I’m retired. It’s my new job. As far as jobs go it’s pretty easy, the attendance policy is flexible, and the goals are manageable, and easily achieved, and the commute is a walk in the park. Or a walk to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.
Retirement does come with a little free time, and that can be dangerous. A longing for an occasional mimosa, when you don’t have any orange juice or champagne, can lead to drinking warm wine right from the box under the ironing board in the laundry room. It’s important to stay busy, and sober.
I’m writing a book. Which is nothing new. I’ve been writing a book for the last 40 years. It isn’t the same book. I’m not really sure how many books it was. I remember days sitting in front of a thrift market typewriter, tapping away. Getting lost in the intricacies of plotting a course through times and places until I was hopelessly lost. And couldn’t remember what the whole thing was about. There were friends who told me it was drinking, addling my mind. There were friends who told me smoking that much pot had begun the slow, inexorable drift into cognitive decline. We lit a joint and laughed our asses off about that.
When I got a computer, with a word processor I thought I had it made. I could type without worrying about mistakes, I could go back and alter past mistakes and plow on to a whole new batch or errors. The world, my world, the world I would create was going to fall at me feet. And thank me for taking the time to breathe life into the stories taking place across the busy surface.
Until I lost track of things, every thing, people became shallow and flat. I’d look at them and they had nothing, no personality, no motivation, no idea what they were supposed to do next. And I couldn’t help, because I had lost track.
Since retiring I thought, with my free time I could finally pull it off. I was wrong. I started with a small plan, a tiny bit of plot, and was going to build. I thought it would be that simple. It wasn’t.
I remember a seminar I attended, years ago, when an author explained two different types of writers. Plotters and Pantsers. Plotters, plan things, plot them and build from a plan. Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. He didn’t suggest one was better than the other, he just felt everybody fell into one of the categories, more or less.
I always thought I was a Pantser, that’s the way I write blog posts, or personal correspondence, I write a lot of letters. I start with an idea, or a sentence, and just start typing. It works well, at least for me, when there are 1200 words. I can normally stay close enough to my point to make it plausible. And when you’re writing a letter to a family member you can wander all over and people are normally just happy to get something in the mail that isn’t a bill, or an advertisement. And if they find it meandering and difficult to follow they are free to write back with a critique. But, when you get up to 20 chapters and 30,000 words, and you have introduced another new character and have no idea what he’s going to add, but he has a great story, and I’m sure he could have a nice apartment, and a good job, delivering medical supplies to Medicare recipients and he was a scholarship football player at Duke university…
Maybe it needs focus.
It became obvious, I need help. Off to the App Store.
I downloaded a free trial of Storyist, and Scrivener. Both are full functioning versions of their paid applications. I’m not sure they are fully operational, but except for compiling and printing I think they are complete, or close enough to decide. And, it seems from my trial they are everything you are going to use to write a book, or a screen play, or whatever you want to write.
I pasted an existing work, from Pages (the Apple word processing software) into both Storyist, and Scrivener, and tried to manage the narrative arc.
I was planning on reviewing both sets of software, discussing their relative strengths and weaknesses, different features and abilities. I realized that would take an accomplished, proficient writer, a startling degree of organization, the ability to test the limits and capacity of both. In short it would require thorough, logical test and a keen understanding of both programs. Which eliminates me.
So, I will give you some thoughts, and observations.
Storyist is a remarkable program. It seems to have a sense of humor. There are ways to reduce the story to salient points. A snapshot of steps that your work has taken to get from point A to point B. It can keep you from wondering off path and getting lost in the words. It can map ideas and make connections between ideas, or places, or characters. You can drill down into the story to see progress and potential.
Scrivener is a monstrous beast, with features and abilities it would take me years to understand. It has a cork board which lays out each step, characters, and scenes. It puts everything, neatly, more or less, in a panel on the right side of the screen. On that list are every element of your work. Details are always easily at hand.
Both programs provide a drag and drop method of rearranging scenes, or chapters, making editing easy. Either one is a joy to work with and make tracking progress and provide an easy method to focus on writing while working toward a goal. I think Scrivener would take more time to learn, because of all the features. As far as I can tell both packages cost $59.99, and neither requires a subscription, which I consider a plus.
Trust me when I say, I’m not qualified to tell you which app you should buy. I’ll probably end up with Scrivener. For one thing I have an old license from long ago (when I was too impatient and arrogant to take the time to learn to use it) and would probably qualify for a discount. Plus, when it comes to organization I need all the help I can get. But I would be happy with either.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
