Using Scrivener

One of my good friends (who is also a writer) has been raving about a program that she uses called Scrivener. For the most part, I have used Microsoft Word to do my writing. It is a solid program and it gets the job done. My friend looked down on me for this.

So I decided that I would give her recommendation a try during Nano. Scrivener was offering a free 30 day trial, so I took the offer and downloaded the program. Now I honestly don't know why I never used it before, because it is really cool.

I don't want to go too much into what the program does because I am not reviewing it, but it does have some cool features that have gotten me quite distracted. For example, I have created my own character profiles before (it's hard to remember how I described characters previously), but Scrivener lets me do that in the book. So I did, and it was very fun. I have spent A LOT of time looking up pictures of people to use as a visual reference for some of my characters. Some of them are really good. Other...not so much. It's really difficult to find an accurate picture when you get really specific about character traits...for example, try googling "one-eyed fat man with scar" and see what you get. There's a lot of variety to say the least.

I eventually gave up finding images of my characters when I had ones for the main characters. I really only need main characters, because those are the ones that are embarrassing to forget (fun fact, I once forgot that Erik was "fair haired" and I still don't know if I ever specified his eye color).

Here is a sample of book 2

I've been writing The Outcast (book 2) for some time now and I have made a lot of progress. A lot of that was during Nanowrimo last month in November. When I created the profile for my novel on that site I shared an excerpt from the book. I figured if I did it there, I should do it here.

Hopefully this little teaser will leave you wanting more:

Rowan stumbled forward. He could tell that he was nearing his end. This land was defeating him. His throat burned for want of water and his stomach pained him. His last drink had been juices squeezed from one of the few plants able to grow in such an environment. The prickly plant had yielded much juice, but it had been tainted and now Rowan wished that he had not succumbed to the thirst.

The combination of sun and tainted juice left Rowan sick and weak. He was hungry, but couldn’t bring himself to eat. Nothing could be kept down, and he was unwilling to waste what little food he had left.

Was he even travelling in the right direction anymore? It was hard to tell.

His head spun and suddenly he could no longer tell up from down. The ground was hard beneath him, throwing up dust as his body made contact. The pain was nothing to him, barely even registering as he fought to regain his senses. Rowan allowed himself a short respite to recover, laying where he had fallen as he rested.

When he rose, it was a struggle. He wavered, finding the weight of his pack much heavier than it ought to be. After finding his balance, he took a tentative step forward. Another followed, and he slowly began to walk. He made it a short distance before his vision went white and he again found himself on the ground. This time Rowan made no effort to move.

He was so tired. He had done so much.

A shadow passed over him briefly. It belonged to one of the scavenger birds that had been following him. He knew without looking, for Lauratrea had no clouds. It was as if the sun would allow nothing else to share its sky.

Why do I fight on? Rowan wondered. He knew that if he did not rise soon, he never would. But a weakness that was not entirely physical held him down. Why do I struggle to live when my life no longer has purpose?

Rowan’s eyes closed. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of defeat, but not the kind that inspired aspirations and a need to overcome. It was the kind that left him resigned, unwilling to rise.

Baird’s voice spoke to him then.

You are more than what you have become.

“I am nothing!” Rowan cried. A surprised flutter of wings came from somewhere outside his field of vision. “I am an outcast. A wanderer. A shadow of what you—,” Rowan choked on his words. “…of what I could have been.”

You run from that which you must face. You turn your back on me.

“What would you have me do?”

Silence.

“You abandoned me!” Rowan’s voice broke. Emotions warred within him, equal parts anger and guilt. “You left me behind so that you could die, but we were supposed to fight together!”

You were weak.

“I was willing! You meant to save me, but my life means nothing now. I am lost, and there is no one to show me the way. I have nothing left.”

Silence.

“Please…answer me. I need you.” Tears streaked Rowan’s cheek, burning lines into his dry skin. He cried silently, lapsing in and out of consciousness.

The highlight of Nanowrimo

So now that Nanowrimo is over, I thought I would share my favorite/funniest and least favorite moments. Of course I enjoyed all of nano, but these are the two moments that I will remember. I'll start by revealing my shame, and hopefully you won't judge me to harshly.

So the most difficult part of nano is dedication to the cause. Writing 50,000 words in a month is no small task, and it requires you to be very dedicated and to write every day. That means no skipping days. So what did I do not once, but twice? I skipped days and I didn't meet my goal. Alone, this isn't really that bad. But I am. "Why?" you ask, well because I failed to meet my word count on the very first day of Nano. Off to a bad start, I eventually caught up. Only to immediately take not one, but two days off. I would argue that I wrote a couple hundred words one of those days, but it didn't make a difference. I was dedicated to the cause though, and caught up again, only to realize that Thanksgiving is a terrible time to write. I spent a full day driving and once again, I was behind. This continued until the very last day of nano, at which point I was able to buckle down and finish. But still, I kinda cut it pretty close. And my wife Carissa made me feel all of the shame (literally ALL of the shame) for every day that I did not meet my word count.

My shame, however, was not indicative of my worth though. My very favorite nano moment, which I will forever treasure, was when Carissa asked me a question: why did my profile have a halo?

To clarify, the Nanowrimo website gives a halo to your profile if you donate money. It marks you as special and superior to others. I now had one and Carissa, of course, did not. Now, had I actually made a donation and earned my halo this would be expected and she wouldn't really care. I would have paid for (and earned) my halo. But I didn't donate. Someone else made a donation in my name, so I got gifted a halo. And let me tell you, Carissa was not pleased with that. She is a very good person and fully supports nano—and perhaps it had something to do with me lording over her about how superior I was—but she called me a liar and a cheat, undeserving of my halo. It really didn't help that this was shortly after one of my "rest days."

Long story short, I now have a halo and Carissa doesn't.

I won nano

November's nanowrimo is finally over and I managed to finish as a winner with a total of 50,009 words (cutting it just a little bit close). It was a very difficult month, to be quite honest. I fell behind a few times when I traveled to see family and I accidentally slept for a day and did not write.

To get to 50,000 by the end of the month, you need to write 1,667 words every day. It really doesn't sound like a lot, and it doesn't even look like a lot (it's about 1.5-2 pages single-spaced in Word, unless you write a lot of dialogue). However, the moment you fall behind you have a lot of work to make up. I was lazy and fell behind about four times, that means there were about four days of no writing. Each time I was like "Don't worry, it'll be fine. I can totally catch up tomorrow if I work really hard." Then the next day I would curse myself and end up behind the goal for several days. I don't think I've ever hated a bar graph (how the website tracks your word count) so much since I took a math class, but at least back then it wasn't personal. When you fall behind, the bar graph showing your statistics become a mocking, taunting, ode to your failure and it likes to slap you in the face. I have a very strong dislike for it (when I am losing to it).

But despite all of the difficulty, I managed to win nano and write 50k words of my novel which brings the total word count just over 77k. That's close to half of the novel's first draft, a very good amount of progress. I plan to continue writing at this pace so that I can aim to have a draft done soon.