you have someone's email, you can invite them to read your work - and you can easily include images, too. The issue would be the inability to review on the page or on a linked-to page - you'd have to manually create a review thread with something else, or as a separate writerly-document-that-the-public-can-edit. But it might be something to consider for things that you don't want to have in the public sphere, or that y ou want separate from your blog or LJ.

Comments

[emmagrant01.livejournal.com]

Oooh. That looks interesting. Do you think it might be a good forum for betaing a fic as well? I usually have multiple betas for things anyway.

[ancarett]

That's what I was going to say: what a perfect venue for betas!

I plan to use Writely to let some friends review some professional writing before it goes off to journals. I'd rather they catch the weak points or typos before the editor sees them!

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on your take on track changes. Via writely, each beta can work in a different colour easily enough but I don't know it it'l have the same ability to automatically have each editor create content in a specific colour.

But on the flip side, betas can see each others' comments automatically, then semiautomatically (aka easily) let other "collaborators" know that the doc has been edited.

So, I'd say it depends on how one works with his/her betas but I can see the merits in it.

[fleshdress.livejournal.com]

Oooh, that looks interesting. Thanks for the link. :)

[tinnidawg.livejournal.com]

I've been using it for months now and I love it. It's great for betaing - one only has to hit the collaborate button after editing for the email to be sent to all the others that there have been changes.

[storm-maven.livejournal.com]

I have the perfect use for this service. I'm a total and complete Mac user and don't have Boot Camp on my two Intel Mac Minis. Since I'm too cheap to purchase a Windows license and then get Microsoft word, this will be good to be able to do Word documents. I'm going to let my daughter know all about this so she doesn't have to stay after school in order to work on her homework if she doesn't want to. Thanks for sharing.

[tropes.livejournal.com]

As I tend to write fic with partners, I've found Writely to be the greatest tool known to man, except for Tom Cruise.

:D

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Just so you know, the barebones text editor that comes with OS X -- TextEdit -- can read and write Word .docs already.

[storm-maven.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info. My daughter will be more than happy with this information.

[sff-corgi.livejournal.com]

in_the_blue introduced me to Writely (so if anybody else needs inviting...), and I've been using it to assemble a large 'fic.

It's still beta-ish -- trying to correct font sizes/colours/etc gets impossible after a while, and the HTML editor (to strip out the code you don't want) is frustrating to the point of turning to *shudder* FrontPage for help.

But it's been, as you said, really useful. Between LJ and Writely, my 'collabetas' and I have made lots of running progress.