Techy Tuesday: Scrivener (Software)

With National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) rapidly descending (less than 2 weeks til I have to start polishing my NanoNovel), I thought it was fitting to talk about the software that I used when I was writing said novel :)  Meet Scrivener!

Since I was an official participant in NaNoWriMo, I was eligible for a discount on it.   I admit, I nowhere near used it to it's full potential and I full intend to learn much more about it over the next few months as I plan my second book for this November.  

Put out by Literature and Latte, Scrivener is a program that is especially for novelists.  It allows you to plan your novel, map out your characters, write your story, compile your manuscript into various formats...well - it pretty much does anything a writer would need it to do to get that book out of ones head and into ones hard drive!

Because I was using it as a word processor more than anything else, I really came to love a couple of the features above the others.   To free me from distraction, I often resorted to working in full screen.  This would block out the rest of my computer so I could just concentrate on the task at hand (and was quite good at it too, as I was definitely less inclined to send emails or check Twitter when I was in this mode).   The other feature I loved was the word count.  It allowed me to set up my daily word goal (VERY important when you are in a word count based challenge) and I could watch my progress as the novel came further along each day.

The software isn't terribly expensive, as software goes.   They sell it for $45.  I think the Nano discount brought it closer to $30.  And then, of course, after I "won" by finishing my 50,000 words - the discount became even deeper as one of the "winner goodies" - I think it was 40% off or something ridiculous like that.   I only kicked myself for a moment when I saw that bigger discount because, overall, I was very happy to have had the software to write my novel with.

More importantly - I am even happier to have it on my side when editing starts in 2 weeks time.   And then...onward to planning my next one :)