Tips for writing a book in OmniOutliner & does it work?

Hi,

I’m considering using OmniOutliner to write my next non-fiction book which will be about 400 pages long. I used the old version of Apple Pages for my last book and the new version is not conducive to writing a book.

Has anyone written a long book with OmniOutliner? Any good tips?

Thanks,

Tony

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As much as I love OmniOutliner, and have used it for many years, I would recommend you use it for brainstorming your book. Then transfer the outline via OPML to Scrivener. Scrivener is the perfect tool for writing your 400 page non-fiction book. It interchanges brilliantly with OmniOutliner using OPML import/export.

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I agree with @anamorph as well. You should brainstorm with OmniOutliner then write with Scrivener or Ulysses.

I’m currently using Ulysses since it’s on OS X and iOS and syncs with iCloud. The iPhone (beta) version is coming out this quarter and Scrivener has been working on a mobile version for a couple years. However, Scrivener will work better with your OPML workflow. Both are a great apps. Ulysses does not import OPML files at this time, so you would have write your hierarchy again.

They are not entirely the same at this point except for a focus on writing. Download the trial for both and use the one that works best for you.

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Thanks, appreciate the response.

Thanks for the help.

Yeah, I was going to suggest downloading the Scrivener Trial, which lets you use it full featured for a month for free. If you need to write parts of your book on iOS, you can use any Dropbox sync text processor to integrate with Scrivener. I know Elements works; I suspect Ulysses does as well.

I use Drafts to jot down story ideas, and send them to my Scrivener InBox folder on Dropbox. The next time I open Scrivener, it will import the changes to that folder automatically.

Good luck.

gingko app + Fluid

I tried this, but couldn’t get Fluid to create a Ginko app. Could you provide some suggestions?

I did this:

  1. open account on gingkoapp.com
  2. download Fluid from fluidapp.com
  3. open Fluid
  4. open fluid and paste my ginkgko document’s URL into the URL field: “https://gingkoapp.com/app#XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
    5 ) click Create

Simple as that
And now I have a Gikgko App in my Applications folder

Do you have any error shown ?..

I must’ve pasted wrong – it was just spinning and spinning. Whne I tried it again useing your instructions, it worked.

Disappointed it doesn’t work offline, though.

they talk about an offline mode in their forums

I did not try it though

also noting, you can import your OmniOutliner outline as opml into evernote, then export from Evernote into ENEX (Evernote Export) format, then drag the ENEX into Ulysses for an import. Works great.

No OPML export in Ulysses though.