Attaché software

Attaché

Reviewed by Chas Jones

Introduction

If you take your writing seriously, you want to be published. And if you want to land a publishing deal the recent survey conducted by WritersServices showed having articles and short stories published was a good pointer that you will eventually get a publishing deal.

So how do you manage to keep a flow of articles going while you focus your creative juices on your masterpiece? If, like most writers, you can’t give up the day-job, you really need somebody to run your office. A new piece of software might be all you can afford to help keep track of your writing and marketing efforts.

Attaché says it is ‘a new concept in document storage and submissions management, especially designed for writers who want to organise their projects in a professional and resilient manner.’

What it does

You might immediately think ‘I already put my files into folders so I can find them’. But Attaché provides you with another layer of organisation. You probably have your files structured in a logical way but this software lets you re-group relevant files around themes. So you could organise your writing into distinct projects that you can turn into stories and articles without actually dragging files around. Even better, the same file can appear in several places at the same time without having to make copies of the original.

If you write nothing but fiction then the idea of chunks of source material that can be sculptured into a new form might sound like an electronic version of fridge poetry. But if you are writing a crime novel or historical romance, research notes, picture and images you have assembled could provide inspiration.

There is a second layer of organisation. If you are creating a textbook you can have each project as a chapter and then bring the chapters together as a group.

Organising your work

Articles make money and seeing yourself in print is excellent for your morale. If you do not think that this sort of jobbing writing is for you, try this little experiment. Have a look at a magazine or scan the supplements of the bloated weekend newspapers and see if you can come up with the titles of a few articles you might be able to write. Now scan through your computer files and see if you have written anything similar. Attaché would then let you do this without moving a single file around.

The first problem you will encounter when you start looking through your older files is remembering their contents. You can of course open the file and read it and all word-processors provide a facility to include a summary which you can access by inspecting the file’s properties. With Attaché, the short notes are displayed alongside, which makes it a lot easier. You could use the notes to explain the relevance of a document to a particular project. If you have a number of writing projects underway, this makes life much easier.

The main difference between regular documents and Attaché documents is that the latter allow you to store multiple versions of the same document with the same name inside a project. Each version of the document is treated as unique and can be accessed at any time. If stored regularly, these can provide a complete history of the development of a particular project, as well as allowing you to go back to any earlier version that you have saved.

Attaché puts these copies in another directory so it does not alter or clog your existing directory or file structure.

Sales and Marketing

You still have to do all the editing and writing but once your piece is ready for submission the software can offer more assistance. Attaché presents you with an address book containing a long list of journals and magazines which might want to receive your work, although everybody will tell you that it is good practice to identify your target magazine first. It is only another address book but it is one that is designed to work for you as a writer.

Attaché then helps you to keep track of submissions you make. You can set a date to track what is happening. You can also set a response date so you know when to abandon hope and send the article elsewhere or to chase up your contact to see if they have any plans or suggestions.

You can also track any sales within the system. Anyone who has written articles knows what slow payers magazines can be, as the time from submission to publication can be months. So keeping track of billing is important. There is a financial report feature that I suspect will provide fairly depressing reading for most writers.

Backup

The final feature worth mentioning is the backup facility Attaché provides. Project files can be backed up and restored to and from a single backup file. You are reminded when backup is due. This is also useful for transferring the files from the laptop to a desktop and back again.

Editing

Attaché has a slightly awkward interface with the editor. The recommended way is to export the file, edit and add it back, overwriting or adding the version as a new version. You can also only have one file open for editing at a time. This is an issue being addressed by the developers so look out for the next upgrade.

Conclusions

I have a confession. I have sent off some draft articles and had them accepted while other carefully crafted words have been rejected. Timing, it seems, is everything. The more articles I send, the more articles I get published. Now if I could get myself properly organised…

Attaché can help you to organise your sketches, ideas, exercises and essays in a way that will help you extract articles. Attaché is not going to help you write your literary novel but it might be excellent for a work of non-fiction.

Software is only a tool and this is one worth having in the toolkit to make your path to publication a bit smoother.

Good luck - but - Get organised!!

You can download a 30-day free trial which is 11.6Mb. Installation and setup was well-behaved and fast. It needs 14.5mb on your disk.

A free copy of Attaché is available for download from
http://www.kelltium.com/attache/download.asp

You have to pay $49 to keep it running when the free trial expires.

Reviewed October 2005

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