Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

I Guess we’re not in Kansas Anymore…

Our weather excelled itself yesterday afternoon. Torrential rain, hailstones and tornado-strength winds. Several parts of the country have experienced falling trees, roofs being blown off, and power cables snapped. Cars and even a caravan have been tipped over.

The tall gum tree in our back garden was being torn every which way, and it was an incredible sight. This tree is taller than our two-storey house and can bend like you wouldn’t believe. So far, nothing has broken, but bending seems the better way to go!

I was trying to work on the blessed edit while keeping one eye on the weather when an almighty crash chilled me to the bone. It sounded very close. I stood up to see the damage.

Lying in the middle of the yard was one of my bonsai trees. From a row of trees on the shelf, all of a similar weight and size, the wind had scooped one and thrown it on the floor just a few feet from the window.

Luckily, these trees are wired into their pots, so I couldn’t see much damage. It was probably in a state of shock, for I am not in the habit of throwing them around.

It could have been worse, for if the wind direction had been different, it could have come crashing through my window!

At the time, I was experiencing some stormy weather of my own, trying to come to grips with Scrivener again. After mastering the initial set-up, I had just completed the second edit and thoroughly enjoyed the process. Having the entire novel in front of me was an experience. No whizzing backwards and forwards to all those separate files whenever I wanted to check something.

I knew the next stage, compiling ready for publishing, would be difficult, but I was confident I could figure that out, too.

Famous last words…

I read the instructions again and promptly ran out of confidence. For the first time in my life, I was terrified! Rather than tackling that now and risk losing any of the precious manuscript, I decided to transfer it back to Word, just to get it finished, if I’m honest. All I had to do was highlight the manuscript and click where I wanted it to go. Easy peasy.

Only, it didn’t do what Scrivener said it would do. It sent just one chapter!

My hair was in danger of being ripped out, so I took a deep breath and tried to copy and paste a few chapters myself to see if this was possible. Imagine my joy when this actually worked!

During the next half an hour, I successfully transferred the entire story to Word.

There’s not much else I can say on this subject; it may be a while before I try Scrivener again. It is a brilliant system, but why must it be so complicated?

Grrrhh!