I downloaded Scrivener as a free trial on Feb. 1st and had decided to purchase it a couple of hours later. The next day I emailed someone at L&L to say, “Wow!”, and now wish to say that again, louder, and in public.
Wow, guys!
I’ve now been using Scrivener for two weeks. When I bought it, my novel-attempt was at 17,000 words and I was struggling. There were too many sequencing problems, too many things were I’d spend half an hour trying to get my head around where and when such-and-such had been discussed and who had what attitude about it. Like that. I spent half a day maybe, back two weeks ago, figuring out what I wanted to do with Scrivener’s labels and statuses and folders and corkboards, and came out of that session suddenly able to grasp the whole novel as one gestalt. Marvelous!
And empowering.
I’m now at 29,300 words, just writing a couple of hours every night after I get home from my day job (software engineer), eat dinner, throw the ball for the dogs, go for a walk with my wife and the dogs, and then finally settle in. And I have a clearly defined plot laid out for the rest of the novel. Best, I’m no longer struggling. I just sit down each night and write.
What has become clear is that I will write a novel. Whether or not it’s any good and whether or not I can manage to get it published, well those are still to be determined, but I will finish this novel. Soon.
This is, I have to confess, my first attempt at a novel. I wrote and sold a few short things ages and ages ago, a short story and a poem to IASFM, a vignette to somewhere else, a poem for inclusion in Asimov’s and Jeppson’s “Laughing Space”, but even the longest of those never topped 12,000 words.
I had no idea how hard it is to think in “novel space”. Or “was”. Scrivener makes “novel space” something I can stand in and look around. It gives me access.
I tell everyone about it. So far only one of my would-be-writer friends has downloaded it, but I keep pushing it. Constantly!
I LOVE it. Thank you for all your hard work.
Happy Valentine’s.