25 September 2009
Writing and ideas
Posted by Greg under: Writing .
I’ve been thinking a lot about keeping track of writing projects and ideas in general. I write almost exclusively in Scrivener on my Mac and note ideas in Google Docs when out and about. I also have various notebooks and scraps of paper.
One the problems I have as a writer is that I have too many ideas. In order to get them out of my head and stop distracting me from the writing at hand I need somewhere to put them where they are easy to find and manage.
Gaiman, Jones et al. “Calliope” in Sandman no. 17.
Scrivener posits itself as not only a writing program, but a project management application. While it has many, many fine aspects as a writing tool it is quite weak on the project management side. I think it might be down to differing views on what project management actually is. Scrivener is very good at managing all the various bits of research, drafts and so forth relating to a single project but contains no interface for managing the various projects one creates with the program. Even when you click “open an existing project”, all that does is take you to the standard file opening dialog in Finder.
It might be my background in archival control and information management, but I really really want something that keeps track all the stories, scripts and novels I’m either currently writing, thinking about writing, editing or archiving after completion. I guess I’m talking metadata here. I’ve being trying to find some kind of adjunct to Scrivener to cover what I see as the missing elements, but nothing really seems to suit either in functionality or budget. I might have to buy Bento and start making a database… For now: a Google Docs spreadsheet.
Or a card catalog.
6 Comments so far...
KB Says:
26 September 2009 at 7:08 pm.
Hi Greg,
Yes, when I call Scrivener a “project management” tool, I do mean as in “managing a single project of writing”, as that is indeed what it is geared for. What sort of thing do you have in mind for making tracking different projects easier? The problem with trying to manage different Scrivener projects is of course how they could be scattered around your hard drive, you could move them, delete them or take them to a different computer and so on. This would make it very difficult for Scrivener to track them beyond the standard file system methods it uses now. And I strongly believe that individual Scrivener projects should be single .scriv files rather than having one large database containing all projects, for various reasons. But feel free to drop by the Wish List section of the forum, or just drop me a line directly, about how you would see such a feature working. I can’t promise anything, of course, and the 2.0 feature list is more or less closed for now (long as it is), but I do like to hear ideas for improvements.
All the best,
Keith
(Scrivener developer)
Greg Says:
26 September 2009 at 8:10 pm.
Hi Keith
Hope I didn’t sound too negative – I should point out that I like Scrivener so much as a writing tool that I changed operating systems (and computers!) in order to have it.
What I’m probably after is another program entirely to work in concert with Scrivener. I still haven’t found the right one (it may not exist yet).
Cheers
Greg.
KB Says:
27 September 2009 at 7:48 am.
Hi Greg,
Not negative at all – I was just wondering how you would see something like this working, that’s all, as I’m always up for suggestions and trying to improve Scriv to make it as useful as possible. Wow, great to hear you changed to a Mac to use Scrivener – thank you!
All the best,
Keith
benconservato Says:
28 September 2009 at 8:48 pm.
Ahh all those pieces of paper are hard to let go of. Good luck with getting it all t work for you.
Anthony Says:
28 September 2009 at 11:22 pm.
I searched for a free application for my mac and settled on evernote. I just wanted searching and tagging abilities like the mac address book has. It works ok but I’ve seen better note applications for the mac for around $20-30.
I just realised that Google had a notes programs but they have discontinued support for it.
I have been thinking about these kind of programs more recently as I have been heavily researching web 2.0 stuff, I think there is room for improvemnt in this kind of area, perhaps like a wiki on speed or is that acid?
Skimma (Sarah B) Says:
3 October 2009 at 5:09 pm.
Hey Greg, like you, I have the issue of too many ideas, and often relate to the comic you put there as an example of the problem. There’s no real solution except just to get them written down in some form or another which is what you seem to be doing any way. Glad to see writing’s become a priority for you again though. 