Hello fellow authors and Soplings, I have something super awesome to share with you today! :o I recently discovered a writing tool--a super amazing writing tool-- that has caused me to run about telling everyone I meet how wonderous it is! (Hello, postman, do you have Scrivener? No? You should get it!)

It has allowed me to organize my current massive novel (250k words aka 600 pages) into a single glorious file instead of about two hundred individual "tools for keeping track of valueable book content"--aka: documents, emails, sticky notes, virtual sticky notes, notecards, memos on my phone, notes on my phone, napkins, self-texting, and backsides of unopened junk mail.

But in discovering this wonderous program of Scrivener, it means saying good-bye to another: WORD.

Where to begin on this one?

Welp, like so many who grew up when computers were relatively new things and old monitors use to be the size of cardboard boxes (and work about the same), I hand-wrote everything. Christmas would roll around and the number one item on my list would be a stack of college ruled notebooks. I still remember the Christmas my aunt and uncle got me about 20 notebooks on the side, and then sat and gaped while I fawned over their magnificence like it was the greatest gift I had gotten all year. You'd think I had just gotten a score of kittens.

And to me, I had.

I was pretty sure this is what Heaven looked like.

However, there was one, tiny problem with this method: I had to type the whole damn thing onto a computer. As a very time-oriented individual, this seemed like an utter waste.

Thus, with much difficulty, I transitioned onto the computer. We only had one back then that my household shared-- my parents were always trying to do work on it, my sisters fighting to play Frogger, and there I was, trying to scrounge for a little time with my virtual notebook.

This inevitably led me back to hand-written work and it was only after I finally bought my own laptop in highschool that I was able to really focus on the Steps of Power series as I do today. [Or rather, how I did... until a few weeks ago].

At that point in my life, WORD was my best friend. Together, we churned out document after document after document. There must be over two thousand (literally) WORD docs on my laptop alone--and this doesn't even begin to address how many are on my old laptop, the laptop I borrowed, my husbands laptop, and my desktop. In those WORD docs lie a ridiculous number of book notes and even rough drafts or outlines for a dozen other Steps of Power books (including The Legend of Eraydon!)

So yes. Yes, I love my new Scrivener and I'll tell you all about it in my next post, but for now, it's time to say goodbye to a lifelong writing companion.

Farewell, sweet WORD. May you go on to greener pastures.