Maureen Noel

Author of Nightworld.

I’ve tried them all. From AppleWorks on an Apple IIe to an endless number of word processors on the Mac, I’ve gotten my fingers on every word processor that’s showed promise—the promise to make it easier to write. Because writing is hard. Really hard. I’ve fallen in love with features in all of these word processors, whether it’s the clean user interface, fullscreen mode, customization for fonts, colors and backgrounds, or even how well their find/replace functions work. As a novelist, I want to surround myself with the best tools I can afford. $45 for a word processor that combines all the best features of other word processors and then adds an incredible number of its own new features? It’s a steal. Using Scrivener, I wrote my latest novel Nightworld more quickly than any of my other books. From the flexibility to work as I work best, to organize scenes, plan plot points, and keep track of characters, no word processor beats Scrivener. The ability to bring in research materials, whether images, PDFs or other documents, means I don’t have to waste time. I’m even able to deliver an e-book to my publisher. There’s only one writing tool that I love more than Scrivener, and that’s my fountain pen. But my fountain pen, I have to admit, does an atrocious job at spell checking. My next book will also be written with Scrivener. So should yours.