Most if not all of my creative writing now gets done on my MacBook. I have a wonderful writing program called CopyWrite that I live in when I’m actually banging out prose. It’s wonderful for keeping track of my notes and all my various versions. However, as a text formatting program it stinks. But that’s ok because that’s not what it was designed for. So I began my search for a word processor that I can use on the Mac for formating my final documents.
I will never shell out the bucks for Microsoft Word, so that option is out. I tried Open Office, but it lacks the features I need for formating novels, short stories and story synopsis – mainly, it does not let me put a different header on the first page of a document, something that I have found is pretty hard to find in a word processor. Yes, MS Word can do it. No, Open Office can not and neither can Pages, or AbiWord. If you know how to do this in either of those programs please do tell.
I finally found a Mac only program called Mellel that allows me to format headers the way I need to. I have only been playing with it for a short time, but so far it’s proved adequate, if not completely elegant. My search has ended at Mellel, but if anyone knows of a cheap, Mac only or multi-OS word processor that can allow me to have a different header for the lead page of a document, please let me know!