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Writing Challenge Day 3 - Back to Scrivener

Sorry Scrivener, all is forgiven.

I've actually been using LibreOffice for about a month because I was using for a different project over the holiday period, and generally, everything was fine. But then today, right in the middle of a sprint, it started acting a little weird. I tried to undo a few things only to see it replace chunks of text with error messages. Then it crashed completely.

Thing is, this document is less than 5,000 words. That's not a lot for a word processor to handle. And while it autorecovered the file, it's still one too many crashes for me. 

Going to back to Scrivener, I suddenly remembered the Session Target tool. This makes life so much easier, as I can see, as I type, my progress. In LibreOffice I'd have to paste the word count into the spreadsheet I'd made. 

Project targets window

It also displays as a line bar at the top of the project with the Manuscript Target at the top, above the chapter title, and the Session Target below, so there's always something on show.

Top of Editor Window.


I'll live without a global undo and just ignore the bells and whistles. There are however, a few other advantages of Scrivener which I need to nail down here for when I go through this same thing again in the future. Colour labelling for files is gold. This is something I run through a whole project, going from orange for first drafts, yellow for revised and green for final. Simple, but very useful. I make use of the notes window in the Inspector too.

And I've got a plan for the compiler. Something I've never tried before. If I hit my wordcount today, I might have a play - at the time of writing this, I think I'm around 1,600 words. 

Later

Well, true to form, once I was back in Scrivener, I started messing around with the Compiler and lost about an hour. How can something designed to be used for writers be so insanely complicated to use? I'm from an IT background -- I used to build characters and VR environments for video games, so I'm not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to using software, but this is just mental.

I gave up in the end and I've decided to just go with the standard formatting options. It's just easier that way.

But I did get some writing done too. I've just hit the word count. 2,314. But I've switched POV to 1st person as an experimental chapter. The chapter I wrote yesterday is from Alice's point of view. She's the wife, but she also has the potential for a big secret going on. And while the chapter is okay, it just isn't good enough. I think it would be much better told from the MC's perspective in conversation. But that's for a future edit.

This is why I find Writing Into the Dark so difficult. I feel like I need to know what is going to work before I write it. 

I'm going to keep going and simply experiment along the way. I heard a great piece of advice today about finishing the first draft and accept that it'll be terrible. But at the end, you'll have something you can mould.

This sounds so much less daunting than the Dean Wesley Smith approach.




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