WHY OneNote?

[WildelyCreative]

Am thinking about it and have downloaded the trial version but why is it any
better than good old fashioned pen and paper for recording notes.
I am writing a book and aim to use OneNote to assist with
character/chapter/plot etc to keep the stories tight.
Any useful tips for this particular purpose would help me decide whether to
buy or not.

Cheers

 

[xTenn]

Am thinking about it and have downloaded the trial version but why is it
any
better than good old fashioned pen and paper for recording notes.
I am writing a book and aim to use OneNote to assist with
character/chapter/plot etc to keep the stories tight.
Any useful tips for this particular purpose would help me decide whether
to
buy or not.

Cheers

One thing it consider in usng OneNote for such a project is this - while
OneNote allows you to bo build a notebook/group/section/page structure that
is very robust and accomodating to your work habits, it is also very easy to
RESTRUCTURE it when you get further into the project. So many times this
comes up for me - I find a better way to organize and manage it on into the
project, and to me this is a major advantage OneNote has over pen and paper
(plus the usual - backups, searching, trnasportability,sharing when needed,
etc.).

Not to mention that for researching OneNote really works well.

Curious - you mention pen and paper - are you planning to use a tablet
computer with a pen? OneNote 2007 works very well wiht a tablet (I use it
quite often this way, and keep notebooks on different computers all synched
up using OneNote's own mechanics).

 

[Kathy Jacobs]

biggest advantages over pen and paper:
1) Searchable. Handwritten notes on paper are impossible to search in any
automated way. Put those same notes in OneNote and you can find anything by
either content or tag.
2) Better back up.
3) Automatic annotation of information from the web or other files
4) Tag your character notes, your plot points, etc. with custom tags and you
can see who is where in your book
5) Outlines that can be expanded to draft information - no need to reference
another page, just add it in between the the outline pieces
6) Hyper linking between notes on similar information. Create your outline,
expand it, link things that need to be linked.
7) Automatic to do list creation so you can keep track of plot points and
character status

Is that enough for now?

--
Kathy Jacobs, Microsoft MVP OneNote and PowerPoint
Author of Kathy Jacobs on PowerPoint
Get PowerPoint and OneNote information at www.onppt.com
or on my blog, http://geekswithblogs.net/VitaminCH/Default.aspx

I believe life is meant to be lived. But:
if we live without making a difference, it makes no difference that we lived