April 24th, 2012
U is for Update on Using Scrivener
Hello!
Whew! We’re closing in on the finale to the A to Z challenge!
Today, U is for UPDATE ON USING SCRIVENER. 
A little bit ago I had mentioned me downloading the writing software, Scrivener, based on a blog post by a writer friend, Jenny R. Fierro (if you ever get the chance to read her work, I highly recommend it. Two of her flash fiction pieces, Flowers for Clockstreet (a finalist for the 2012 Micro Award!) and Autumn in the Shenandoah were published by Every Day Fiction)
As with anything new there was a bit of a learning curve to using Scrivener, and this is where I recommend taking the tutorial. Yes, I know, it’s *two* hours of exploration, but if you’re someone like me who loves to master the short cuts (shift F7 in Word is the thesaurus, etc) well, those two hours are time well spent learning how to command a tool as cool as Scrivener!
I’m not sure if you can see from this graphic how Scrivener can be customized for the individual. I used the Short Story Template for my entry into J.Taylor Publishing’s Make Believe anthology. In this example, I split the screen so that my Binder (the file tree) was on the left, my scene in the middle and then the image I used for inspiration on the right. I changed the image depending on the scene I was working on. I really like this feature! 
I composed my story for the anthology scene by scene in Scrivener, but I will confess to taking the “finished” scenes and exporting them to Word so I could perform the final edit/review. I resorted back to Word, something I’m familiar with, only because I was still adjusting to Scrivener. I was approaching deadline for submission and I needed to work quickly.
Scrivener came complete with subfolders for me to create all my character sketches, to store the research I completed or the images I used for inspiration. All of that is one click away, in the Binder, on the left side of my screen! No more minimizing my document to open up the “My Pictures” folder on my desktop where all my photo inspirations are, nope! No more multiple word documents used to draft my scenes where I would cut and paste certain elements together. No way! Each scene sits there in the binder, where I can access it quickly and manipulate the placement with ease. Scrivener gives me the flexibility I need to just WRITE!
I really enjoy the freedom Scrivener gives me to write as I do on paper, sketch out a scene or flip the page to do some more character analysis. With the exception being, instead of all that info stored in my spiral bound notebook, it’s all located in the binder, there on the left. Everything I need to create my stories is contained, in one space, not scattered about in several notebooks or scrap pieces of paper (yes, I write on whatever will hold ink, hehe!).
Now that my entry for the Make Believe anthology is finished and submitted, I’m ready to move on. I’ve already started a new project using Scrivener, where I look forward to implementing the Novel template soon.
So how about you my friendly followers, anyone using Scrivener, are you an ol’ Pro at it now? Do you love it or hate it? Are there any tips and tricks you think I should know?
