Scrivener's Second Chance
I woke this morning to the relentless pitter-patter of rain on the bedroom window, and squinted across at my better half, peeking from a gap in the duvet towards me. We lifted our heads, looked out at the steady mist falling across the garden, and hatched plans to scrap all plans for the day ahead. Yes, we had promised to take the children for a walk into townto visit the visiting fairgroundbut the rain had offered us the chance for a rare “day off”.
What does a normal person do when thrown the opportunity of a morning doing nothing (apart from fill the washing machine and tumble dryer repeatedly until they are about to spontaneously combust) ? I have no ideabecause I'm not a normal person. I'm a blogger. A blogger that has switched platforms more times than he's had hot dinners this year.
Yes, you guessed rightI switched blogging platforms. Again. Yet another migration. Yet another lifting of the universe of words I have written over the last decade over my head, and lowering of them gently into somewhere newor in this case, somewhere they've been before. Squarespace.
So. The blog now sits somewhere nice. Somewhere pretty. Somewhere good. The next question is how to improve the rubbish I've been posting of late. How to fool myself into writing words commensurate of the quality I know I'm capable of if I actually try. Ahh trying. That will be the real problem. How to trick myself into trying ?It so happens that I had a conversation with a far-flung-friend on LiveJournal early this morning about the Scrivener word processing application on the Macbook. It also happens that I am using an old Macbook for the first time in ages. It also happens that the Macbook has a copy of Scrivener installed on it.
Writing with Scrivener is kind of like driving a Ferrari. Sitting in a Ferrari, you probably feel big and importantit's not a huge leap of imagination to think of yourself as Carlos Fandango, about to head out onto the old circuit at Spa Francorchamps. Well Scrivener does the same for writing (stay with me). Sitting in front of a laptop with Scrivener on it lifts you to within imaginary spitting distance of Hemingway, and Fitzgerald. Except of course they didn't have computers or word processors, but still Ah crap, this isn't really working, is it.
Real writers use Scrivenerthey swear by itso do famous journalists. It's not expensive either, meaning plebs like me can use it too, and even though we won't use 5% of the features a copy editor, or a script writer might use, it's still a lovely environment to conjur words within.
Anyway. I like changing subject by writing “Anyway”. I'm actually going to give Scrivener another chance, and try to write worth posts about interesting things now and again. I'll still write the daily garbage of course, but in among the flotsam and jetsam, you'll occasionally see an opinionated brain dump that obviously went through no editing process what-so-ever.
I'll shut up now. I've rambled on long enough.