Scrivener just plain rocks.
Okay, okay. I know. Word is fine. Google docs is fine. They are all fine and get the job done, everyone is happy and damn if we don’t all hate and resist change.
My “day job” is as a photographer. (no no, for realsies. I take portraits, shoot weddings, occasionally band promo kits and model head shots, not gonna lie: it’s awesome and fun and the perfect career choice for an art geek). I remember when the buzz started about Lightroom, a software Adobe had developed to complement and in some ways replace Photoshop as part of the photographer’s work flow, boy howdy was there some resistance. Including from me. Because I didn’t want to have to shell out $ for more software, when I was already running Photoshop, the most magnificent photo-editing software in the world.
But eventually, Lightroom got me because of all the things it does–cataloguing, batch editing, batch import/export operations, etc. etc. that save me time in my workflow. Time that can then be spent marketing or doing research or *grin* writing.
So, when I became admittedly a late adopter of LR in my photography workflow, I vowed I was never gonna let a resistance to change stop me from utilizing something that could speed up my work flow and make my life easier.
Enter Scrivener. Y’all, Scrivener doesn’t make your teeth shine, your hair bounce, or your fingers type faster. It doesn’t make you a better writer.
It makes you a better equipped writer. It is organized in a sublimely visual way that makes this photographer’s toes curl. It allows you to shift and move story points around without any ctrl+c/ctrl+v hold your breath and pray you got it all.
It can name your characters for you–put that ancient baby name book down, y’all. Seriously, that battered old thing has been on your bookshelf since you wrote your first short story two dozen years ago. You’ve highlighted every name you’d ever thought you’d use and you’ve used most of them already.
And yes, in this one way, Scrivener is the answer to your most fervent writer prayer: your synopsis will write itself.
No, I’m not kidding.
Not an exaggeration.
Your synopsis will write itself.
Okay, you still have to do the typing. But it’s organic to using Scrivener as an organizing tool: each document within your Scrivener binder has an index card associated with it to remind you what’s in the file when you hover the mouse over it. Write on the index card what the file says. A catchy, zing-y blurb to remind yourself what is inside, and when you go to compile the manuscript, those little blurbs get lined up and compiled as your synopsis. And it was painless.
Your synopsis just wrote itself. You will not be drunk tweeting about how much you hate writing synopses and then struggling to actually write the damn thing with a hangover the next morning. You might clean it up a bit, polish it, whatever, but you’re not spending hours staring at your computer wondering why the hell you thought you wanted to be a writer when they actually pay people to clean floors–which sounds pretty awesome compared to pulling a synopsis out from under your fingernails.
Y’all, it’s less than $50. Rather than settle for something that simply lets you put words on a page, why not treat yourself to a program that will speed up your workflow and your output?
Yeah, yeah, I’m a Scrivener evangelist. They aren’t paying me to write this. They don’t even know about it. It’s quarter to five in the morning and I am more excited about Scrivener than my coffee.
There aren’t many things in life more exciting to me than my early morning coffee. 😉