One Last Time… but is it good news?

/ Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

At the time, I thought this was brilliant news. After struggling to learn Scrivener so many times in the past, I was finally getting somewhere. That was before Mister Not feeling Well decided to visit our house.

It’s funny how everything seems worse when you feel like crap!

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We seem to be on the mend now, so some of that elation is creeping back in. Well, enough for me to brag about it…

Microsoft Word had annoyed me for the very last time. It actually made changes to the book format that I was working on. Changes I neither wanted nor needed, and I very nearly lost my work and my mind, so I decided to master Scrivener. I mean, it has to be better than Word, doesn’t it?

So many writers use it, and their testimonials are really encouraging.

Apparently, it can do everything Word can do and a load more. Not sure I truly believe that yet, but willing to be enlightened.

This time, I am approaching it differently. No more YouTube trailers, as helpful as they are. I am going to use Scrivener’s own tutorial instead.

Everything was going well, and my confidence was growing. When I decided to stop for the day, I saved what I had managed to do.

At least, I thought I did.

They recommend that you use Dropbox as a saving place, and after seeing where my feeble efforts actually went, I can see the merit in using Dropbox.

The other thing I didn’t like was the fact that my work was saved under a weird file name, not the name of my project. I just know I won’t be able to recognise this tomorrow.

Tomorrow brought more problems. I logged on to Scrivener, hoping to find my file. I couldn’t find it anywhere and had no clue what button to press. That was when I started to feel like a dinosaur. I probably shouldn’t be let loose on a computer, for I really must be as thick as two planks. It takes me a month of Sundays to grasp anything, and some things have never been mastered! The least said about those, the better…

I finally managed to figure out what to do. I had to click on File, then open, and it took me to OneDrive, where I had saved my book.

Oh, me of little faith! I didn’t believe I had figured it out, so I repeated the process several more times. Yay! I had figured it out!

I went on to add a brief synopsis to the chapters and learned how to create files for each of my characters. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though; there is so much more to learn.

Tomorrow (another one), I am going to master the corkboard and also outlining…

If it doesn’t rain, I might even have a go at cutting the meadow we now have outside!

28 thoughts on “One Last Time… but is it good news?”

  1. Congrats on your great efforts Jaye. There are many – like me, who can’t wrap my head around Scrivener. Even after Youtube videos, Scrivener tutorials, and Scrivener for Dummies book. I haven’t attempted it in a few years. Like you, finding files and whatnot was sucking up precious time. 🙂 xx

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  2. Congrats on biting the bullet! 😀 … You can save your files anywhere you like on your computer. I set up a dedicated folder for each novel in my ‘Writing’ folder before I even begin with Scrivener and save it to that … you can also rename the file as well.

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