Tools of the Trade

How many of you have heard of or used Scrivenor?  It’s a writing program, designed by writers for writers.  I used to hear a lot about it from some friends over at Compuserve. They raved about how it was the most amazing thing ever and made writing so easy.  You know, other than coming up with the words.  But as it was only for Mac and I refuse to own anything Mac or Mac related I stopped paying attention. 

Last year just before November the good people at scrivener announced that they were working on a windows version and guess what, you could try the beta version out free for NaNo.  And if you won NaNo you got a code that would give you fifty percent off the finished program when it came out in 2011. 

Well, my friends have been raving for so long I thought I would give it a try.  It was free after all and if I didn’t like it I could stop using it.  I admit I loved it.  It has more bells and whistles than I will ever use.  There are lots of things geared towards outlines and I don’t use outlines but for the most part it was pretty darn good. 

Because I’m a pantster and a chunkster I am often moving scenes and chapters around. This program made it so easy.  In fact for my NaNo novel last year I had four threads that weaved around each other and I was able to keep each one in its own thread then shuffle them together when I needed.  It has a split screen ability so if you want to have blank page for writing and still have an old scene up so you can check eye color or last names you can.  You can split the screen horizontally or vertically depending on your preference.  Not quite as nice as dual monitors but since I don’t have those very helpful.  There are places for notes by scene, chapter or as a whole.  I could never detail everything the program can do so you’ll just have to go check it out here. 

All in all, this program made it very easy to draft my novel.  They are releasing the full version on November 7^th and it is now available for pre-ordering at ten percent off. (Twenty for students)   If you won NaNo last year you got a code for fifty percent off. If you lost your code I’ve heard you can tell the good people over there your NaNo name last year and they’ll look it up for you.  It’s only forty dollars to begin with, which isn’t too bad for a great program anyway.  And if you really want, I think you can still download the beta version and play around with it to see if you like it before ordering.