My new love: Scrivener

Since the end of NaNoWriMo, I've been having a lot of problems with the organization of my novel-in-progress. Or I should say, the dis-organization. And the universe heard my frustration and answered with a tidy solution.

Here is the software solution to chronic disorganization:


Allow me to introduce you to Scrivener. (I even like its icon--the yin yang and quotation marks--perfect!)


Its like I have my own personal team of software developers who heard about my (writing) problems and created this software just for me--that is how perfectly it solved my (writing) problems. I downloaded it a week ago and have been using it happily all week.

Actually, that is an understatement: I have been **spazy** and **thrilled** to get to my computer each day and to get my paws on my story. It's like my computer now has a magic organizing fairy inside!

Instead of wading in the mire of folders that I had in the word processing program that I usually use, trying to find what I know I wrote last week and want to now incorporate into my master document, and tearing my hair out because I can't remember whether it is in the file titled "Scrap" or the file titled "Fearless Risk Taking Writing" (which I named on a day that I needed a little pep talk) or in the file titled "Rewrite" or the file titled "Gaps to fill". Scrivener helps me actually find what I am looking for pretty quickly.

It has even transformed my non-creative days into productive days. I did not write much new prose today--my brain was foggy and groggy and really not sharp enough to spit out sparkly words that anyone would want to read. But with my buddy Scrivener I was able to solve some other important problems that didn't require a creative mind: things like in which POV a troublesome chapter should be written, how to integrate the antagonists story in the flow of the plot (rather than my previous method of having a separate file called: "Bad Guy Stuff" with little stars inserted into the main document where I thought parts might eventually be inserted). I was even able to come up with some chapter titles. This is all stuff that I would have struggled to do with my word processing version--it was just too big, too long and too much of a mess.

And even better, since I was a NaNo winner, I got 50% off the regular (reasonable) price of $40. I can't even quantify how much the $20 I spent on this software has increased my productivity.

Coincidentally, the same week that I discovered and started to use Scrivener, I read a terrific book, probably the best book with an unreliable narrator I've ever read, called Liar by Justine Larbalestier. I'm not going to blather on about the content of the book because it does have a nifty plot twist that I didn't see coming and I don't want to ruin it for anyone else. Let me just say, it's a really well written YA novel that I'd bet a lot of adult readers would enjoy. The Scrivener coincidence came up when I finished the book and was reading the author's acknowledgments (I like reading these--does anyone else? Though I confess it bugs the crap out of me when they are positioned before the book begins. I think you should thank people at the end of the book). In it she says that she used Scrivener to write the book and didn't think she could have managed the complexity of her plot without it.

I started reading this book the day after I downloaded Scrivener and now that I have played around with it for a week I can completely see how it would make her novel much more manageable. Another reason for me to feel grateful for Scrivener since it enabled me to read a really fun book!

Now I just need to see if the smart people who created Scrivener have another program that will solve the rest of my problems. Anyone know of software that can tackle the problem of every horizontal surface in my house being covered with paper? Earlier this week I waded through a mountain of bills, catalogs, the girl critter's many drawings of dragons, the boy critter's homework that I have no idea whether or not he was supposed to turn in last month, scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names, coupons that I'll probably never remember to use, printed out recipes, book reviews, torn off pages from the Cute Overload calendar, business cards, school phone directories, and so on. I thought I did a pretty good job of organizing and recycling, but now that it is the weekend, I look around the sty house and it has all reappeared.

If someone can write a program that solves this problem, I swear I will drop this novel writing nonsense and devote myself to pitching your product until you have made your first million.

Winner!

I did it! I added 53000 words to my novel this month.

Whew!

That said, my novel is more done than it was but still not a full draft. I'd say the last third is still pretty sketchy. The first third is now pretty darn good and the middle third is on its way.

But the best thing about NaNoWriMo is that I realized that it really wasn't that hard to crank out 2000 words a day. I really loved the little statistics page on the NaNo website where you saw your word count compared with your daily goal. I'm going to set up a spread sheet and log in my efforts on my own to keep this momentum and motivation going.

Today I am going to clean the house and make dinner and deal with a lot of the stuff that I let slide in the past month. I know that sounds like a sad way to celebrate but asserting some order on my real world (as opposed to my fictional world where all the organizing energy has been spent of late) will feel good. I'll blast loud music and make cookies, too.

And tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting down and cranking out another 2000 words.

Progress!

I just passed the 25,000 word mark for NaNoWriMo--that's the half-way point and supposed to be today's goal. Because Brian and the critters are up north enjoying the beauty of Michigan in Autumn (and possibly freezing their asses off, but the weather has been kinder than in past years) and it is not yet noon, I suspect I will be able to add significantly to that word total in the second half of the day.

One thing that has really kept me going during NaNoWriMo has been new music. In the past I've written mostly to classical music--some traditional (the second movement of Beethoven's 7th Symphony and Bach cello concertos in heavy rotation) and some less so (Steve Reich and Philip Glass minimalism which can get me into a writing trance and make me forget how long I have been sitting in front of the computer).

But this time I'm writing to songs with words. I used to find the words in songs terribly distracting to my own attempts at prose generation. But this time I'm not distracted or annoyed but feel it pushing me gently to keep going. I'm using Pandora Radio to keep a stream of good stuff coming out of the speakers. So far my best writing has come from a station* composed of Great Lakes Swimmers, Bonnie Prince Charlie and Iron & Wine (who I just discovered will be at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival on January 29th). Men's voices, particularly kinda soft ones, seem be doing the trick which is strange because this isn't music I've written to or even listened to that much in the past. I've tried making stations based on some of my favorite women singer's voices but they haven't kept the words flowing like the boys. So thanks boys!

Do you have any particular artists/genres that get you writing? What is on your writing playlist?
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* I'm not sure if that link will take you to the station or not...I can e-mail individuals with a link that should work if you ask (nicely!)

Wake up brain, it's time to wriiiiiite!

Garlic naan bread with cream cheese, sliced raw jalapenos and ground black pepper.

Combining the above spicy breakfast with a strong cup of Roo's French Roast, I'm fueled to punch out my daily word quota in record time.

And then I'll collapse with caffeine tremors and a capsicum burned tongue!

Wow.

It kinda works.

I'm 6 days into NaNoWriMo and I've added 12,199 words to my manuscript. If I can keep up the pace then I think I'll have a complete first draft done by the end of the month.

It helped that for the first two days I was under the mistaken idea that I had to generate 7000 words a day. I have no idea where I came up with that number--maybe I read it on the blog of someone who knew they could only write two or three days per week and thus set themselves an insane daily word goal? I mean, I'm not that bad at math (50,000 words divided by 30 days makes 1666 words per day)! But the goof up turned out to be kind of useful since for the first couple of days I really cranked out the prose (and ate a lot of the kids' Halloween candy). I didn't make 7000 either day, but wrote about 8000 words in two days. That got me ahead of the curve so that, when the critters had the day off school on Tuesday, I had enough of a buffer to skip a day and didn't have to feel guilty about wanting to park them in front of crap videos for hours on end.

And since my initial burst, I've found that writing 1500 words per day isn't that hard. No, they aren't the best words I've ever written, but some of them are decent and others hold the germ of a good chapter. The important thing is that I'm getting the damn plot cranked out and not getting all OCD and revising the first 50 pages over and over again.

I needed something to slap me out of the pattern I'd fallen into and it looks like NaNo was just the thing.

Throwing down the gauntlet

I've signed up and I'm going to do it: the National Novel Writing Month challenge!

After reading Stephanie Perkins' particularly compelling recruitment post, I decided this might just be what I need to get that completed draft cranked out before the end of the year.

It's tempting to procrastinate and write a long meditative post about what I hope will come out of the experience, but the clock is ticking and I have 6,387 more words to spit out today!  Wish me luck!