Using Scrivener: More Perspectives

Last week, in a post titled, “ Working With Scrivener : More Tips” I had written about my progress in using Scrivener. I want to share with you this time some perspectives that I have gained from posts by others who shared their experiences in using Scrivener. I found these to be pretty useful, and I hope they will be of use to you.

To start with, here’s a post by  Erin Elizabeth Long aka Girl None on why she thinks Scrivener is the “Best Creative Writing Software.”

A major take away for me from her post was her recommendation to use Calibre to format your ebooks. I haven’t done this kind of thing myself. I somehow feel the task is quite formidable, but I plan to explore Calibre more to figure out whether someday I can use it too. In the only ebook I have had published, “He Sees Everything & Other Short Stories” some one did the formatting of the book for me before it went up on Smashwords. I have also tried to figure out how to self-publish on Kindle, Lulu and Create Space but have baulked at the idea of having to do all that formatting. The process, at least for me, seems to be far more difficult than it is made out to be.

You might like this post by Natasha Lester in her blog which is charmingly named ” While The Kids Are Sleeping.” Ms Lester writes of her taking to Scrivener. On reading her post, I felt encouraged that I seemed to be on the right track as far as using Scrivener was concerned.

I haven’t used Scrivenings too much so I found this review in 9 to 5 Mac by Ben Lovejoy quite useful. I hadn’t realized that Scrivenings show you sections which need not be contiguous. There could be material from different chapters in one view. This is a powerful tool which again I need to explore further.

I also found some useful pointers on using Scrivener in this post by Young Adult author, Shana Norris.  I particularly liked the way she uses it to categorise her articles that she writes as a free lancer.

Thanks to these people and many others out there who continually share their experiences. This makes it that much more easy for others to use this writing software. I am convinced that if one were to use even a fraction of its total potential, it would still be worth  the investment.