Pamela Merritt

Blogger and author of The Way of Cats.

This year I faced my biggest Scrivener challenge. I’ve been writing with this incredible software since the beginning. Now I had the thoroughly modern dilemma of turning posts, from my popular blog, into a book.

I certainly did not want to cheat: that disappointing maneuver of throwing blog posts into a word processor until I reach my word count. I wanted to turn my material into a real book that would delight my fans, and make me new ones. Enter the latest Scrivener.

I would pull in blog posts with related themes using the handy web import feature. I would create a folder, and put all the different blog posts into the folder as documents. This gave me a fast word count when I clicked on the folder. I arranged them into a better order for a book chapter. Pro-tip: turn all that web stuff into editable text by opening a new blank document to Paste and Match Style. Gets rid of the pictures and the links and makes me see it in a new way.

I would background the text from each post into a different highlight color (love that!) and chop it into pieces and ditch the parts I don’t need. Blogging is a shorter medium and I must assume this is the first blog post my reader has ever seen. In books, we have a history, depending on where I put this chapter.

Now, I have the essence of what I want to say, I re-arrange it until it flows from beginning to end. Now I fill in the parts that need to hook together the different parts. Before I know it, I have a chapter. Or two. Or an idea for a new chapter.

Do that long enough… and there’s a book.

Thank you, Scrivener.