I was going to attempt NaNoWriMo, and got clearance from all three relevant committees: the Work-in-the-Home (aka DIY) Committee, the Leisure Activities (aka Movies) Committee and the Divorce Watchdog.
After spending a couple of days working on the outline for my book, I downloaded and paid for Scrivener for PC (cost, including 23% VAT: €42).
At 11am yesterday (Sunday) I started the 2 hour Scrivener Tutorial. I completed it by 16:30. Four and a half hours for a 2 hour tutorial. That’s got to be a record. Okay, I took a phone call and had a lunch break in there.
Scrivener looks interesting. It was designed for the Mac, but is now also available for the PC. What you get is a screen designed to help you organize your manuscript – whatever type of project it is: Novel, Screenplay, Short story, whatever. If you haven’t tried it, take a look. It has the great advantage that it will output eBook formats directly as well as most of the industry standard file formats (.doc, pdf etc.)
The software can be downloaded here for a free trial period of 30 days.
After the tutorial it took me a couple of attempts to import one of my short stories into Scrivener. I then segmented it into “scenes” and went about rearranging these on my “corkboard”. All great fun and highlighted a couple of flaws in the storyline.
As for NaNoWriMo, I’ve decided life’s too short. So it’s NoWayWriMo for me. Maybe next year. (Enough of the hollow laughter)
