I’m curious to find out if anyone is using Scrivener for a Writer’s Journal/Notebook? If so, how are you using Scrivener’s features to organize it?
Probably many are; it’s such a damned versatile and flexible tool, you can tackle most anything with it. As for journaling, I used the hierarchy of files and documents, setting year then month then day as titles – you could even break it down into parts of the day, should you choose.
But notice I said “used.” Strengths of Scrivener, for my use, are those features which help organize and inter-relate the separate (occasionally disparate) elements. My journal entries, however, are typically one-off items, once in a while with inter-connections but those only accidental or incidental. No reason, in my mind, to tie them together. And so, because it seemed to me not the most efficient use of the program, I wound up going back to Journler, which I’d been using for years. (It’s being phased out – dumped to open source, if you want to hack away at it – but still works fine on Lion.)
Not to discourage you from trying, as Scrivener is almost everything a writer might need for writing. (You’ll have noticed considerable dismay among denizens of the forum, particularly those recently arrived, at Scrivener’s inability to find them an agent, part their hair, or summon their familiars. Screw them.) It will, as I noted, work quite well as a journal. For me, it was a matter of staying with a specific tool, and saving Scrivener for what it does – in my opinion – best: writing prose (fiction/non-fiction), keeping track of what I’ve done and how it connects to other stuff I’ve done, and assembling all the far-flung elements into a package fit for an editor.
ps
I used to use a Scrivener project as a writer’s notebook, but I’m afraid it has dwindled. I set up all sorts of folders and sub-folders (for competition entries, submissions, different types of writing exercise, snippets of interesting news items, odd words, half-developed ideas, attempts at short stories, even shorter stories, sketchy outlines of articles and non-fiction books, ideas for novels…). Once an idea grew big enough and interesting enough, I dragged it off to a separate project of its own, so it could fizzle out in its own space (but that’s another story). The writer’s notebook project was really just a playground for messing about in, experimenting with things, and at the time I found Scrivener to be the ideal tool for it.
My high-level folders were things like Fiction, Non-Fiction, Source Material, Submissions etc. Within these, I used different folders for observations, exercises, character sketches, ideas, snippets etc, as needed. Then I added labels to indicate the revision status for those things that were my own work, and used the status field to show the next planned step for each document with a label (? to show that I hadn’t revisited it yet, rework now, consider for re-use, consider for attempted publication, ditch). Metadata searches helped me to fish out those things which I wanted to work on next.
I hit the doldrums for a long time with my writing, so I simply stopped using this project (no reflection on Scrivener’s credentials for the job, to which I still think it is admirably suited). Recently I have tried to kick-start my writer’s notebook, but I have decided to do it in DevonThink Pro instead – mainly because I found on revisiting my old Scrivener one that I couldn’t remember what was in it, and it occurred to me that DTP’s artificial intelligence features might come in handy if I ever want to dredge through the random contents.
I have also bought a new notebook (of the old-fashioned paper variety) to carry around with me, because all the books I have ever read about writing tell me that this is a good idea. I can’t see me ever wanting to write little observational gems in public (I used to feel self-conscious about it even when I was legitimately making notes at performances while writing for a regional newspaper), but you never know. But how do you carry a notebook around with you everywhere if none of your clothes have any pockets? 
Like Hemingway did, between your teeth!
On sale now in Greenwich market.
I’ve tried most known ways of taking notes on the computer. I had a Newton, an iPaq, various software solutions on various notebooks beginning with a Radio Shack Model 100. I keep coming back to a paper notebook and a pen.
Like Hemingway, I like the Moleskine notebooks, and very specifically the Moleskine Cahiers, which is a minimalist little saddle-stitched thing with a nondescript tan cardboard cover that fits into every pocket of every item of clothing I own–and I very specifically own no clothing not equipped with pockets.
I write the beginning date of each notebook on the front, and when it’s filled up I write the end date, plus whatever of significance it might contain. I write from front to back on the right-hand pages, and when I reach the end I invert it and write from the new front toward the new back on the new right-hand pages.
I file them by date, but before filing I often transfer much of the contents to places of use–into the WIP, into Scrivener files for future WIPs, ideas good and bad, reminders: things of use. Once I transfer something, I draw a line through it and leave a note to myself saying where it went.
I have an index, a simple Scrivener file, listing the rough contents of my collection of notebooks (including the supermarket 3x5 spiral rings that preceded the Cahiers). They go back, hmmmmm, 18 years. The Cahiers first appear in my files about 12 years ago.
The notebook in current use goes with me everywhere–in a shirt pocket (I buy Pocket-Ts for the summer), in a hip pocket. At night, the notebook sleeps beside the bed, and I sometimes rise early and fill it with things I would otherwise forget.
There’s something satisfyingly memorable about the flow of a Uni-Ball Vision micro across the paper that I just don’t get from digital.
Of course, I’m totally getting an iPad 3. Just to see.
But then I’d have to remove the rose! 
That would disappoint Mr K.
From: archives.estonbond.com/2009/08/t … moleskine/
"I’ve found plenty of conversations recently on Moleskine-based blogs as well as general writing sites such as The Fountain Pen Network who instantly reference Chatwin or Hemingway whenever Moleskine is mentioned. Whilst true that the authors did use a book that resembled the Moleskine, both died a decade before Modo & Modo registered their Moleskine trademark in 1996. The Moleskine Modo & Modo produces is as much Chatwin’s Moleskine as any of the other Moleskine clones by papermakers such as the Spanish Miquelrius or British Paperchase.
“In a 2004 IHT article, Modo & Modo marketing director Francesco Franceschi even admitted to the marketing con, saying that “[The Moleskine link to Chatwin and Hemingway is] an exaggeration. It’s marketing, not science. It’s not the absolute truth.” According to Wikipedia’s entry on Moleskine, Chatwin’s last supplier of his Moleskinesque notebooks was a stationer in Tours, France, hardly an Italian company that binds their millions of moleskin oilcloth notebooks in China before finishing them in Italy.”
Well, I’m glad I fell for the marketing con, then, because my writing took me mostly to locations of the wet and miserable variety, and the Moleskine Cahiers were the only notebooks that persistently survived intact. There’s a couple of foot-tall stacks of them on the corner of my desk that have been everywhere from the Grampians to the Torngats, from Tierra del Fuego to Midway Island. The spiral-rings from the market and various flavors of small saddle-stitched office-store versions were shedding pulpy pages before they were halfway filled.
I tried the full-size fancy Moleskines, so beloved of the GTD obsessives, but they lack the portability and the (for want of a better word) file-ability of the skinny little Cahiers. And they’re also unnecessarily expensive (the Cahiers are about eight bucks for a pack of three).
Yeah, I used to use Moleskines, but their paper quality went downhill for fountain pen users. It looks like the quality has improved a bit since then, but it still pales in comparison to the Quo Vadis “Habana.” It’s got the elastic enclosure like the classic-variety Moleskines, and the pocket. But it’s not as mobile as the Cahiers, of course (which I also enjoyed, but the paper was a deal breaker). If you use rollerballs, then hey, there’s no problem; however, for wet ink, nothing beats the Quo Vadis Habanas, which use Clairefontaine paper. The ultimate notebook IMO. 
Did you notice any change when they went from 90 to 85 in the paper weight for Quo Vadis Habanas?
Leuchtturm1917. Proper paper, numbered pages, index. Dream notebooks:
thepaperie.co.uk/brands/leuc … RfAodmA3cC
Product Details
Made by Leuchtturm1917
Blank index & numbered pages for easy organization of notes
Acid free 100gsm paper
Stickers for labeling and archiving
Thread bound book opens flat
8 perforated and detachable sheets
Expandable pocket in inside cover takes A4 sheets
Page marker ribbon
Thanks, Jenny.
Hi, Hugh.
Your motto says “It’s not the arrow. It’s the Indian.”
Do you mean “Arrows don’t kill people. Indians do.”?
Interesting thought! Reminds me of guns in America. Nineteen times the murder rate of Australia, mostly using guns, and they say… now what do they say? “Guns don’t kill people. People do.”
But… Canada has a similar gun ownership ratio per capita to the USA, and a much lower murder rate. Now why is that? Are Canadians less prone to murder as a population? It’s a mystery.
Like Scrivener: Scrivener doesn’t write novels… people do!
I knew I had a point to get to, there…
John Tranter, Sydney
Yeah, these are incredible good notebooks, the Mercedes Benz among notebooks. Definitely designed by someone who used them heavily for himself; you can tell that from all these small, clever details. Unfortunately they are difficult to find.
Indeed yes - a pathetic attempt at irony, underpinned by my scepticism that certain doodads and gizmos that some favour will make a good writer of me or anybody else, but undermined by my belief that very good arrows like Scrivener are very good weapons to have.
Exegete:
No. I found no difference between the lighter paper. It's only 5 grams, so.... I love the Quo Vadis.Man, what was I looking for a good notebook. Didn’t find any which really had all what I want. Moleskin is much too expensive so I bought me a simple Club DINA6 which is very nice and cheap enough so that I can I buy it often, 5.95€ only. Only missing thing all are missing and I now found whilst checking the leuchturm1917 site, a simple pen-loop! That was the essential feature I was so much missing…
Gonna grab it through amazon right now 
Maybe trying a leuchturm1917-notebook too 
edit: Meant din6, 5 was to big for me. Needed something I could always carry with me.
They take their aggression out on moose.