![]() At best guess, I’m 6,000 words from completing my third novel. I’ve been at this point for the past three weeks. Beyond, at one time. I’ve added, deleted, revised, rewritten. I moved the fifth chapter to the beginning, deleted the entire third chapter, and combined two others. I’ve mapped numerous bright orange post-its across a magnetic board near my workspace, rearranging events and inserting new characters and plot points. I’ve scribbled lines of illegible notes inside my marble composition book. My desk is a disaster of index cards and post-its. Reading over some of my notes, I wonder why I wrote them. What did I mean by she needs new shoes first? So I caved. I admitted defeat. I joined the present day. See my post on Organizing. I purchased the highly touted Scrivener app. (Hard to resist at 50% off.) Good buy? After making my way through 30% of the 23-step tutorial, I’m wondering if the program can help my current project. After all, if I were to employ Scrivener now, I’d need to type up all these crazy notes. I’d need to discern which are about character, setting, theme, and so on. Not an impossible task, but still time-consuming. Finish this book and save Scrivener for my next, you say? Perhaps. In the meantime, here's what I like about the tutorial and some of what I've learned thus far. 1. The tutorial is lengthy, but it's reader friendly. 2. It employs the “I do, we do, you do” teaching method – gentle hand-holding and encouragement for you to try. 3. You can make mistakes (in the ‘you do’ time, your practice does not delete the original tutorial). 4. There are many bells and whistles, but you choose which to blow, ring, or ignore. 5. The writer uses gentle humor and intuits when your cup has runneth over. In fact he encourages you to get a cup of tea at that point and have a break. We’ll see how much further I get into the tutorial before next week. There’s always a struggle to balance writing and learning. I’m hoping Scrivener eventually provides that balance for me. Isn't that what its icon suggests? Have you tried Scrivener? I'd love to hear your impressions. What do you like? What works? What doesn't?
6 Comments
7/28/2014 06:53:03 pm
Hi Ellen - I'm at roughly the same stage as you with my new novel! I tend to use Scrivener mainly for writing and a bit of planning. I like how you can import a Wikipedia page for research, but apart from that I haven't tapped or tried most of the cool stuff you can do with it. One thing I love about Scrivener is the way you can turn your project into any kind of file using just a few clicks, Word doc, PDF, EPUB and .mobi. I formatted all my ebooks using it, saving a fortune, and I send my work in progress to my Kindle to read.
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7/29/2014 01:58:20 am
Robert, I hadn't gotten to the part about sending a WIP to your Kindle. That's very cool. Hoping to move faster through the tutorial this week. We'll see about that. I think for now, I'll just spend time the old fashioned way and finish my book. Please share any other insights on Scrivener or other tools when you think of it.
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Chrissy
7/30/2014 02:56:52 am
I'm one of those people who purchased Scrivener but never really got in to it. Finally this year I decided to make an effort or delete it off my desktop. The best thing I came across (note: I am not in any way an affiliate) was http://learnscrivenerfast.com/ . I can't say enough good things about this program or the way it helped me get right into using the program. If you search Twitter #scrivener once a week or so you will probably come across a link to a free 20 min webinar to see if you'd like it.
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7/30/2014 04:04:43 am
Chrissy, that is a great tip! I just bookmarked it. I've been learning more about the program; re-read the steps I reviewed last week. It does take some time to learn it, but I do think it will benefit my writing. Very excited. It's so helpful to build community, too. I've learned much from people as yourself. Social networks have other purposes besides sharing pics of dogs cuddling cats. Thanks for stopping by!
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8/1/2014 11:24:46 am
Love Scrivner! I geeked out with it on my second project and have my characters pinned to a board, was grateful for the name generator (I'm terrible at names) and love the ease of revision. But in panic-revision-mode at the moment and can relate!
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8/2/2014 02:12:17 am
Hi Charli,
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