Monday, December 26, 2011

Preparing for War

Or the new year - same thing.

2012 is upon us in a week. Are you a goals person? Do you make charts and spreadsheets plotting your mini-destinations during the year? I do. I will be making up my work schedule for 2012 this week, trying to fit in all the things I need to do and some of the things I want to do. It's going to be a very busy 2012, but hopefully, a lot will get done.

Something I started working on last week is using a novel-writing software. I've been thinking I need to try something to see if I can better organize my fiction writing, especially writing series books. Flipping through every page of a document to find the color of car someone was driving is simply not the most efficient method to write.

So I downloaded a trial of Scrivener for PC. And I have to say, that I'm really enjoying it. It's simple to use the basic things and as long as I do the work of taking proper notes, it will allow me to have all my research and info right there on the same screen I'm writing the document on. Scrivener also allows you to break up your work into chunks - like chapters or even scenes. As I sometimes write books out of order, that's really cool. I can write a random scene and then drag and drop it later on where I want it to fit in the book. It also has a corkboard (printable) with little stickies that have a synopsis of each chapter written on them. So you can see your book at a glance.

Are you planning on incorporating any productivity tools into your new year? If so, what are they? I may want them, too. :)

Deadly DeLeon

3 comments:

Kathy Bacus said...

Sounds like an excellent tool, Jana. And it might really be good to use when writing a series. I think I'll give it a trial too!

~Kat

Jana DeLeon said...

It's a bit more work up front, of course, but I think it will be worth it in the long run!

Ellie said...

I'm a huge fan of Scrivener. My other favorite productivity tool is Vitamin R, which helps me focus on achieving small goals (writing for 20 minutes uninterrupted, etc.). And yes, I will be preparing for 2012 with spreadsheets to map out my goals.