How many projects do you have at the same time?

Scrivener
1

I started to use Scrivener for work (I am a freelance writer). I think this wasn’t a typical way to use Scrivener: from the beginning I didn’t considered compiling a whole draft at the end. I just used Scrivener to handle very big anount of small text in a single project (storing them in Draft folder) and keeping all instructions and recomendations, e.g. how to write for praticular website or what style of formatting do they prefer, in Research folder. This gives significant boost to my work, because I can move fast between different files and gather information for my friting. Setting the goal (how characters need I to write) is also very helful.

Actually, I don’t know why, but it seems to be in general easier for me to treat all what I write as some broad areas (projects), not as single files (as it was earlier, when I was writing in common text editors). Sorting the files in folders isn’t so productive, as gathering all files in single projects.

Then I created another projects: one for my sholar paper I’m currently working on, and one for my creative wrinting (I’m working on a novel). I’ve also some other plans, for example, move my diary of dreams into Scrivener (Earlier I was writing my diary in One Note, but it was too slow and heavy… to much fucnctions I don’t use and slowing down my small netbook).

I would like to ask more experienced Scrivener users two questions:

  1. How many projects do you have at the same time? (I’ve fear, that when I will create too much different projects, it will be difficult to keep all of them in mind… or not?)
  2. Do you work with projects that consist of more that one text? (I tend to make not project=novel or projects=article, but project=area of work (educational writing, creative writing etc). I think it has some reason, at least in creative writings area… all of my texts (novels, short stories) are interconnected on some level.

(And: I bought Scrivener today, after using it almost every day during 30-day trial, and I am totally happy with it :slight_smile: )

2

At this moment, I have roughly 180 projects, many of which are now archived and no longer modified. Some are very temporary, and I will even throw them away once they are done with their purpose, rather than archive them. A good example of this is a journal transcription project. After scanning the pages of the journal, I use Scrivener to transcribe it because it has the best interface for typing alongside a graphic in my opinion. But once I compile the text out, I don’t need the project any more. All I want is the text files created from the journal and the scans. So perhaps that demonstrates how I use Scrivener for a wide variety of tasks, some of which aren’t necessarily at all to do with writing a specific “thing”.

It depends on the material. I have some projects that are in fact essentially databases of files. My collection of common tech support answers, for instance, is just a project with hundreds of individual documents in it that have been tagged with topical keywords. Then there are some in the middle which are more like you describe: they house a series of real-world documents that are all very closely related to the same topic. On the whole though, I would say most of my projects have one singular real-world purpose.

Yes, it is true that on a certain level everything is connected, but that is what my computer’s drive is for. Everything on the drive is related to me by being on my drive. I have layers of organisation within the home folder on my drive that keep the many dozens of files formats—Scrivener projects included—arranged into a system which describes larger areas of interest. I’ve never been a big fan of the “everything bucket” program idea, where one replaces their natural filesystem (an incredibly stable, elegant and even at this point in time, sophisticated set of technologies) with another program. I’m more a fan of augmenting the natural file system with tools and systems, because everything that is good and just can work with the file system (much as Apple would like to abolish that notion, which is truly a shortsighted pity). The same cannot be said for all of the little cubby-holes we put data into.

Anyway, got off on a bit of a rant there, sorry about that! :slight_smile:

3

No surprise, but I agree with Amber. :open_mouth:
I created a Saved Search that lists all files ending in .scriv
At present, I have 136 of those files, all Scrivener projects
They are filed in many different folders on my drive,
Depending on the nature of the writing assignment:
Novels, Films, Essays, Reviews, Talks, Courses, etc.
If the file title does not ring a bell, I press the spacebar
And QuickLook gives me a view of the opening contents.
Also, Spotlight does a good job of locating particular words/phrases.
So, I keep many project files and rely on the System to
Help me find any particular elements I need to locate.
(Oops, I’m speaking of Mac conventions; see now you are
A Windows user. Hope you can translate to that world.)

4

I also tend to have one project = one text. A book would be one project.

Exceptions for me: a blog would be one project with each post its own text within that project. I keep a project for all interesting things I find on the web. Another project for cooking recipes. Another one for tips and tricks relating to working with a Mac. Another project includes all the problems with solutions I find in this forum as to working with Scrivener.

Another exception is a series of books. One project for the whole series with a separate folder inside that project for each book. The current book is the Draft folder, with past and future books in Research.

I am sure Scrivener could handle a lot more files that I feed a project at any one time, but I find it easier to keep track of things and keep organized if I maintain lots of projects. I can archive backups and if I want to see what I had in a revived project that I was working on a year ago, I can pull that up.

  • asotir
5

I’m experimenting joining many texts in the same project.
I have several projects: Academic work, Computer, etc.

The idea behind that is this:
When I do research for a journal article, a talk, a book, etc., I take notes on index cards. Then, when I have sufficient material on the subject, I order them, and only after that I begin writing the text. That’s the sound methodology to use for these kind of texts.
Now, many cards I wrote in the past for different texts are useful now for my new researches. That’s why I want to have all of them together. Until now I used a database I created for that purpose, and it worked great.

But when I discovered Scrivener and I decided to use it as my wordprocessor, I applied the same logic.

This is the way I work:

In the Binder’s Research I imported all my index cards, and know I create them directly there. Actually I have more than 5000 cards (documents in the Binder, always less than 1 page) in there.

In the Binder’s Draft I create a folder for every single “project” (book, journal article, public talk, etc.). Actually I use folders and subfolders: Articles / This article’s title, etc.

This way, when I am writing a text I can immediately look for a word or phrase in the cards in Research, eventually select a group of cards, even create a collection with those cards, order them for the new text, etc.
Then, I can split the screen, with my text on one window and the cards on the other. Then I eventually copy ad paste…

By now it seems to me it’s working very well. Of course, the .scriv file is big (more then 20 MB), but it’s not a big problem.

6

I have two right now. The are both novels but I spend a lot of time in character development on each of them.

7

I have 10-15 different projects in various stages of development but none of them, except one, are in Scrivener and therefore I am certain this will help organise everything for me. I had been looking for this kind of a program for a long time, tested many of them on the PC, but none of them was the way I wanted it.

The license fee is worth every penny even if I won’t use the program every day due to work. But my projects have suddenly become much more manageble and, therefore, more fun to deal with. So I’m looking forward to purchase it very soon. :slight_smile: