Tara Rodden Robinson

Author of Genetics for Dummies.

When I wrote the first edition of Genetics for Dummies, I created a massive document that I called my ‘metajournal.’ It was the holding place for everything about my writing process from obsessing over page counts and deadlines to annotating my literature cited. By the time I was asked to revise the book for its second edition, I had discovered Scrivener. Gone were the days of scrolling back and forth, scrambling around trying to remember what text went where, and juggling multiple files for text and citations and journaling.

Using Scrivener, all my materials reside in a single location. Citations imported from the web or pdf documents are annotated in the document notes section. Keywords make everything easy to relocate. Synopses can be cut and pasted straight from the abstract of the scientific paper or re-written to suit my own tastes. The split screen allows me to reference citations and my text draft simultaneously. With the backup feature, there’s never a worry about losing something.

All in all, Scrivener delivers outstanding value and makes even the most complex writing projects easy to manage. It’s a must-have for any serious writer.