For me, Scrivener is up there with books, dogs, and peanut butter. If you have ever had a conversation with me, you know how high of a compliment that is.
I genuinely feel that if you are a writer of any sort (including academic) and have not used Scrivener, you are missing out on something. Let me start at the beginning. My TaleMy evolution of writing tools went something like this: crayons, pencils, mechanical pencils, pens, word processor, Scrivener. I used Word for a long time. It worked, sort of. It’s fine for short stories and poems, but if you have ever tried to write a novel in Word, you know that it crashes the second you start counting your words in ten-thousands. Sure, you can split your baby up in different files, but if you’re an indecisive creature like me, sometimes paragraphs move from chapter to chapter. And no, I do not want to open and search through twelve different files to figure out what color the minor character’s eyes are. Besides that, there’s page breaks and section breaks to deal with. Really, formatting a book in a typical word processor is just a mess. Can you tell I did not have a good experience with Word? Enter Scrivener! How did I find it? NaNoWriMo, of course! I participated my junior year of high school, won, and received the magical Scrivener discount. However, I did not buy Scrivener at that time. I was still using my poor Toshiba laptop and had plans to go Mac. (If you’ve read my post about how to organize your writing, you know I have done so.) But alas, there was no Scrivener for Windows back then. (They have since rectified that situation.) There was, however, a beta! I downloaded it, tried it, and immediately fell in love. Let me point out that my first experience with Scrivener was a semi-buggy beta, without all the features it has now. And it was still fifty times better than Word. The absolute first download I made after buying my Mac was Scrivener. And (hold onto your hats, folks). I paid full price for it. Again, if you know me, you know how much of a compliment that is. I learned two things from my mother: go straight to the clearance rack and always check the “cheap grocery store” first. (To this day, I do not know the real name of that establishment.) So when I say I paid full price for something, it doesn’t matter if the price was two bucks or two thousand. That means I wanted it. Like I was going to spontaneously combust if I did not have said item in my possession. So that’s the story of how I came to be a Scrivenite. (Real word? Doubtful, but I like it.) Let me come to the review portion of this review.
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About the Pen Your Own Pages BlogWhat does "pen your own pages" mean? Write your own story, in your own way. But know the writing community is behind you, cheering you on. This blog is meant to be a source of support, information, and community. Victoria is an East Tennessee author and editor. She is the owner of Blue Pen, which offers editing services and book design services. Follow Victoria on Twitter and YouTube. |
I love this software! I've had it for about a year and also paid full price. (Like you, I had to really want it bad to pay full price ). I just wanted to mention that it's super easy to use. I was scared the first time I opened it because I had no idea how to do anything in the program. But the tutorial is fabulous and I was up and writing within minutes.
It has SO many features, but the great thing is you don't have to use them all at once. The basics are super easy to master, and then you get to keep learning. I've used the program for years, and I'm still learning.
This is one of my goals for 2016 is to learn how to use Scrivener. I've already bought the "dummies" book for it and have begun experimenting with the it, but I still have a long way to go.
Honestly, the best way to learn is to just play with it! Tutorials and things are great, but you'll figure out what works for you by spending time in the program.
I have been using Scrivener on-and-off for a few years, but it had never replaced my primary software - WriteItNow. However, just completed NaNoWriMo using it again, so in 2017 I will have to force myself to adapt to it....and convince myself it is the best.
And my greatest fear is losing a project - Scrivener did that but at least I had an rtf copy that word could read
Definitely set up some back-ups! I keep all my writing synced to Google Drive. Plus I back up to an external drive hourly with Time Machine. Losing work is a writer's worst fear.
I now make at least three backups, including one on OneDrive and one on a USB flash drive.
Scrivener was literally a game changer for me with my thesis work. It helped me compile all my research into one place and actually made me more motivated to get stuff done!
I don't know why I took so long to use Scrivener for academic writing. But once I switched, it made life so much easier!
I'd love to hear otherwise, but I don't think it supports "round-tripping" in and out to Word format, preserving editorial comments, which for me is a super important requirement, since a good professional editor helps (me) so much.
Victoria, I'm your newest subscriber.
Excellent review. I'm planning to purchase Scrivener for my next project, even if I have to pay full price.
Hi Victoria,
Always great to find a fellow Scrivener fan!
I agree that it's so good for academic writing. I wish I had it when I was at University, would have saved soooo much hassle compared to the way I wrote my papers!
I also think the composition mode is absolutely awesome.
Not sure if you've seen - http://scrivenerville.com/ - but it's pretty cool, has some good Scrivener discounts which people might find useful.
Have you heard of Vellum? I've heard some people say it's better than Scrivener, but I'm yet to try it myself.
Thanks!
Good review. Scrivener's my go-to for anything longer than a short story. Combined with Vellum for professional-looking output files, and it's the best of all worlds.
Fortunately for Word, I still write shorts sometimes.
While Literature & Latte's Scrivener for Mac continues its success story, the Windows version remains little more than a disaster. After L&L has left current customers out in the rain (bug reports for version 1, which is still being sold by L&L as the official Windows version, have been ignored for years, and "support" has been handed over to an unapologetic volunteer crowd), the official policy is to tell customers that they must buy Scrivener again (this time future version 3) if they actually want to see any bugs fixed. Whether or not current users will appreciate this questionable policy and pour more money into the underfunded software remains to be seen, but if the way L&L have treated customers in the past is any indicator of how things will be handled in the future, Windows users looking for reliable writing software should probably look elsewhere.
I'm not sure what the complaint is, exactly. I've been using Win Scrivener version 1 and its updates since 2010. It has worked perfectly for my needs, and I was happy to pay the 45$ for it. That's quite a return on investment. As for the Beta version of Win Scriv 3, I've been using that since Beta 7. It's now up to Beta 33, and works well for my needs, just as V1 worked. When 3 becomes available to purchase, I'll lay out the bucks. Software that just works. Imagine that. And cheap, too. I'm a happy user, unlike the previous poster.
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