Mark Paul

Co-author, with Joe Mathews, of California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How It Can Be Fixed, University of California Press.

Scrivener helped me do everything a writer needs to do, and particularly a writer in a hurry: Gather up shards of facts and ideas. Fit them together into sentences and paragraphs, building sections and chapters. Tear down what you’ve built and try them another way. Annotate. Rewrite. Through all this construction and rearranging, the sources and footnotes and links follow each shard as it is passed around. At the end a finished manuscript pops out, ready for editors and readers. And best of all, Scrivener is flexible enough to let me write my own way, in full screen or with multiple panels begging me for their attention. I can’t imagine a more perfect tool for my writing-books, articles, reviews, op-eds.