Hi all, I’m a recent switcher to the mac and along with switching platforms I have obviously also had to switch a few of the apps I use. A little while back I discovered Scrivener and started out on the trial period. I write a monthly feature column in a magazine and during the trial period I put two of these features together. The trial expired and I have registered and today sent a third feature off to the editor.
My binder has five folders, draft, research, ideas, submitted and trash. Draft contains the draft of a article or articles that I may be working on at any given time. This includes versions so I might have sub folders within draft for issue 200_v1, issue200_2 and issue 201 simultaneously. These folders contain draft copy only. My research folder has subfolders some paired with folders in the draft folder and some containing speculative research for future articles. These folders hold web pages, general notes, pdfs and images.
The Ideas folder contains several text files each carrying notes for speculative ideas in a much more general form than the research folder. Generally speaking an idea will move from ideas into research and then will appear in drafts at the same time as it exists in research. Once the article is finished and submitted folder moves from the drafts folder to the submitted folder where it stays as an archive.
That’s my usage scenario for regular magazine features if it’s of interest to anyone.
I would be interested in hearing any suggestions to make that workflow more effective. for example I’m thinking about dumping the submitted folder and just keeping the copy I send in in a separate archive folder so as to keep the .scriv file size down, although I wonder whether that file size is actually that important in any case.
I am also wondering whether I should go to the trouble of integrating Scrivener with Subversion and doing away with the multiple version files in the draft folder? Another way to achieve same might be by means of the snapshots facility, though I’m leaning towards the Subversion integration I’m wondering whether it’s worth the effort.
It’s a rare thing that the editor returns copy to me with suggestions, usually they just wield the red pen themselves, in fact it’s happened just the once that I can remember, if it was to happen again what would be the best way to deal with that in Scrivener, in the days of writing straight into a word processor I would just open a copy of the file and amend as necessary - any thoughts?
In closing I’d like to say what an impressive bit of software Scrivener is, I can say for a fact that its organisational elements have made me more efficient, I’ve even managed to get my copy in by the deadline which surprised the ed.
Cheers all Mike
Project size isn’t something to worry about for the most part. Technically speaking, you could dump everything you’ve ever written: Articles, novels, thesis, whatever—and Scrivener would handle it just fine. The way it handles resources is quite efficient (technically speaking, it only loads into memory what you are currently working on; not the entire project). And the file-system limitations beneath that are impossible for any one person to exceed in their lifetime. Even if all you did for the next fifty years was pound gibberish into windows as fast as you could.
Regarding Subversion vs. Snapshots: Given your description here, I think Snapshots are just fine for what you need. Subversion, and other other extensive version control system for that matter, are going to be of more use to a team of people working on the same project. Sure, an individual could benefit from detailed version tracking, but I would think that for most users, snapshots and jotting down a brief note in the snapshot window is good enough.
But if you like challenges and are not put off by technical matters, why not. Do some searches on the forum. Some other users have experimented quite a bit, and there are some good tips and things to watch out for.
Thanks for your thoughts AmberV, I’ll look into snapshots a little more closely, I have used Subversion in the past for team projects as you suggest but it felt like a lot of effort to go to when the major benefit I have found in Scrivener to date is that I don’t worry about that background level of organization. I have just been sticking it all into various folders in the binder, different binder / scriv file for different clients / projects etc. It seems to work that way. I have a list of deadlines taking me into November meaning that between now and then there will be at least seven more articles in this one binder I have open in front of me at the moment, along with associated research and so on. Will have to see if I pull off my usual trick of ending up in organizational purgatory.
Cheers Mike
I agree with Amber, it sounds like you have an efficient and well-constructed system in place, and Snapshots would do you just fine.
Re: the resources usage, although you shouldn’t have a problem with performance, you may still find things get a bit cluttered. One easy solution is to “split” the project every month (or six months or whatever interval makes sense) by duplicating it, then deleting all the old work/research from the new copy. Name each project by its month, make sure you have a backed up version of all prior projects, and then you can work ‘fresh’ on new columns without having to permanently lose all your old notes and drafts. You don’t need to do this, of course, but I find it very helpful to keep my Binder clean when working on serialised stuff.
Antony thanks
I think your suggestion of pruning every few months is the way I shall go. Also snapshots sounds right for versioning though I haven’t ever had to do too much of that at least not post submission. I have a couple of longer projects on the horizon and I can see a need for disparate revision versions so…
thanks again Mike
Just as an addendum, then: for longer, more self-contained projects, I strongly recommend a fresh Scriv project for each one. Remember that you can drag and drop entire folders between Scriv projects, so you can copy across any reference material you might need to re-use.
While I don’t write columns, but reviews and feature articles, I deal everytime with reusing older materials.
To do an example, I recently had to write of the same exhibition for two different audiences. One of them needed two different versions of the same article (a longer, more detailed one, and a shorter, more sintetic one). So, I had to write three versions of the same article: (A) longer magazine feature, (B) shorter magazine feature, and © company report.
First of all, I used the powerful collecting featurs of Scrivener to collect and give a first appearance of logical order to my research notes, with infos kept from handwritten notes, emails, brochures, and web sites. At the same time, I started outlining my “master article” in the Draft folder.
I completed the longer feature article (A) in Scrivener, then exported it and finalized it with a wordprocessor (in my case Nisus Writer Pro, reading Scrivener ‘compiled’ files very well). From that, I started distilling the shorter article (B) in the wordprocessor, without having to go back to Scrivener.
The company report © was a different matter. While I was tempted to continue working in Nisus, I decided to go back to Scrivener, since some additional material was needed. I created a duplicate of my original Scrivener file, and renamed it accordingly for the different target (from “XXX Article” to “XXX Report”).
Everything that was no longer needed in the Research folder was trashed out. The original draft article (A) was moved to an “Archived” folder inside the new Scrivener project. I loaded the final, edited, shorter feature article (B) into the Draft folder, and split it into several pieces to be used with the outliner. I rearranged the original structure, to fit the new target, then compiled and fialized my editing in Nisus again.
I don’t use Scrivener to archive my completed writings, but only as a writing tool during most of my writing phases (all before the final revision). Each version of the final document reside inside the same Mac folder as the Scrivener’s project file. This lets me have my final documents immediately accessible in a standard format, and my original Scrivener work files ready to be used again if needed.
Paolo