The Wikipedia article on brain lateralisation comments:
“Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about certain functions (e.g. logic, creativity) being lateralized, that is, located in the right or left side of the brain. These ideas need to be treated carefully because the popular lateralizations are often distributed across both sides.”
This is a polite and restrained way of saying that popular ideas about left/right brain are a load of rubbish ;-). Having spent the last five years retraining in psychology I have to say that I find the idea that creativity could be confined to one hemisphere completely unconvincing, and I’ve yet to come across any solid scientific evidence for it, though I must add that it is not my field of psychology. There may well be some, though I’d be surprised if it were not hotly contested.
You are to be congratulated for blazing a trail by showing us all that one can publish direct from Scrivener. I don’t write novels, so I confess I haven’t read the book yet, but the mere fact of its production has given me all sorts of ideas. Thank you.
I was using it as a form of speech not a medical diagnosis. A way of saying I like to keep the shapeless, creative writing separate from the factual, hard research. Research gets in the way when I’m writing. I only want to see it when I need it. Others will feel differently.
Mentioned this earlier. If you missed it and want to read David’s book and don’t have a Kindle and can’t be bothered converting the book’s Kindle format to a PDF (which takes all of thirty seconds) - then here is a useful site to help decide which e-reader might suit you best: the-ebook-reader.com/free-ebook-reader.html
Ah, My Lord Lightning, we meet at last. Or is it…‘again’?
I was wondering Sire, whether it’s worthwhile pointing out, that, his Lordship vic-k has a Kindle, as well as Kindle for PC, on his wife’s Wintel jobby, and whenever he downloads something on one, it automatically appears on the other as well!! He’s quite tickled with the arrangement. He thinks he’s getting two for the price of one unbeknownst to Amazon!! If he finds out I’ve put it out on the forum, he’ll have a seizure. Probably think Amazon will start taking liberties with his Amazon account.
My dear Lord Fluff - you iridescent old rascal. Is it possible that you have both Kindles using the same name? Books in the Kindle store typically come with 6 simultaneous device licenses.
My Lord Lightning ,
Sire, my deepest thanks for ilmk.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/si … dle-store/. However, Since 'tis vic-k we’re talking about, my Lord, I think it best to leave him believing he’s getting one over on the man. Beating the system as it were, Sire. His innate, ner’do’ell-ness responds mightily to such stimuli.
I was so excited when I saw this. But I have a Sony. Given that some of it is on the blog, I’m not sure it’s worth the energy to futz with Amazon’s DRM to put it on my device. I don’t want to read it on a LCD with a Kindle app–I have an eink reader for a reason.
David, count me as part of your audience who’d snap this up in a heartbeat in a format I can read. I’d heard the Mac 2.0 version of Scrivener compiles to a format ready for uploading to Smashwords. Is this incorrect? I’ve made a few ePubs in Calibre using a Word doc (no DRM) and they took under a half-hour a piece.
It’s totally your prerogative to only sell through Amazon, of course, but there are many of us for whom that’s enough of a negative to move a title from “I really want it” to “oh, nevermind.”
Smashwords demands you hand code the thing in MS Word. Life is too short I’m afraid. Really - Kindle runs beautifully on a Mac or a PC. I have tried to explain comprehensively why I can’t afford the time to put this small, specialist book up in other formats. If I was in the US it would be different but from the UK it’s just impossible I’m afraid. There’s no practical way I can put this up in epub format.
After going through this thread it seems that Keith Blount, Scrivener’s inventor likes this. The most outspoken critic on the thread, Lord Lightening, came to admit liking it. David Hewson, of course, likes it.
The Kindle App is free.
I just couldn’t tolerate the idea of not having it; so I got it.
For some reason, maybe because I used 'One-Click Purchase" on Amazon for the first time (today), I was surprised to see that it wound up being a free purchase (!?).
I had to admit, though, it was a tough choice: buy a six pack of beer or get a possible useful writing aid, specifically for the new program I got.
Luckily, um…it was a cold and rainy night…and it was a bit of a drag to head out shopping.
Just bought his eBook and will be reading it from cover to cover this coming week. The Scrivener for Windows program sounds like just the thing I need. I struggled with the problem of bits of research scattered all over the show, scraps of plotline dangling here there and everywhere, character sketches sandwiched in between snippets of dialogue and above all, twice as many works as I needed.
A painful process, and difficult to distil the raw material, especially if you have to reduce reduce reduce … I had to cut my completed thriller Obelisk Seven down from over 200,000 to its very lean 84,000 words - I was inspired a bit by Dan Brown - you can see our debt to him in our website glennashton.blogspot.com
I am looking forward to final version of SforW this November!
Has anyone had their email from Amazon yet, informing them that they can up date to the revised addition which includes Scrivener for windows.
Grandad 7 (now8)
I was notified of an update on 16th August. This was presumably for revisions pre-Windows. I haven’t actually taken up that offer yet, and I haven’t received a notification more recently.
They told me it was going out two weeks ago. Will nag them again. If you contact them directly they might be able to help. All I can do is ask them I’m afraid.
I haven’t received an update from Amazon either. Not a major problem – the book is useful as it is – but I would be interested to see the updated version.
It really is a basic revise with the Windows shortcuts and a brief list of what the Windows app won’t do. If you’ve got the hang of things with the earlier version it won’t add anything I suspect. But I have asked Amazon again.
I got in touch with Amazon and used their on line chat mode for problems and a wonderful girl sorted it all out. I’m now a proud owner of the up dated book.
Thanks for your help and those that suggested getting in touch with them.
Grandad7
I use the Windows version of Scrivener and I bought this book. I found it useful even if I can’t use all the tips at the moment as the tips were relevant only to the Mac version. It was good to see what other features are hopefully on the way and how I might use them.
Thank you David, for the book, blog and Scrivener template. While possibly not what you imagined, I have taken advice from another short book - this one specifically on plotting - and used it in companion with yours to derive a Scrivener system that has really worked for me.
The “other” book is Fill-in-the-Blank Plotting by Linda George. I was able to check it out at the library. The gist of it is she takes the Hero’s Journey method of plotting a story and melds it into the Three Act method.
Both have their merits and I thought her brilliant system of putting them together, really taking the best of both plotting worlds, gave me an opportunity to make the most of my time and create a complete, compelling world in which to place my prose. (Inadvertent alliterations galore there. Sorry. My firm belief in serendipity is restricting me from removing them.)
I combined George’s steps and your template, placing the steps at the Chapter level and plotting scenes under these individual steps, simultaneously relying heavily on your template to fully develop the story.