Update: Both 11/9 and my second technothriller, The Billion Dollar Heist, are now available on Amazon.
Of all the stereotypes we hear about Apple owners, there is perhaps none so enduring as the guy writing a novel on his MacBook in Starbucks. Well, one November, I became that guy. Fast-forward a few years, and I have a 110,000-word technothriller ready to unleash on an unsuspecting public.
I’d had an idea for a novel years earlier, but I’d initially done what almost everyone does when they have an idea for a novel: absolutely nothing. The gap between having an idea and having a completed novel seemed too enormous to contemplate, especially when it would have to be combined with, you know, working for a living.
But then someone told me about something called NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month. Every November, around 400,000 people across the USA, UK, Canada and a number of other countries around the world attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel. I decided to become one of them–using Apple technology, naturally …
The idea behind NaNoWriMo is a simple yet effective one. You tell everyone you know you’re going to do it, to create peer pressure. You put your social life on hold for a month, and you write 1,667 words a day, working evenings and weekends. If all goes to plan, you wake up on 1st December with 50,000 words of a novel.
50,000 words is not a novel–they normally start at around 80,000 words–but it’s a big chunk of one, and once you have that much written, the prospect of writing the rest, albeit at a slower pace, doesn’t seem so daunting.
Writing can be a lonely existence, especially if it’s what you do for a living anyway, so there’s one extra component: what NaNoWriMo calls ‘write-ins.’ Bunches of people gather together in coffee shops and do some mix of socialising and writing. Having at times an entire coffee shop full of people all doing the same thing at the same time is surprisingly motivating.
Using Scrivener for planning & writing
I soon learned the hard way that I needed to plan the novel, in detail, before I wrote a single word of it. Being a tech-lover, I figured there had to be some software around to help with the planning, and there was indeed: a Mac app called Scrivener.
I reviewed Scrivener back in 2013, but the tl;dr version is that it’s an app created for writers by someone who really understands how writers work. And that begins with the planning.
One Scrivener view is a set of virtual cards or Post-it notes on a virtual corkboard. You can type notes onto these, then organize them as you like: give them titles, shuffle them around, stack groups of them together and so on. The end result is a novel in kit form.
When you’re ready to begin the writing, the cards transform themselves into documents (chapters, scenes, whatever structure works best for your novel) and you start writing.
While writing, Scrivener helps you keep everything you might need to refer to, all in one place. Previously, I had an unholy mess of windows from different apps positioned around my screen: research notes and character pen-portraits in Notes, webpages in Safari, photos in Preview (handy when describing, say, the flight deck of an Airbus airliner), a spreadsheet with the structure of the novel in Excel, and the manuscript itself in Word.
The combination of Scrivener and a large screen allowed me to open everything at once within a single document in a single app.
Having a detailed plan, and writing every single day, means you never begin a writing session staring forlornly at a blank page: you can begin tapping away at the keyboard within seconds. I soon realised an additional benefit of this: anytime I had a few minutes to spare, I could write a paragraph or three. On the metro, waiting in reception to meet someone, even waiting for the kettle to boil … all that dead time became writing time.
Of course, a MacBook–especially a 17-inch one–isn’t always the most practical of devices to use on a crowded subway, so I took to using my iPad for these ‘filler’ sessions. By keeping my Scrivener document (which is really a disguised folder containing RFT files) on Dropbox, I could sync plain text versions to an iPad app called Plain Text.
The name gives a small clue that the app handles only text files, but it did have one huge advantage over a conventional wordprocessor like Pages or Word: it has the same sidebar to show the overall structure of the novel. Although I mostly wrote sequentially, there are times when writing something would make me realise I needed to change something that happened earlier. Clicking directly on a section heading is far quicker than scrolling or searching.
Once I had a first draft complete, I no longer needed to display notes or photos alongside the piece I was writing, so at that point my MacBook Air 11 took over the coffee-shop duties. I upgraded to the Haswell version when it came out to take advantage of the amazing battery-life, which freed me from the need to carry a power brick.
With what was, prior to the new MacBook, Apple’s sleekest machine, I was that Starbucks stereotype. Much of the editing was also done on my MacBook Air.
Finally, since there are few things as painful as losing your hard-wrung words, you want a robust backup regime. I use a combination of a Time Capsule, wired USB drive for a second Time Machine backup, Dropbox and manually saving work to a USB key at the end of each writing session.
The path to publication
Writing a novel is one thing, getting it published is another. After a false start with a well-known agent, I ended up deciding to enlist the help of some technology, which is how it ended up as a Kickstarter project. More on the publishing process in a separate piece coming soon.
Meantime, if you’d like to check out the Kickstarter and see whether it sounds like your kind of novel, please do.
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Yay for NaNoWriMo! I haven’t found any good write in the cities of Germany where I had been living while I was partaking in the novel writing craziness, but it was still a great experience. And you are right: writing not even 2K words a day is much more manageable than looking at an entire storyarc all at once. By now, I have four unpolished stories, but with some effort, they can be turned into something. It’s the first step that counts :)
I started out with Scrivener as well, since it’s the best app to keep all the research an actual writing in one place, but then I discovered Ulysses early last year. Now, I do the actual writing in Ulysses since I like it better for a completely distraction free writing environment, and once I have the basic writing done, I transfer it to Scrivener to tweak and polish. With the new Ulysses iPad app (and hopefully soon the iPhone app), writing and reading my stuff on the go has become even more comfortable.
Good luck to you and your novel, I hope you will get it published!
Thanks, Julia. Scrivener has a distraction-free mode too, but I actually like seeing the structure as I write so almost never use it.
Oh, I know, I am just too tempted to fiddle with the book and my notes when I have all of that accessible. My own downfall :D
Just pledged for your book, can’t wait to read it :)
Thanks, Julia
You just need a professional book cover, have your manuscript edited and you are good to go to get published and sell your eBook. Do it on your own, upload to iBooks, Amazon, Nook, etc. or choose a company like booksmango.com as publisher.
I agree on the book cover. Ben’s photography is very impressive. I’m certain he can come up with something fantastic. So much talent should be shared on the book cover.
Thanks, Antonio. I actually changed the cover after watching a TED talk on the subject – I’ll share that story in an update to the Kickstarter project sometime next week.
… The moment when you realize you should have been reading Ben Lovejoy’s articles in a British accent…
Recently I find that in Starbucks there’s always somewhere in the corner someone with a massive horribly ugly Dell, with his charger dragged all across the room to a power socket. People have no shame and respect these days… :p
I was certainly very glad when Haswell MacBook Airs came along – I never take my power brick out with me these days.
Thank you for that great article, Ben! Probably top 3 articles you’ve ever written! :) Really helpful and useful. I won’t pledge for the book simply because I don’t like that kind of books, but I wish you deeply a great success with it! :)
Thanks, Ilko
This is a great article. Best of luck with your novel publication!
Many thanks, Cameron
As a MacBook-using, Starbucks-loving, Scrivener-worshipping, three-time NaNoWriMo Winner…YES, I’m the Venti Soy Caramel Mocha! Over here in the corner without a charger!
*ahem* Nice article. This is the first time I’ve seen your site and I like your writing style! I’ll stay tuned for more.
Thanks, SMG – and well done on completing Nano three times!
Ok, I’m in. And tweeted it out, so literally dozens more people know about it now. :)
Heh, thanks, Jasen
The fact that you completed your novel means it’s already a success, Ben. Very well done.
By the way, GREAT NAME for the book and superb simplistic marketing design on the sleeve. Visually-catchy, psychologically-punchy and totally memorable! http://i.imgur.com/0rYzxVp.png
It’s something even the Apple marketing team would be proud of.
Thanks – I appreciate the kind comments
Great stuff. I got addicted to novel writing with NaNoWriMo as well.
Scrivener is a great tool but I never use it, the reason being the thing you said in your article about “planning the novel out” before you even write a single word.
You should be aware that this is only *one* way to write a novel and that far from everyone writes this way. It’s true that at some point you have to sit down and think about your character arcs, and your timelines and do some planning, but by no means at all do you HAVE to “do it first.” This can sometimes kill the whole idea in fact, and many people are better off just jumping in and writing.
Scrivener can help you out only on that one type of approach, for all other attempts it gets in the way.
Yep, some people (famously including Stephen King) are ‘seat of the pants’ writers. You have to find what works for you. Having tried it both ways, I know what works for me!
Utterly disagree. I’m a pantser and never do any planning at all.
Scrivener is great as a tool to manage, reorder, and edit work.
Might not work for you, but Scrivener can work for all types of writers and writing.
Use CreateSpace for print-on-demand physical copies (you can create the print-ready PDF in Scrivener).
Brilliant service that gets your book to every corner of the planet.
Toi, toi, toi!
Have you heard of Ulysses for Mac and iPad? I’m trying that out for my writing. I, too, have been plagued by having ideas but not actually getting any real writing done. Lol. I have always wanted to be a novelist.
Yes, Scrivener has a similar distraction-free mode, but personally I rarely use it. I really like seeing the structure of the novel in the binder while I write. I think with writing, it’s figuring out your own patterns – what time of day is best, what environment, etc.
Three friends of mine who are all published authors have each separately told me the same thing: the biggest difference between a published author and non-published one is follow-through. Developing ones story-telling skills are also essential. I have been trying to write a novel for over 20 years, but it is only in the last 2 that my writing abilities have advanced sufficiently to reach 30,000 word mark. I kept restarting the novel. Eventually I realized that I had 3 or 4 decent chapters that would work within the same story. Now that I have a good start, the rest is about finding time wherever I can to write. Note that listening to one’s work through Voice Dream for iOS is a great boon for catching errors.
Getting feedback from others is also a must. My writing style improved immensely after someone with a journalism degree critiqued one of my chapters. Then there is reading about writing, character development, plot development, and constantly reading other people’s work with a critical eye. I could go on, but you probably know most of this. Let me know if you want me to check out your work.
Pledged for $6 USD. Thanks for this post Ben. I know another author who published a romance thriller called Afghan Girl at Amazon.com. It was a fine novel but he can’t get enough people to write reviews for it. Very frustrating to put so much effort into a project with so little to show for it.
I’m writing a hard science fiction thriller myself (30,000 words in). Since I don’t want my project to suffer the same fate as my friend’s, I’m very interested in seeing your publication group idea work out. Good luck!
Thanks, and best of luck with the Sf thriller.
Thank you!
I am willing to serve as a beta reader for your future novels if you need one. For what it is worth, another journalist, John Lumpkin, found my input valuable enough mention me in his latest novel, Desert of Stars.
No obligation to reciprocate although I am always looking for critiques of my own material.
Thanks, I’m fortunate enough to have a solid set of beta readers, but I appreciate the offer.
I tried to use Scrivener a while back and did not understand how to leverage all it had to offer… I might be a seat-flyer… After reading this article, however, I feel totally challenged to write more often and make better use of technologies that are available. I currently use a combination of Notes and Pages (syncing through iCloud has been a seamless experience). I’m also curious to know your opinion, as a writer, on what would be a better mobile writing tool, the iPad Air 2 or the upcoming 12″ Macbook? (Asking for a friend :-P..)
Really great article. Glad I found it.
Thanks. I’d have to go with a MacBook personally for Scrivener and easier multi-tasking if using other apps, but I do also write on my iPad.
Just pledged for mine! Good luck Ben, hopefully I will join you soon!..
And will you be there for personal pickups?
Thanks, Atikur – and yes, I will
i never thought you would publish a novel , big surprise !! and good luck with the publishing , i saw ur kickstarter already reached the goal :)
Thanks, Jasper
Ben, or anyone else in that matter, have any of you guys ever used Ulysses? I’m also writing a novel, a sci-fi thriller, and I’m about to transfer all my notes from half a dozen programs to a writer’s app. Scrivener looks cluttered where Ulysses looks like it respects your space but I have doubts about the usability or features. At home I’m on a 27” iMac and out in the wild I use the early 2015 rMBP 13” (which, by the way, feels dead slow when I tried to use it on 1440*900 mode instead of native 2*1280*800)
I’m not a fan of plain text with markup, and Scrivener has distraction-free mode if you want to view your words and nothing else while writing, so Ulysses isn’t for me. But both apps have their fans, and both offer a free trial, so try them out and see which works best for you.
Yep I have both of them installed on both machines. I figured I’m going to have to use Numbers with Ulysses since I keep all my characters side by side. Ulysses won’t let me do that. I’m yet to find that on Scrivener but at least it has a separate characters folder with predefined bio info. It has the overview mode so I think I can simulate numbers with that. By the way congrats with the novel.
Thanks, Oomoot.
Hi Oomoot. Glad to hear about you writing a sci-fi thriller. What’s the working title/concept? Are you referencing the Atomic Rocket’s website any? I’m willing to take a look at your draft if you’re willing to look at mine (31,000+ words in).
Personally, I have never use Ulysses or Scrivener. Too much of my editing is done on the go in Word on my iPhone.
Hi Mansur, The working title is the name of the main character, Kral, but it’s definitely going to change. My novel is in Turkish and well you probably won’t be able to read it. It’s about a regular working class guy’s life 100 years from now who lives in one of the oldest quarters in Istanbul. I’m using the snowflake method so it’s all in pieces.
Well your command of English is excellent so I hope you’ll translate the final product. Best of luck!
Your words are most gracious sir. Thank you. For a reason no one in here writes sci-fi, fantasy yes sci-fi no. So I figured I should. Though snowflake kind of slows me down. If it succeeds in Turkey I think I myself am going to translate it personally.
Looking forward to it! You’ll need someone to proof the English draft to get all the idioms and fine sentence structure, but you write the language well enough for anyone to understand you. Good luck on the book!
I looked into the snowflake method and decided I was already writing slowly enough as it was ;)
I’m well aware of it. If I ever succeed I’ll need a pro and a native speaker to proofread it after translating it.
That was the same process I used to write my book as well. Create the peer pressure, tell people in work, then when they ask how’s it going, you better have an answer. I’m currently awaiting my Macbook for book two. Some risk -reward being employed as well as peer pressure.
Seems a decent reward. :-)
I am now probably Bidding farewell to a very long nursing career and have been contemplating a book… your article is exactly what I needed. Oh and did I mention I love you!!!!!
Well, thank you … Best of luck with the book!