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I've found Scrivener to be invaluable in my law practice. See http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php.

It's available for Mac, Windows, and Linux (currently in beta). You can take the notes in whatever format or program you like, bring in PDFs, images, media files (such as dictation or lecture recordings), etc., and organize them as part of a Scrivener project.

Scrivener is extremely robust and offers multiple ways to view and organize your notes (such as in an outline or as notecards on a corkboard). You can choose what information gets compiled into a document for printing (such as an outline of a particular topic) and apply different formatting without having to change the source formatting. It's also great for handling endnotes and footnotes.

Thank you for introducing me to Scrivener! Other than the lack of VIM keybindings this looks perfect. Here are the Linux download links that I found:
Tarball: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/Beta/Scrivener-1.5.0.6.tar
Deb: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/Beta/scrivener-1.5.0.6-beta.deb

Thank you for introducing me to Scrivener! Other than the lack of VIM keybindings this looks perfect. Here are the Linux download links that I found:
Tarball: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/Beta/Scrivener-1.5.0.6.tar
Deb: http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/Beta/scrivener-1.5.0.6-beta.deb

I think the fact that Amazon uses a proprietary format is a heaping pile of crap, but that's as a user, not an author. As an author, I just upload the ePub I generated for B&N and let Amazon handle the conversion to whatever they call their zip file full of HTML.

I use Scrivener to do my writing, and it exports to ePub directly. There's also a plugin that will export to Kindle format, if you want to do that. And it exports to Word, which is what I have to use for Smashwords. And it exports to PDF, which is what I use to edit. It's a fantastic piece of software.

But, yes, the rest of the world needs to get on the ePub train. It's a really nice format, very fit for what it does.

This guy should have checked out Scrivener. It's not focusing on layout and stuff like that, but useful features that keeps a larger work (novel or other things) together. Keeping track of your loose ends with a storyboard feature and much more. There are more tools like this too.

I get that Office Suite 20xx is bloated, but it is not like there aren't a wide array of Novel specific editors that cater to the exact things novel writers need, and it is not like OSs don't come with VI, EMACS, DOS Edit, Notepad, etc...
Scrivener is almost good enough to make me want a mac.
Rough Draft is what I actually use to write novels, it is simple and outputs in RTF, has very few features, but the ones that it does have are what I want.

IMO a good creative writing software package has to be simple, and it looks like TFA is looking to simplify even further... It is an understandable thing, because distractions are killer for a writer...

IMO he should get an AlphaSmart A portable, purpose built device which does text and only text. Full keyboard, it gets something like 700 hours on 3 AA batteries, it does not have fonts or animated assistants or 1gb install files, and best of all, you don't have to look like a pretentious douche on slashdot to use it.

Scrivener
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/
even if you have to get a polycarbonate macbook to run it on.
( & a Nice Big Screen to plug inta tha thang, fer deskwerk )

Stein on Writing ( Sol Stein )
http://www.amazon.com/Stein-Writing-Successful-Techniques-Strategies/dp/0312254210/

Writing Fiction Step by Step ( Josip Novakovich )
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Fiction-Step-Josip-Novakovich/dp/1884910351/

[ not affiliated ]

The MEANS for writing thoroughly well...

Cheers,

I notice no one has mentioned scrivner It's not really for writing your final draft but is great for organizing ideas and gathering information. Once you have the basic layout you can export it to text documents and work on the final draft in something like Adobe Indesign. It only took me a hour to learn with its built in tutorial. I found it a must in my writing (mac only though sorry).

"Stein on Writing" by Sol Stein
http://www.amazon.com/Stein-Writing-Successful-Techniques-Strategies/dp/0312254210/, is the only other weapon-of-choice against mundane writing.

Here's the demo for Scrivener
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/Scrivener_intro.mov... ...see just how different the Way of Working with words, it is...

Sheer Capability...

That's the sort of thing I use Scrivener for:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

Mac only, though. But very nice.

bad typography seems to be a religion.

Fighting both with tradition & with vendor marketing...

( ragged-right's more readable than justified - and has been for 500 years,
space-endash-space is more matching the "this is an interjection" concept than nospace-longdash-nospace - visually, that is,
can't get good typeface families with expert chars, etc etc etc. )

BTW, if you get the chance, try Scrivener, maybe on a Frankentosh/Hackentosh or http://www.efi-x.com/ machine - best good-writing prog around http://www.literatureandlatte.com/ - if you prefer your publications be well writ.. :)

Both Corkboard & Infinite-Paper, among other things...

http://www.writerscafe.co.uk/ is *sorta* similar: its StoryLines gives one the ease of arranging the bits-of-story into several ( visually ) parallel streams of story, so one can SEE what one's work's structure be -shrug- Writer's Cafe runs on Linux/Windoze/Mac, unlike Scrivener...

I'd outright ban wordprocessors from author's submitted copy, if necessary, to get fully-worked work.

Cheers

BTW, the kerning in your PDF sucks: the word AVERAGE is particularly bad, and the word "weight" also shows bad optical distribution.

Try the font "Utopia" included with X in SuSE: it seems to be through and through quality. Interesting how clear the LaTeX is, in comparison, though, I'd never seen a a/b before, and am probably going to have to learn it, now. I owe you one. (:

Always Persue Excellence!

Scrivener also promises large scale document tools on Mac only. I haven't really tried it out seeing as I don't have the next great canadian novel in me at this moment.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html

Qybix

Literature & Latte is not a software company... Wait - if Literature & Latte isn't a software company, why would you want to buy software from me? Two reasons: Firstly, many shareware companies are really only one person - I just happen to be particularly upfront about it; secondly, I am first and foremost a user of Scrivener. I developed Scrivener because I felt I needed a tool to help me really get a grip on my writing, notes and research, to organise it and start putting it all together like a jigsaw.

...an underlying philosophy is that Scrivener should never try to be all things to all writers. Instead, Scrivener has a well-defined general feature set, and the aim is for this feature-set (based around outlining, storyboarding and composing) to be as solid as possible, and as refined, user-friendly and intuitive as it can be. Feature requests will always be seriously considered, but just because another application has it, it doesn't mean that it will fit into Scrivener...

The reason for this is not that I am a Mac snob, but simply that Literature & Latte ... is really just me, and I happen to prefer and use (and program for) a Mac.

The author may not develop for Windows, but he does provide some links to Windows-based writing software in a similar vein to Scrivener"

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/links.html

He also provides links to other OS X writing software. He must feel pretty comfortable with his competition!

I'm toying with the idea of purchasing Scrivener myself. I tried the demo and like the way you can jot down notes and images in a pretty free-form way. It's close to the way I write.