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A #Scrivener help beg

August 30, 2015August 30, 2015 Luther M. Siler6 Comments

The internet isn’t cooperating. I love the hell out of Scrivener’s Compile feature, especially the way it builds the Table of Contents for me without me having to carefully hyperlink everything. But:

Does anyone know how to prevent it from actually adding the “Chapter Seventy” part in front of the chapter title? Because it’s doing that throughout and I’d prefer that it not do that. I’ve been fiddling and haven’t figured out what the problem is yet.

(EDIT: Figured it out, naturally. Leaving the post up so you can get a gander at some chapter titles.)

On the learning curve

August 30, 2015 Luther M. Siler9 Comments

One of the fun things about learning a new piece of software is that you can completely screw yourself if you do things wrong and not learn about it until it is deeply obnoxious to fix what you did.

I have committed myself to writing Searching for Malumba and Starlight in Scrivener, and I intend to keep to that.

Searching for Malumba has, at present, about 140 individual essays.

I have just discovered that each of those essays, which are technically each chapters, needs to be in its own folder in order to compile properly. And I keep accidentally clicking the wrong things while trying to create those folders.

You may fire when ready.

The best part is that he’s learning

June 30, 2015 Luther M. Siler

(Context for the title. You should all watch Archer.)

So I’m starting to enjoy fiddling with Scrivener.

I spent a chunk of last night sleepily going through the (rather impressively detailed) tutorial that they include with the program, and got through about half of it. It does an impressive job of using the program to teach the end-user how to run itself, and by the time I was halfway through the thing I was fully in the okay it’s time to start writing now and figure the rest out later stage of working. And, well, as you can see I’m actually accomplishing things. Mostly. Sorta.

So far I’ve been on summer vacation for eight hours and nineteen minutes if I start the count from when I got up this morning. During that time I’ve received fifteen emails and four phone calls– one from my assistant principal, and her summer vacation started a week ago. Each and every one was about stuff that I really shouldn’t have been needed for. But whatever, at least no one has asked me to come back in. Yet.

It’s cloudy outside. It’s been cloudy outside for a week or two now, and that telescope that I acquired at the cost of high personal drama hasn’t been outside the damn house yet. Tonight will be the peak of the Jupiter-Venus conjunction, and if I can’t see it at least with naked eye because of the clouds I’m going to be pissed. It cannot possibly stay cloudy all summer long, but I have a feeling that it’s going to try. The forecast is showing a clear window between 9:00 and 10:00. That ought to be enough, as sunset’s at 9:23, but keep your fingers crossed for me. I’ll take pictures if I’m able to get set up at all.

Word-makin’ talk

April 28, 2014 Luther M. Siler10 Comments

Writerpeople: what software do y’all generally use? I know I’ve got some fans of Scrivener out there, which despite several tries I’ve never really been able to get into; anybody use anything else that I need to know about? I came across this article on Lifehacker the other day that led to me downloading a bunch of new programs to try out (including Fade In, a screenwriting program– I have a secret desire to write a screenplay for some reason; maybe that can be a side project this summer) and I have completely fallen in love with FocusWriter.

Dudes, I wrote four thousand words of fiction today, and it wasn’t even difficult. That’s not unprecedented– I did nearly twelve thousand during the closing days of NaNoWriMo several years ago while under deadline pressure, and once wrote a thirty-page paper in three hours flat in grad school– but to get four thousand words done in a single day when there is no pressure whatsoever to perform is so unlike me as to be faintly alarming. Other apps do the same main thing FocusWriter does; it blacks out the entire screen, letting you choose a theme (I have basic white text on a black background; you can choose other colors or even use an image as the background) and hides its entire UI so that all you can see is your text on the screen. Awesomely, it also has a setting to make freaking typewriter sounds when you hit keys, which– for me, at least, which may be a sign that I’m moderately nuts– is weirdly, insanely rewarding.

Anyway: point is, BA 7 is done, meaning that all I have to do is finish BA 6 and do one last edit/polish/clean-up run on the entire thing and then The Benevolence Archives, Volume 1 is ready to be unleashed unto the world. Which is awesome and terrifying all at the same time. Hell, I’m on such a roll I may see if I can finish 6 tonight. Why not, y’know?

I love productive days. ISTEP starts tomorrow so the rest of the week is going to be obnoxious and stressful; I’m glad today wasn’t. How are y’all?