Up till now, my first draft has been housed within a single Microsoft Word document – all sixteen thousand words of it. MS Word has served me well enough thus far, but I’ve a feeling that I need something else, something better, something more writerly.
So I’ve made my first cash investment in my writing – I’ve bought Scrivener and ported all the work across. It looks much better. Immediately it’s easier to see the individual scenes and to rearrange it, if I so desire. I’ve be able to combine my outline document with my draft too, and it’s notably easier to tinker around with the that outline, and see how that affects the work so far.
I know there is heaps more to know about Scrivener, so I’m watching the tutorial videos in my spare time, and when I say spare time what I really mean is the gaps between the writing, which is itself done in my spare time. In effect I’m learning Scrivener in the spare time of my spare time, which feels pleasantly recursive.
I have Scrivener; I’m invested and I’m writing every day. It feels like I’ve become serious.
Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash
