I’m working on a hard sci-fi story - have never had anything published previously, But then, I’ve been a tech writer since 2004, so have been writing for a living since then, albeit fairly quotidian user guides and system documentation.
I have instantly fallen for Scrivener - in fact adopting it has completely transformed my project in 24 hours. I think that’s partially because in my techwriting career I have used single-source tools like Robohelp and Author-IT which made it much easier to learn this tool. But I also just like the way it all hangs together, especially being able to import all your research webpages and PDFs. And being able to set up the skeleton of the whole project and build out the detail is brilliant.
Anyway - so far so great, Every question I’ve had in setting up, I’ve found answers to straight away, I may not have the need to post in the Forum, so just thought I’d say hi.
Like with you, Scrivener just clicked for me. Even though there’s a lot to it, the core features have always seemed straightforward.
Some suggestions:
Definitely go through the interactive tutorial, if you haven’t already. It’s the quickest way to get a high level appreciation of the features available, without getting mired in the details.
As you are a tech writer, after a week or two of actual use, it might make sense to skim the manual. Again, just to get a high level of what’s available.
Scrivener is super flexible. While it probably doesn’t do everything you want in exactly the way you want, there are usually ways to make things work.
Keep in mind that Scrivener is most decidedly not WYSIWYG. People typically get into trouble when they approach Scrivener thinking it’s Word with a Binder.
The only really tricky feature is Compile, which is where Scrivener makes it’s non-WYSIWYG-ness work. You can output your writing from the editor to a slew of different formats, most of which you probably won’t need. Take it slow, experiment, and the Compile light bulb will definitely come on. But you won’t need to learn Compile until you’ve got some writing you want to output.