My new playmate

Scrivener. I love it. And I haven't played around with it much yet.  First I have a lot of JAD to type up from three different notebooks, when I am done with that and feeling restless, confused, and uncertain- that will be a good time to procrastinate by learning more about Scrivener.

Right now I'm just using it to write. But with the added bonus of chapters and scenes- which are wonderful compared to what I was doing. The old way- I would be going through these notebooks and having to scroll repeatedly through the whole body of text to find my section. Now I know where things are-listed on the main page, in order-so I can find things. I turn a page in my notebook and find something I wrote for the end of the story- and type that up in a chapter- then turn another notebook page and I'm in the beginning of the story- so I click on the first chapter and add the scene there. It is so much easier than the stupid way I used to work. And is turning notebook pages that flip back and forth randomly through time, into a sequential entity.

I also really enjoy the ability to drag photos in for my characters- and to see them all on a page together. I click on them, type info about them there- click back. It is much more useful than my old way of doing things with desktop folders with different bits of info and related parts scattered all over. Plus it is fun. It is so easy to go back and forth between things. I usually write in fullscreen composition mode- I imported a picture of the beach- which I faded out behind my text-it's a lovely way to write.

There are many other features just waiting for me to take the time to learn how to use them. I have no doubt that in the future, they will prove extremely helpful too. When I first read about Scrivener, and watched the tutorial on youtube I was intimidated. I am not a computer person. It looked complicated to use to me. But then I downloaded the free trial, and realized I didn't need to learn how to do everything right away. I just needed to know certain things for right now to move forward with my writing project- and I didn't find anything I needed to learn for that to be hard at all. It was straight forward enough that I could figure that out by just playing around with it.

My only complaint is that I had to abandon my outdated laptop because it wouldn't run on it- not much will these days- and move upstairs onto my husband's computer. So I had to reconfigure this whole space so his desk has a view out a window (he doesn't care one way or the other)- and clear piles of stuff off of it- so I can set down my notebook and a glass of water and work here. Headphones are now important too, as it is still summer, and my 17 year old son is on the other side of the room, on his own computer, listening to music that I am not at all able to block out. Though I try and try and....