On Writing : Help this member out, I'm reposting his comment that was in the wrong place by Suzanne Bronson

Suzanne Bronson

Help this member out, I'm reposting his comment that was in the wrong place

Allow me to make a comment about Scrivener. I have used this program for years. They continue to upgrade and I own the latest edition. It is a complex and quirky program. The creators are obviously brilliant individuals, but I truly believe they don't think like writers. They think like computer programmers. I attempted to download the manual for the new version and it's 750 pages. What's wrong with that picture"? I was working on my novel when it suddenly disappeared. I couldn't find it, so I emailed Literature and Latte. They told me some steps that didn't work, so I ended up giving them control of my computer. It required several days for them to find it. Since then I am afraid of it and use Word. I am the type of writer that when I want to write, I want to do it. Scrivener has become so cumbersome from my point of view that I spend too much time with the workings of the program rather than my writing. I purchased a new manual from Amazon, one of those supposedly easy use explanations. All it does is make me feel stupid.

Suzanne Bronson

@JohnRoane

A. S. Templeton

I quit Scrivener back in 2018 and never looked back. The index cards, scrivenings, and project-organisation features were just okay for my first project... until I entered the revision phase. Lack of true styles, extremely sluggish global search & replace, drag-and-drop formatting nightmares, and bloated directory structures quickly made the project impossible to manage. I finally exported to Word, which, with a few choice editing add-ons, has become a powerful tool for my writing... and notably lacks a 750pp manual.

Lark Anderson

That’s terrifying. I’ve used Scrivener for 5 years and have thankfully never encountered that nonsense. It’s great for series work but I admittedly don’t use all the features.

Jonathan Jordan

Like any tech-based tool, you gotta feel out what works for you. I know people who live Scrivener and use it religiously. Meanwhile, I have little desire to learn yet another tool to use for writing. I’m just now getting the hang of FinalDraft after 6 years of using it, lol.

Linda Holden

To be perfectly honest I really do not trust any of these 'software programs' as after several years and having lost at least 2/3 memory sticks we are now having to start all over again....

As we value the right to life I am stuck with apps like Google but you can change the fonts in Microsoft word.

My laptop has OpenOffice and that's what I'm sticking to.

Best wishes

Linda

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