Many things. So many damn things. First off, my 30 day NaNoWriMo post didn’t publish. In fact, it disintegrated in the ether. But I guess all that really needs to be said is that I did it. By the end of November, I’d doubled the target with over a hundred thousand words. December was a write off, what with Christmas and loitering on Pinterest pretending that this would be the year I make all those awesome homemade decorations and epic cakes. It wasn’t. But it was the year I finally gave in and bought Scrivener with my winner’s discount.

I have no idea how I lived before this. One huge bulky file with hundreds of pages. Unwieldy drafts printed out to make paper revisions. That’s how I lived. Utter lunacy. Scrivener has transformed the way I organise my writing and has saved me and the planet a fortune in paper and ink. I’m sure much of it is psychological. I like having chapters and scenes that can be moved about, or worked on side by side. I like how it all concertinas down into one project, then opens out again in beautiful order. I like how I can tell at a glance which characters and artefacts are in a scene, and where that scene was set, thanks to the aesthetically pleasing colour-coded keyword function. I like how much easier it feels to write tighter scenes when I have a clean screen in front of me. I like how notes, links and photos can be added to scenes for inspiration. I like how I can see how the scene word counts accumulate in neat little bundles, making me feel accomplished. It appeals to my mind and my eyeballs.

I started work on the second book in January, with my 100k NaNo words in the bag. A few days before the end of February, I’d finished my first draft. It’s heavy, at 180k, but it’s done. I’m not fiddling with it too much until I’ve finished the third book. I started it yesterday and have bagged 4k so far.

I feel compelled to point out that my thoughts on Scrivener have not been paid for or sought. If they gave me money, I wouldn’t love it more.