Scrivener And Goodreader: How To Get Rid Of Paper Drafts

I don't have a printer.

When I need something printed I go to the print shop across the street. It works fine, for the most part, but I don't like killing trees and it's inconvenient not to be able to print something the moment I need it.

The solution: Scrivener + Goodreader

I use Scrivener.

I used to use MS Word and I was (to put it mildly) reluctant to switch word processors. I'd used Word for a number of years, was very comfortable with it--my quibbles with The Ribbon notwithstanding.

But Scrivener has won me over. Having the ability to, at a glance, see a short one sentence description of not only each section but each scene, being able to set up my project targets (I enter the date I want the manuscript done by, the number of words I'd like it to contain and Scrivener will tell me how many words I have to write that day). I also can specify, for each scene, how many words I'd like it to contain and Scrivener will show me my progress graphically.

And the random name generator: heaven!

Anyway. Suffice it to say that I'm a Scrivener convert. You might be wondering what this has to do with a paperless office. I'm coming to that.

PDFs + Goodreader

Scrivener--like Word--gives you the option to output your work as a PDF.

Goodreader--the app--lets you use your finger, or a stylus, to markup PDF files.

This gives writers the ability to get rid of their printer. Here's how:

1. Output your work from your word processor as a PDF file.
2. Import it into Goodreader (many people use Dropbox or Google Drive for this),
3. Markup the PDF file with whatever changes you'd like to make,
4. Save the PDF file back to Dropbox, switch back to your word processor,
5. Open up the PDF doc in a separate window and make whatever changes you'd like to your original document.

That's it!

Perhaps laying it out like that, the five steps, makes it look like a lot of work, but it isn't. Or at least it's a lot less work than printing it out. And it allows one to get rid of paper!

I find this works the best for short stories and novellas, I still print out my novel length stories.

If you'd like to read more about this, here's a great article: The Virtual Red Pen.

More good news: Literature & Latte the creators of Scrivener, may have Scrivener on the iPad in time for NaNo this year!

Photo credit: "melancolia" by paul bica under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Scrivener: A Writer's Best Friend

Yesterday a writer friend of mine, C.G. Cameron, sent me a link to a wonderful post Charlie Stross wrote in which he discussed his experiences with Scrivener. For those of you scratching your head muttering, "What the heck is a Scrivener?! I hope it's not contagious!" I'll let the program's creators introduce it:

Scrivener is a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.

Got that? After I first read the above quotation I felt like asking, "Yes, but what does it do?" Enter Charlie Stross' blog post. He writes:

Some of you probably know about Scrivener, the writer's tool from Literature and Latte. [It] ... has more features than you can wave a bundle of sticks at, mostly oriented around managing, tagging, editing, and reorganizing collections of information including rich text files. I've used it before on several novels, notably ones where the plot got so gnarly and tangled up that I badly needed a tool for refactoring plot strands, but the novel I've finished, "Neptune's Brood", is the first one that was written from start to finish in Scrivener, because I have a long-standing prejudice against entrusting all my data to a proprietary application, however good it might be. That Scrivener was good enough to drag me reluctantly in is probably newsworthy in and of itself.

That's quite a recommendation!

Mr. Stross goes on to discuss the pros and cons of Scrivener and to relate his experiences with the program in more detail. For anyone interested in what Scrivener is and whether it might be the right tool for them, I can't recommend his article highly enough. Here's a link to it: Writing a novel in Scrivener: lessons learned.

The program is modestly priced at $40.00 USD and can be downloaded from the web.

I've had Scrivener for a a while. I open the program occasionally and tinker with it, this month I even went so far as to use it to hold all my character information for a short story I'm working on. I think I need to bite the bullet and just start using it.

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Scrivener: A Great Tool for Writers

A couple of days ago, The Book Designer had a marvelous blog post about why Scrivener was the ultimate program for writers. It was as though this article was written for me since I have been thinking about switching from Word to Scrivener.

Here is the link: Scrivener: The Ultimate Multitool for Writers