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Writing on the Mac: Scrivener Software
Review by Sara Polsky
I tend to be a low-maintenance writer: I scrawl notes on whatever scrap paper I
have lying around and write my full drafts in Microsoft Word. Occasionally, I've
even drafted things in text-only programs. At least, that's the way I operated
until I discovered Scrivener, a new Mac-only writing software geared toward
novelists but useful for all writers.
Scrivener gives writers a way to keep all aspects of a project-- research,
outlines, and drafts-- together, with the menu on the left side of the screen
allowing the user to access any part of the project at a time. At the research
stage, Scrivener users can take notes using Scrivener's word processing
functions. Even better, Scrivener allows users to import webpages and save them
in the program, eliminating worries about losing links to important resources.
Scrivener is at least as useful for drafting pieces as it is for research. If
you like to skip around while writing a draft, you can keep all the pieces of
your draft in separate files, accessed via the project menu. When you finish a
particular phase of the draft, you can take a "snapshot" in case you want to
look at or restore an earlier version of the file while revising.
Both research notes and draft sections can be organized on the corkboard, my
favorite Scrivener feature. The program links every document you write or
import-- a piece of your draft or a webpage you've saved, for example-- to an
index card, which is pinned to the corkboard. (The "draft" and "research"
subsections of each project have their own corkboards.) When you switch index
cards around, the order of the files moves, too, giving you a quick way to
rearrange scenes or chapters and saving you the trouble of organizing your work
on a non-virtual board. You can also see the index cards in outline form, which
allows you to label each "card" as a concept or chapter and denote whether it's
still to be written, a first draft or revision, or a final version.
In addition to the word processor, corkboard, and outliner, Scrivener has a
number of other functions that make a writer's life easier. For instance, users
can set the program to "full screen" mode, which will prevent you from seeing
the documents on your desktop or the Internet windows minimized on the bottom of
your screen. I find the "full screen" tool particularly helpful in my constant
quest to stop checking my e-mail and start writing.
Scrivener's primary flaw is that its word processing capabilities are still
rather basic. When I tried importing academic documents into the program, for
example, the footnotes and some of the spacing didn't transfer properly. But
Scrivener does offer an export function that allows you to move any document
into another word processor, a relatively easy way to take care of advanced
formatting problems.
Scrivener users are ultimately left with the same problem all writers face: the
blank page. But because Scrivener took away my usual organizational hurdles and
distractions, I felt able to face that blank page with a little more courage.
Scrivener is available in a 30-day free trial, and if you choose not to purchase
it, you'll be able to open it once after the 30 days are up to export any files
you created in the program. Learn more about the program and download the trial
at
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html.
Sara Polsky is a senior at Harvard University, where she
studies medieval history and literature. Her writing has appeared in Renaissance
Magazine, Mystery Scene Magazine, Student Traveler, and other publications.
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