Continuity: The Dream of Scrivener

 

 

I’ve been dreaming about this software—Scrivener:  vivid dreams of us intertwined in the sands of a beach with pounding waves: the sky is blue; our limbs, entangled. “Scrivener,” I say.  “You are the answer to my prayers.”  We feel the heat of our passionate soul kiss, which keeps the coldness of the ocean at bay.  White sand—virginal—lies everywhere…except the delicate, tender flesh of our private parts.

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Scrivener is a writing software that allows you to organize your novel—or many other writing projects—spatially.  There’s a digital corkboard with little flash cards on which you place synopses of the major plot elements.  Each flash card represents a chapter.  Click one and the individual chapter pops up.  Rearrange the cards; the plot—including all the writing–will rearrange itself, too.  How easy is that?

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I’m midway through my novel (yeah!).   And now the crazy, hairy disorganization is starting to set in, so Scrivener is always on my mind.  Many years ago, I had dinner with this writer who penned a book called Neatness Counts, which argues that so much of the craft of writing is about organization.   If your desk is a mess, so is your novel.  If your file folders have no system, neither does that staggering work of heartbreaking genius.

Right now, I use real index cards that I lay out in sequential order.  Then, I write whatever catches my fancy that day, which means everything is out of order.  Writing out of order has advantages over writing sequentially:

1)  it allows you to get your most inspired writing in

2)  it prevents the block which results from writing from A to B to C

3)  if you’re stuck going from B to C, you can just skip to Z

The drawback of this “system” is disorganization.  If you have so many little pieces, you’re bound to have a crisis.  You have to try extra hard to not let the disorganization get overwhelming.  I didn’t care because, for a while, I could keep everything straight in my head.  It was preliminary stage back then.  Now, it’s not so easy.  Like I said, I’m midway through the novel.  Things are getting ugly.

I just spent a good hour organizing the file folder on my computer.   I even compiled a list of things that I’ve finished, which is the only way I know I’m midway through the novel (yeah!).  I spent so much time, poring through my note cards, obsessively collating and re-collating.  You know:  actual note cards get into a big mess if a certain cat decides to roll around on them.  Digital cards stay forever neat.

Index cards seem kind of boring—like that wife who sits around in the kitchen drinking coffee in her robe and slippers, her hair a god-awful, untidy nest.  Scrivener looks better and better every day with its tight little beach body and golden tan like freshly baked buttery bread.  And as I think of Scrivener’s luscious thighs, I really do often wonder that if I rely on technology, it might give me permission to forget the story.  Writers need to obsessively go over and over the story and, so often, technology allows us to shelve things; otherwise, the story can’t live inside my head.  This is the only thing that is keeping me from cheating on my cards and running off to that beach for the ephemeral pleasures of smooches that, no doubt, will shatter a long, strong marriage.

 

2 thoughts on “Continuity: The Dream of Scrivener

  1. I’m just starting out on a book and I keep thinking this is the perfect time to get with Scrivener. But I have nightmares about computer crashes, lost data, and stabbing my laptop to death for eating my novel.

    • Wow, Thomas. I guess I never thought about that. But isn’t that the way it is; the girl you see, fleetingly, in the window of the other subway…she looks like a woman in a Hopper painting…little do you know, she’s $25,000 in credit card debt and has a sex dungeon…

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