You may think that writing lost some of its romance once it was no longer necessary to scratch away with a quill pen or bash each draft out on a battered Remington typewriter. But like it or not, being a writer today means that it’s almost essential to use a computer. And whilst there are adherents of the prophet Jobs and his Way-of-the-Macintosh, for most of us a computer means a PC running Microsoft Windows.

Of course you need a bit more by way of software to be able to do anything productive. The one thing you absolutely can’t do without as a writer in the early part of the 21st century is a word processor. Most of you when you read that last sentence will have thought of MS Word or WordPerfect. A heavyweight commercial offering bulging with clever features, but hold on a second... Do you really need all of those bells and whistles? There’s also the fact that – unless you happen to get one bundled with a new PC – office suites are expensive. Even discounted versions of MS Office such as the student and teacher edition cost fairly serious cash. Fortunately, there is another way, you don’t need commercial offerings at all, you can get all the software you need without ever having to reach for your credit card.

There’s been a free software movement pretty much since there have been computers, but it’s often dismissed as the domain of bearded geeks churning out hand-knitted programs for people of a similar persuasion. You may be surprised to learn that nowadays there’s some top quality freeware around that can match and often better the stuff you have to pay for. What’s more, because there’s no profit motive driving freeware’s production it can cater for niche markets, and that includes the needs of writers.

Okay, now that your appetite’s been whetted, let’s take a look at some of what’s on offer. We’ll start with one of the flagships of the free software world, OpenOffice.org. If you need a full-fat, high-caffeine office suite but can’t afford a commercial package – or simply don’t want to put more cash in Mr Gates’ pocket – then this is for you. It’s every bit as good as MS Office and can even read and write Office document formats, so you won’t have a problem exchanging files. The latest version, OpenOffice.org 2.0 supports the OASIS open document format for compatibility with a wide range of other systems including Linux machines and it has built-in filters to allow it to open WordPerfect documents, something which required a plug-in for previous versions.

In addition there's now a multi-pane view allowing you to look at documents side by side. The word count feature has been improved too, so that you can easily check a highlighted block of text rather the whole file. Support for creating PDF files (something you can't do in MS Word without an add-on) has been upgraded so that the program now handles thumbnails and hyperlinks correctly and allows you to define compression levels for embedded images. Other improvements include better mail merge features and floating toolbars with greater customisation options. Even if you're already using the previous version of OpenOffice, it's well worth switching to 2.0 as you're bound to find at least some of the new features valuable.

If you decide you don’t need a complete office suite and just want a word processor, you should take a look at AbiWord. It's a more lightweight solution than Word or WordPerfect, though it offers all of the features you need on a regular basis such as formatting text with bold, underscores and italics. It also lets you insert images and tables into documents. But it's much more compact than the commercial offerings without many of the less-used features, which means it's ideal for older computers. It's very user-friendly too, so you should have no problems getting to grips with it. Like OpenOffice it can handle Word and WordPerfect files so you'll have no compatibility problems. For day-to-day typing tasks, the program is ideal and because it's open source you can suggest features that you'd like to see in future versions or report bugs via the official website. You can view a complete AbiWord user manual on the Web too.

Both the above packages are general-purpose office software that anyone can make use of, but what if you want something that's more tailored towards what you do? Take a look at RoughDraft, a word processor built for writers, by a writer. It has specific modes for books and plays and can automatically create cover pages. There are multiple clipboards allowing you to take notes or cut and paste items in and out as you go along and you can spell check in British and American English. Files are saved in Rich Text Format (RTF) which is pretty much universally compatible with other software. You can also create HTML files using RoughDraft if you want to publish your work on the Web. It's rather more limited in its functions than some other word processing packages, but if you just want to write there's nothing here to get in the way and several neat touches that will actually help.

When you're writing a novel, one of the hardest parts can be planning how it all fits together. Using yWriter allows you to break your work down into a series of easily managed scenes which you can shift around as required. For each scene it records the viewpoint character, goal, conflict and outcome. It will also help you create a summary of the structure for the complete book, and it creates a log file to track your daily progress. While we're on the subject of planning, you might want to try TreePad Lite, a database to track all the notes, articles, webpages, etc that you invariably accumulate whilst writing a book.

If you want to create screenplays there are a surprising variety of tools available, though most of them want to relieve you of some money. Of the free ones ScriptMaker from www.freefilmsoftware.co.uk is worth a look. The same site also has a story development tool called SLang that uses virtual index cards to help you put a plot together and let you see how events relate to each other. You'll find a story-boarding package on this site as well though that only offers a 30-day free trial before you have to pay for it.

Poets and songwriters needn't feel left out whenit comes to freebies. Several free rhyming tools are available, including a downloadable version of the McGill Dictionary of Rhyme. Or for something a little simpler try Lyricmaker from www.vocalist.org.uk/songwriting.html.

Cheating just a little (because it's a website rather than a program), the invaluable Wordcounteranalyses blocks of text for repeated words so that you can quickly spot the ones you're overusing. A similar tool that you can download to your own system is Textstat.

Once you've finished your work and want to submit it you'll find free software that can help you track where it's gone and what the outcome is. Slushomatic is aimed at submitting pieces to magazines but would easily adapt to the needs of submitting books to agents or publishers. Alternatively try the Ultima Thule Writer's Database from www.ultima-thule.co.uk which lets you quickly spot what you've sent where and see those works that are still outstanding.

Those of you who've joined the blogging revolution might want to take a look at w.bloggar. Using this handy program you can create your blog entries offline before posting them to services such as Blogger, TypePad, Blog-City and many others. If you have multiple blogs on different services the program lets you control them all from the same interface. Alternatively, if you have webspace provided by your ISP, Thingamablog lets you create your own stand-alone blog with no need for a third-party hosting service. It has an easy-to-use, wizard-driven interface that enables you to produce your blog with no need for any HTML programming, it even lets you set up syndication via RSS feeds. It's possible to turn out some really professional-looking results with Thingamablog, links to some examples are on the website and there's an excellent tutorial available to get you started.

This has been something of a fly-by of the free software field, and I've concentrated on PCs because that's my area of expertise. There's plenty more to choose from if you hunt around the Web's freeware sites, you'll find stuff that caters for Mac users too, so it's always worth checking to see if there's a free tool that does what you want. Even stuff like firewalls and anti-virus tools can be had free for personal or non-profit use. So remember, whatever type of program you need to pursue your writing goals, there's absolutely no excuse for going out and buying one!

Ian Barker has worked in information technology for over 20 years and is currently editor of PC Tools magazine. This article was written using OpenOffice.org.