With a click of a button, I can look at the chapter summaries on a cork-board view, and I can drag-and-drop chapters in the document tree to rearrange them, something that has been really convenient as I’ve merged and moved chapters in Act II. I have separate sections for major characters, locations and other research notes. I split Razor Mountain into folders for each act, then split out each chapter into its own document under those folders. Where it really shines is in the way it lets me split a big project into nested parts.
There are a lot of pages hidden under those headings… Novel Writingįor novels, when I’m ready to go beyond the idea-gathering stage, I move all my notes from OneNote into Scrivener.Īs far as I am concerned, Scrivener is the best novel-writing application out there. OneNote synchronizes automatically between phone and laptop, with only occasional weird formatting issues. When I need to take notes on the go, I just jot them down on my phone. I have separate tabs for general brainstorms and ideas, short stories, novels, blog posts, lists of books I might eventually read, and more. My digital notebook of choice is Microsoft OneNote. In the past, I’ve carried pocket-sized notebooks, but I went entirely digital several years ago. Writers are known for carrying little notebooks and jotting down ideas whenever and wherever they appear.
Then I can look back on this next year and see how things have changed, or if they’ve stayed the same. However, there’s surprisingly little talk among writers about the day-to-day details of what writing is like, and I want to do my small part to change that.Īs the end of the year approaches, I thought it would be interesting to look at the writing I’m doing and the tools I’m using in 2022.
I don’t claim to have the perfect process, and I think the best way to write will ultimately be different for each writer. One of the goals of Words Deferred has always been to open up my writing process for everyone to see.