Alternate Title: Scrivener? I Hardly Know Her!
In one of the NaNoWriMo newsletters today, I happened to catch that they put an extension on some of the partner offers…one of which being the sweet 50% off Scrivener coupon.
I was planning to purchase this after the April NaNo session when the next set of coupons became available, but since its (re)available now, I went ahead and bought it. $22.50 for a comprehensive writing suite is not too shabby at all!
Going to start loading in my notes for the April Camp NaNo project and see how this shakes out.
(Note: If you’re looking for the coupon, you need to be logged into the nanowrimo.org site and have been a winner in 2012. If you go to winner goodies, the personalized coupon will be in there. If you didn’t win last year, the coupon will probably be available again after the April session if you win that one).
...and then there was Sarah 
What do you think of Scrivener? I was really excited to purchase it after NaNo 2012 but it’s been languishing in my dashboard ever since – I’m still just using OpenOffice. I don’t know if it’s unwillingness right now to overcome another learning curve and adapt to it, or that I was more in love with the idea than the actual product, but every time I see the icon I get a little grumpy because I feel like I wasted my money. Any tips on how to get started with it, or something that you absolutely love?
I’m just getting through the tutorial, so I don’t have any real experience with it yet…but I can already see how it would be a steep learning curve. I do like the idea of being able to create chapters separately but then also bring them together when you need them to, and I also like that you can export in ebook format (I formatted mine myself for St. Charles and it was the biggest…pain…in…the…ass…ever). The notes and research features are cool.
I think for $20 I will get my money’s worth, but I’m not sure yet how much I’ll be able to use it as a replacement for Word, which I’ve been using since 98. I’ll probably post something in May once I’ve had some time to digest some of the features.
Oh, and I think I’m going to try starting with one of the pre-made templates, and see if that helps me get the hang of the features and formatting quickly.
I use LibreOffice. But for writing, I use scrivener. It automatically backs up, so you won’t have to save your work. Another beauty of scrivener is the full screen if you’re windows users. But for those on a mac composition mode. What full screen aka composition mode does, it lessens the distraction, easy on eyes, no more squinting. Plus, in full screen I set my text scale to 150%. Paper width all way.
There are pre-made templates. I go with pre-made templates. Of course, if you’re not sure what your next project would be and you got used to scrivener program. I would suggest blank project for unknown projects, if a novella suddenly morphs into a full length novel.
I just hit several short cut keys and I am off. To be honest with you I hit a rut for quite a while. At the moment I am reading one of the several unread books, I have left.
Anyways best of luck with camp NaNoWriMo. I hope you would win.
Thanks for the tips! So far my impression is that the program will probably do most of what I need it to do once I get used to the many, many features!
Your welcome. As you already know. There are three fiction scrivener project templates. Novel, Novel (with Parts) and Short Story. And there’s the blank project.
I am not going to lie to you. Scrivener can be obvious, confusing and flexible. Some people love it, some hate it. The beauty of scrivener program, you can customize the projects and create folders, such as genealogies. With templates, I duplicate the character sheet and settings sheet.
Thanks for being my 100th follower. Looking forward to your posts and getting to know you. 🙂
Back atcha! 🙂