28: Use Plain Text to Future-Proof Your Writing

You need to consider plain text as a means to future

proof your writing work. Why plain text? How hard is it to

do? And what are the advantages and disadvantages? Let's find

out. Welcome to the writing pursuits podcast where authors

like you discuss writing craft, author, life and book marketing

strategies. I'm your host Kathrese. McKee. I own writing

pursuits and write and produce the weekly newsletter writing

pursuits tips for authors. In addition, I am a speculative

fiction author. Writing pursuits is for authors who drink too

much coffee, endure judgemental looks from their furry writing,

convenience and struggle for words. If you are a writer

seeking encouragement, information and inspiration This

podcast is free. Hey, writing presents authors. Welcome back

to the podcast. For those of you who are new, I want to extend a

special welcome. My name is Kathrese McKee, and I'm glad

you're here. Please leave a comment a star rating and follow

the show to help others find writing pursuits. Why? Why would

you bother to work with plain text files? Why would you

convert to plain text? Before we dive in, let me preface this by

saying I use a lot of tools. So you know I don't use vellum

because I don't own a Mac. But I use Scrivener during manuscript

drafting. And I use Microsoft Word for revisions. I also use

Microsoft Word extensively because Track Changes comes in

handy as a freelance editor. If there's a tool like Scrivener to

make rearranging scenes and chapters incredibly easy and

track your stats, and you can't imagine writing without it,

well, then by all means, use the tool I'm not proposing, we bring

back clay tablets, I have nothing against word processing

and writing programs. However, most of these proprietary

applications produce proprietary file formats. And there's the

rub for longevity, nothing beats plain text. Now, with that out

of the way, I'm going back to my programming roots once upon a

time, I was an Advanced Systems Engineer at electronic data

systems, also known as EDS, eds, also known as EDS. Yes, for many

long years, I worked in the coal or coal, I almost said coal

mines, the code mines, but then I escaped and ran far far away.

But recently, Jay Thorne brought an article to my attention, it

was written by Derek Sivers. And the title was write plain text

files. And I've included that link in the show notes. When I

read that post several things crystallized in my mind. First,

my words are my legacy. When I'm dead and gone, I want to make

sure my 20 true fans can find my work on a thumb drive, possibly

in a vault somewhere. So plain text files are the most durable,

flexible, resilient way to store digital information. On my third

point is I don't want to make

one of the things one of my chief concerns is that a

software change in an application will make my my

files hard to convert, hard to access, hard to read, hard to

use. And that means I need to use a non proprietary file

format to store my files long term. That's the only point I'm

trying to make here. And that brings me to plain text files

because plain text files are useful and easy to manipulate,

manage and store. And finally, you can in case or wrap your

text in more text to display your words online by using a

markup language, so you haven't given up a whole lot. The result

of my aha moment was a true desire to kind of get away from

word processing and concentrate on writing and note taking

instead. And oh yeah, I made the decision to convert and save my

manuscripts to plain text files for posterity. Okay, so the

strings of plain text are that anyone with a computer can open

plain text files. plain text format is non proprietary, but

proprietary applications can open text files. Text files are

smaller to store and load faster, then bloated rich text

files. You can copy text into any program and if you want work

in a text editor without all the menus, and the gizmos work gets

done, and you still have a spell checker. Textiles always look

the same. No weird stuff gets displayed. Weaknesses of plain

text though plain text is not as pretty s formatted text to look

at. There are no tables or input images, page numbers or other

layout features in plain text. It's just text. However, there

are ways to overcome this more in a minute. The absence of

different heading styles in text files removes one of the aides

to understanding written material at a glance, the

structure is not immediately obvious. So formatting

information gets stripped from a Word files or Google Docs, files

or anything else. When you download them as text files, you

can't reverse engineer the formatting that is lost. So

those are some of the disadvantages of plain text. But

let's put those weaknesses aside for a moment. The first thing

you need to do is to future proof your written work with

plain texts. So make text backups of your finished work.

This should have been a step in my episode. Shields up, take the

five day security challenge, I should have had this in there.

If you haven't watched that video, I have put the link in

the show notes. This is how to save a text file from Word or

Google Docs. Microsoft Word, you can simply save your file as a

text file. Now remember, the formatting is gonna go away. But

that's okay. The main thing is to save the text, right? The

words are what matters, make sure you choose the Unicode

option. Easier. Still select all copy and paste your document to

a text editor like notepad or some other note, Text Editor

program and save your new file, put it in a safe place. Google

Docs just go to File, download plain text and put your new file

somewhere safe. Actually, you might want to consider working

in a simple text editor during manuscript development. It's

worth the time to experiment a lot of people like doing that.

Who knows you might discover that it's your new favorite way

of working more about text editors in a moment.

I had to inject the dog he was snoring so loudly all I could

think about was how loud he was. So how can you make plain text

look better without using proprietary software? Well, the

simple answer is markup languages you can easily make

text information look more presentable by including syntax

that is actually also plain text, such as hypertext markup

language, which is HTML, extensible markup language,

which is XML, and also markdown, which I'll talk about in a

minute. markup languages make it possible to include tables and

links if you don't want to learn HTML or XML markup languages. So

check out my favorite way to format text, which is known as

markdown. Markdown is in fact, a lightweight markup language that

markdown language. With apologies to HTML, I don't type

well enough to enjoy using HTML plus HTML slash XML they're both

visually confusing to look at. You can look right past markdown

most of the time. One huge advantage of Markdown is how

easy it is to learn. I mean 10 minutes gets you most of what

you need to know. Markdown is easily converted to HTML. So for

the average human being Markdown is the way to go. So you start

with Markdown and you can convert it to HTML and you

haven't had to code a line of HTML but you can include HTML

within a markdown document. Markdown documents have a file

extension of dot M D. However, you can also say that with a t x

t extension, using markdown can significantly speed up your

writing, because you keep your fingers on the keyboard and type

without resorting to the mouse. So use easy Markdown syntax to

indicate the basic formatting you need like heading levels,

italics, bold, font, strikethrough, etc. When I say

Google added light markdown support to Docs, Sheets and

Slides. So that just means that it's becoming even more

mainstream. Two things to know you must turn the option on In

Google Docs, so start a new Google Doc, go to Tools

preferences, and turn on automatically detect markdown.

Also, take advantage of Google add ons go to add ons in the

menu of Google Docs and search for markdown. Add Doc's to

Markdown and give it a try. So how can you work in plain text

to draft your books? Well, first, you need the necessary

hardware and software for the hardware. You can use any old

machine and I'm not even kidding, go get your trs 80 out

of the garage. If you can still find eight inch floppy disks

defeat it. Barring that, they'll be proud use your college

text, you don't need the latest software, especially if you're

going to work offline and what can be more focused on that. In

this way, you're free from the vicious computer upgrade cycle.

There's something to be said for keeping it simple. The other

thing you need is a text editor program. They're dime a dozen.

There's so many some are for purchase and some are free

markdown editing for editing markdown, I can recommend

notepad plus plus, which is free. You can also use Microsoft

Word and Google Docs to create markdown files. Just save your

work as text files. Why not? They're on your computer

already. Mac owners can use brackets them Text Wrangler just

to name a few. I own I own a program called type ora, T yp o

like it. There are so many other options. So look around for an

editor that appeals to you. Finally, why not leverage your

research with a notetaking application built on Mark

markdown? This is my new latest thing.

I will return to this topic at a later time because notetaking is

a powerful tool for authors. And I really don't think we're doing

it right. You've probably heard of notion and Rome. But I'm

using obsidian now because it is based entirely on and you

guessed it, markdown files. So it is not open source but it is

free to use. And that's that's a topic for another day, I will

come back to it because I'm very enthusiastic conclusion.

Returning to my program of roots made me appreciate the enduring

nature of plain text files. I started using computers in the

their basements or garages, that means I'm getting old. But it

also means that for the foreseeable future, using plain

text is a great way to future proof your written work and

notes. The question of the week is what steps have you taken to

archive your manuscripts or other important work? Or an

alternative question? What is your favorite text editor or

note taking app. That's all I have for today. Until next time,

keep writing my friends. Keep writing. Thank you for joining

us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a comment

and follow the podcast. If you're new around here. I hope

you will sign up for the weekly newsletter writing pursuits tips

for authors that link and all the links mentioned in today's

episode or in the show notes at writing pursuits.com. Please

join us on Wednesdays for new episodes and keep writing my