09 July 2011 Just a few days ago, I posted that Scrivener was not ready for the self-publisher. Providentially for me, I posted a link to the article to the Scrivener forum. As a result, I learned not only to eat crow, but also how Scrivener is ready for the self-publisher.

From the website, Scrivener is "a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents. While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft." It was powerful enough for me to buy my first Mac just to try it out. So, in April of 2010, I downloaded the Version 1 Scrivener. It did a lot of what I wanted, but there were a few annoyances. Most of those annoyances deal with the fact that I'm a picky developer who needs to get over himself.

Scrivener 2.0 came out, just in time for NaNoWriMo2010. I wasn't ready for the shift. To be honest, I was back in my "develop your own tool" phase using Markdown, Ruby, LaTex to make both PDF and Epub. What that really means is I used TextMate, which is a fine editing tool, to write the first draft of this novel for NaNoWriMo. I sat idle for one month, which ended up being five, until I started editing.

When I started, I promised myself I would justify the expense of the Mac and Scrivener by forcing myself to use the tool. It did most of what I wanted it to do, and I was encouraged by a few Kindle books that helped me learn how to trick out Scrivener to my heart's content—mostly. What I ended up with was a well-organized book, but one that had formatting issues. I was tempted to resort to broadsword solutions. That, to me, meant that there was something wrong with the tool.

What do they say about a feeble craftsman? Yep, he blames his tools. So, I wrote a blog article blaming Scrivener for my problems. The good thing was that I posted it to the forum; with some misguided notion of fixing it. The Scrivener developer was very patient and good-natured. Through our forum conversation, he gave me the clues I needed to realize that Scrivener is much, much closer than what I thought. So, if you're thinking of using Scrivener, pay heed.

In the Ruby on Rails development framework, there are these tools called Scaffolds. What they do is give the developer just enough "easy" to get a Rails application operational so the developer can focus on giving the customer immediate business value. Scrivener ships with templates that essentially do the same thing. They give you a few templates for drafting a novel, then edit the novel and submit to a publisher. That, to me, suggested that the focus of Scrivener was not toward self-publishing. That's where I erred.

Kevin's (somebody called him that, but his real name is Keith---let's just keep the confusion alive, shall we?) explanation of that helped me accept that the Templates are akin to Scaffolds—you can use them, but only out of haste. It is much better to take your time and sculpt your own template. When you do that, you have the most control—and in the end control is what a self-publisher needs.

So, I recant my earlier blog post. I'll leave it there, and I'll link to this article, because I believe a bit of humility (for me) is good; and so other who plan to self-publish can learn and start fresh with Scrivener.