My new writing toy

No, my new writing toy is not a new computer.  Not a tablet, not a voice recorder, not voice-to-text software.  Don’t worry, you can still get me any one of those for Christmas.

I finally broke down and bought Scrivener for Windows.  I purchased it with my 20% NaNoWriMo discount which expired yesterday.  It was a bit of an impulse buy, seeing the discount tick away, but I’d been thinking about it for a couple months.

I haven’t written anything with it yet.  I watched the tutorial video and I really liked the idea of it.  I intend to import my novel into it as soon as I finish the steampunk story that will never end.  (Hmm…there’s something to that…but I digress.)  The index card system really seemed to fit my scattered style.  I can outline as much or as little as I want and adjusting the outline brings the part of the story I need to adjust right to my fingertips.  I’ll be sure to update here when I get things going.

I also intend to use Scrivener for the Codex Weekend Warrior contest, an in-house flash fic contest.  Between the two [novel and flash], I should get a decent overview of how useful the software can be for my writing style.

I should pull the steampunk story in too, especially since I plan to do a lot of restructuring once my first draft is finished, but I don’t want to waste time learning the formatting tools while working toward a deadline.  So steampunk stays in Word for now.

Hopefully I’ll have an update in a couple months on how it’s all working.  My New Year’s resolution may well be to do all my writing in Scrivener.  We’ll see how it goes.

Have any testimonials about Scrivener?  Any warnings?  Any favorite tricks?  Let me know.  I could use all the help I can get.