Anyone else find that Scrivener makes them much more productive? Maybe it’s because Scrivener is more fun to use than Word, which is about as appealing as a lard sandwich by comparison, but my daily word count seems to have jumped through the roof.
So, anyway… I transferred my novel over to Scrivener, found the aforementioned improvement in working conditions to really speed things along, and then discovered I had a mammoth editing/redraft job to do in very short order. Scrivener’s dual screen function was a lifesaver when it came to editing chapter by chapter. There’s absolutely no way I could have done it in Word, not at that speed and clarity, and being able to snapshot the chapters as I went meant that I could stop worrying and just keep merrily working along. I don’t think I’ll be starting any major projects in Word again, not for the serious meat of the work anyway.
I’m singing Scrivener’s praises very loudly to my friends and tutor on my writing course, and to any other Mac-using writers I run into. I’m seriously impressed. And very grateful.
Absolutely, yeah. It’s difficult to quantify exactly, as I typically work on 4 or more projects at once (alternating weeks between each one) but I only have to look at my work calendar to see that I’ve definitely written more, and more quickly, since using Scriv.
I’m not sure I write any more with Scrivener, or that I write better. But I do put things together more effectively with it. I can structure what I’m doing more clearly, can take apart a flawed manuscript and isolate problem points, and can re-organize a story line. These are for me the “liberating” features of Scrivener.
I find it a little more like the difference between writing a script in a standard word processor and writing one in Final Draft. In the former you waste a lot of time keeping things formatted and organised and retyping things, whereas Final Draft takes care of a lot of that and lets you actually focus on what you’re doing. Having Scrivener is like having a different writer’s study for each project I’m working on, so I can go in, close the door, and just work. Maybe it’s a difference in the level of focus it allows you to achieve.
