I went to the Swink reading at Tangeirs to see Mark Sarvas (that’s him there in the pic, blurrily) and hear more from his new novel. I agree with everything Callie already said.
I thought I didn’t need anything but Word to write a novel. But today Andrew told me about Journler, which seems more bloggy but possibly helpful, and look, Gwenda is using Scrivener. Are these truly organizational tools, or are they just software-based stalling tactics?
Dammit, I just missed Aimee Bender. Again.
Which reminds me: I’m writing the LA book updates for a new company called 80108. Sign up for and get pithy book events news texted to your phone. In advance of readings happening.
Which reminds me, v.2: if you have a readings series, book launch, poetry slam, magazine party,or any other special event involving the written word, email me the deets at paperhaus (at) gmail.com.
See I’m always skeptical on this kind of stuff too, that it will be more complicated than it’s worth, that it will somehow incorporate some sort of formula elements, that it will be a procrastination thing. But Scrivener rocks (she said after 24 hours). The full-screen mode is AWESOME. No clock, no links to the outside world unless you hit escape. No distracting bar at the top of your page — it’s pretty much my ideal word processor. And all the other features actually make sense once you start using them. It’s hard to explain, but it makes you feel like little Word was just not up to the task of making your life easier. I definitely feel like it will be easier to find stuff in revision, to compare versions, and all that good stuff.
I reserve the right to bitch if the export function doesn’t work… ever.
And I’m still writing essays in Word, though I’ll probably use Scrivener for my Critical Thesis.
Another Scrivener convert here. If anything, it is the anti-procrastination device. You do need to spend a little bit of time with the tutorial – or at least I did – to make sure you *get* it, but once you do, that’s all you need.
Here’s what Scrivener did for me: my current WIP was various pieces, because i write from the middle, and then go to the beginning, and then hop to the end, and then a bunch of things inbetween. with my last manuscript, rearranging all the bits and pieces into an order using a combination of physically ordering the pages and Word took me the better part of six weeks. With Scrivener, I just imported ALL of the Word files, and then – started sliding them around.
Suddenly, there was no more writer’s block. I can write anywhere and not worry about where it integrates into the story RIGHT NOW. Or later.
I was about to pay $20 (i think) for something that gave me the equivalent of Scrivener’s full-screen mode, too.
And the last thing that I love is that I can save the snippets and random cuts and Research all right there, which minimizes the potential for me to get lost down the rabbit hole when I need to go find piece of information X that I researched at the beginning. It’s right there.