5,000 words; Scrivener; NaNo rules my life

[peroxidepirate]

So this is what a 5000 word day feels like.

And I didn't even start writing until past 4 p.m.

A year ago, I had not written a story longer than 5000 words, and I just wrote that much in a day, on a story that's right now 24,000 words and growing. How cool is that?

And this plot stuff? Is actually fun. Oh, it needs some major revision before it's anything I'd show to another living soul -- but it's crazy fun to figure out how all the pieces fit together! This might be enough to change me from a short story writer to a novel/long fic writer.

Also, Scrivener is fantastic. Hell, yes, I will be buying it when the free public beta stage is over. You basically get a tab for each scene (or chapter, or however you want to divide it out) and it's super easy to rearrange things when you realize the second visit to the yarn store needs to come after the brunch at the Snow City Cafe instead of before, and the third visit to the yarn store needs to be replaced by Brett turning into a zombie, and Brett turning into a zombie (he gets better) needs to happen before the Snow City Cafe scene. And then you can export individual scenes as .rtf or .html files, and at the end (or whenever you want a wordle of the whole thing) you can compile it all into a single document. You can also get a whole document word count or page count, or a scene by scene word count or page count, at any time.

All of which is fantastic, because one of my problems with writing long fic has been that I get overwhelmed by the pages and pages and pages of .doc file, and I lose pieces, and when I want to rearrange things I get distracted in the looking for a specific scene and end up rereading three thousand words and tweaking instead. If I can just click the tab for "zombie scene," I won't reread all of scenes 11 through 19 looking for it.

*happy sigh*

And now, rambling Nicki must go to bed. 

Comments

[sillyberry.livejournal.com]

I love reading about how progressive you are for NaNo. It makes me want to cheer for you, but also kind of steal your brain. :P

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

:D Thanks! Sometime in December or January I will post more about the process of writing this thing -- I want to make sure I document this process before I forget, you know? But I can't let myself get sucked down that rabbit hole right now.

[sillyberry.livejournal.com]

Definitely document it! You should keep a log or mini diary, but I suppose the snippets here and there on LJ are doing the same job, and as you said, you need to focus elsewhere.

Do you have a plan for your story? I'm always curious - I usually write on whim and not by plan, so these kind of processes are totally foreign.

Also, I added you on my other journal. Hope you don't mind. :))

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Cool, yay!

I usually don't plan my fic at all, but I seem to stall out by 4000 to 6000 words if I do that. So for this story, I outlined -- by which I mean, I wrote a numbered list of 46 scenes, in the approximate order I'm intending to write them. The whole outline is about 1000 words, and I've done some switching of pieces as I go along, but it's still helping a lot. So I think that's the answer for me, if I'm gonna write anything long. :)

[veras1.livejournal.com]

Since I'm assuming that you write in chronological order (I know a few people who don't), your outline must work really well. I must try this myself soon, whenever my dratted writer's block leaves me alone.

Will you be showcasing your story somewhere once it's complete and polished up?

[journeycat.livejournal.com]

Scrivener is seriously the love of my life - my mom bought it for me for my birthday, as my thirty-day free trial was almost up. It's just SO helpful for organizing chapters. I also really love the research section; it's nice being able to have everything collectively right there at once click, and it really helps with world-building, as you can organize fictional holidays, army ranks, country names and descriptions, family trees, etc. Er, at least that's what I do. :P

Ahem, I guess what I meant to say is - yay for Scrivener! :P

[peroxidepirate.livejournal.com]

Neat!

Can you copy the whole research section into a second project, in case you have two things going in the same universe?

I have the brand new Windows Scrivener beta, and I'm SO GLAD I didn't get hooked on it before my last Mac died -- I think I started hearing about this awesome program right after I got this computer, and I've been coveting it ever since. :)

I haven't started using the research section myself yet. I had already done some basic outlining for this project before Scrivener was available, and I never got back to doing more planning. So I get to explore that later!