Posts on software

Uh oh. Just when I'm all set to throw my money at Scrivener, Mariner Software, developer of my long-favorite drafting software MacJournal, throws this at me:

Introducing StoryMill 3.
The latest release in Mariner Software’s long line of writing and creativity software. StoryMill introduces aspiring authors to multi-level writing methods of tracking characters, scenes, and locations, while professional writers will appreciate StoryMill’s time-saving ability to oversee and manage the full creative process with Smart Views.

What's a girl to think? StoryMill has a trial period of 30 start-ups, so I'll probably take a gander. It's only $5 more expensive than Scrivener, so cost won't be the deciding factor. There's nothing to do but try it.

I've been hearing about Scrivener for ages, but I only downloaded it this past week. I figured with the new year rolling around and a new round of rewrites to work on, I'd try something new.

On its website, Scrivener is described as "a word processor and project management tool created specifically for writers of long texts such as novels and research papers." It's not intended for making your final text look all pretty and print-ready; it's meant for all the ugly, scribbly, patchworky stuff up to that point. Oh, and it's for Mac OS X only.

The past few years, I've been using MacJournal for the drafting stage, then exporting it to our evil ally Microsoft Word for final edits and formatting. MacJournal, as the name suggests, is intended for journaling and related chronological writing activities such as blogging and podcasting. I've enjoyed using it because it allows you to create multiple journals (in my case, novel drafts) with multiple entries (chapters), making it much easier to segment and jump around between segments than an MS Word file of unholy length.

So far, what I'm liking more about Scrivener than MacJournal are its drag'n'drop capabilities. Since Scrivener is not fundamentally a chronological tool, it's much easier to reorder chapters and click between drafts/chapters, which is immensely helpful when working on a major revision. I also like the full-screen option, which allows you to see your document as an uncluttered expanse without buttons and your desktop/other applications cluttering up your peripheral view.

(In fairness to MacJournal, I haven't been running the very latest version, which definitely incorporates full-screen capabilities and may well have other nifty features to rival Scrivener's.)

There are a couple of differences from MacJournal in the export process I'm not crazy about, but (a) it may be that I just haven't yet figured out how to resolve them and (b) the inconviences are outweighed by the perks. For one thing, there doesn't seem to be a way of exporting all files in a project into one single file, without first "merging" them. For another, when you export a project, it creates a new folder with your files in it, instead of overwriting the old folder.

In terms of protecting exported files from being accidentally overwritten by the impulsive writer-type person, these are very good things. But as someone who backs up projects frequently and doesn't really *want* 50 zillion midstream versions cluttering up my harddrive, I find it annoying not to have the option of overwriting.

Scrivener has a lot of power that I haven't even touched. Right now I'm just using it for revising and drafting, but it has tools for gathering multimedia research, formatting screenplays, and other neat stuff. Best of all, you can try it for free for 30 days! After that, it's only 40 buckaroos, which I will gladly throw down if the next 24 days go as swimmingly as the first six.

Last night I ran Microsoft’s spell-check on a 250-page novel. I always write with the spelling and grammar checks turned off because otherwise every page would be full of red and green squiggles.

I’m not a bad speller (hey, I was the second best speller in second grade!), but MS Word really hates my grammar. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if MS Word had its way, every poem would be a business letter.

Anyway, if I leave the spell-check until the end, I can worry about more important issues, like does this story make any sense whatsoever?

Last night’s spell-check revealed a great many boring typos and intentional misspellings (e.g., “He’s fiiine!”). But a few words I got so totally wrong I was actually thinking, “God bless spell-check!” as I corrected the mistakes.

Here are a few examples of my invented lexicon, whose meanings I can only guess at, Balderdash-style:

• Capuchino – caffeinated beverage of choice for professional monkeys on the go
• Criterium – the chemical element by whose qualities all other elements are judged

And my favorite:

• Mediocracy – system of government characterized by unexceptional leadership from the top down (I'm sure you can think of examples)