His best friend’s sister. A deadly secret. A white-hot attraction they can’t ignore.
Today I’m discussing the parallels between drawing—something I’ve recently started learning—and writing. Come join me at WriterUnboxed.com to talk about your own creative outlets, and get a sneak peek at how my drawing skills are coming along!
I get asked a lot about how to adjust the font, spacing, indents, and margins of a manuscript when working in Scrivener, especially from those who are importing or pasting in text from outside sources.
Whatever you do, don’t manually change the look of each new document as you create or import it. That’s the hard way!
In this post, I’ll show you the easy way to get your manuscript looking the way you want it. But, keep in mind that Scrivener was conceived as drafting software. This means that how it looks in the Editor (the space where you write the manuscript) doesn’t matter much because you can change it all when you compile, making it look different depending on the type of file you’re producing—e.g., EPUB, PDF for print on demand, or Word documents for submission.
Still, you probably have preferences for how the text looks while you’re writing. And, luckily, if you don’t like the default settings, you can easily change them and get back to writing.
I’ll also show you how to convert any existing documents that you wrote, imported, or pasted in so they match.
IMPORTANT: I highly recommend you do not use Tabs for indents, or extra paragraph returns to create paragraph spacing. Your output will look better and be more flexible later (e.g., allow you to adjust or remove indents) if you set up indents and after-paragraph spacing to prevent this temptation. If you already started writing with tabs and extra paragraph returns, you can use options under Edit>Text Tidying to strip them out, or use this article to get rid of them via Project Replace.
Okay, let’s start by creating your new global default that will apply to all new documents in all projects on the same computer.
The following steps will let you set the standard for all new documents in all projects on a specific computer, but will not change existing documents (we’ll look at how to apply it to existing files in a minute).
I’m happy to announce that all six of my Men of Steele books are now available in audio on Amazon/Audible! (They’re also listed on Everand.) If you prefer to listen to your romantic suspense, I hope you'll check them out.
Side note: Amazon shows 7 books in the MOS series because Lie With Me is a Men of Steele crossover to the new Night Herons series. Lie With Me is not yet available in audio, but I’ll let you know when it is. 🙂
Hey, there! I’m over at Writer Unboxed discussing my thoughts on The Joys and Perils of Research. Are you a stickler for the details or easy going? I’d love for you to come check it out and share your thoughts. Or just read it and move on. Up to you. 😉
I recently shared this with my Scrivener newsletter readers, and I thought you might find it useful too…
The last couple of months I’ve been pretty stressed out and frustrated, feeling like despite all the hours I was working, I wasn’t getting enough done. And then I took a step back and realized something that has really helped: I was getting A LOT done, but I’d made it invisible.
For example, while I was running the 30-Day Scrivener Journey, I initially might’ve had an item on my to do list that looked like “Create Lesson 4.” And then I’d get to the end of the day, having worked for hours on it and still not be done, and not be able to check that off my list, and feel like a failure.
So I broke down all the discrete steps required to have a finished Lesson 4 on the class website, and there were THIRTEEN! No wonder I was overwhelmed. Once I had all the parts of the process mapped out—I guess that’s kind of my thing, lol—not only could I see just how much work I was actually accomplishing, but I could also stop in the middle without losing track of what needed to come next.
Maybe it sounds silly and obvious, but I think a lot of us fall into this trap. I’d like to gently suggest if you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed—whether in your writing or anywhere else in your life—that you take stock of the full effort required to finish something and give yourself more credit. It’s gratifying to be able to check off each step, and I think it’s motivating.
To apply this specifically to writing, you might think in chunks. Those could be blocks of time, word counts, chapters of a research book read, etc… It all counts. I track words written each day, but my daily goal is time based because I spend a lot of necessary time doing things for the book besides typing out words. Like research, rereading, revising, and brainstorming.
All are part of my process at some point, and the book won’t happen without them. I cannot just think about the story for three months, figure the whole thing out and then have it spill from my fingertips into a typewriter like Dick Francis. (But if I could, the three months of thinking would totally count toward writing!)
Anyway, all that to say that often we think “I just need to do this one thing,” but the idea that it’s only one thing is a lie. For your well being, consider breaking it down.
And if you have any of your own ideas/thoughts to share on this topic, leave a comment. I'd love to hear from you!
Do you have critique partners, or someone who can give you valuable feedback on your book (or work or whatever)? I’m talking about how it feels, and what to look for in a critique partner over at Writer Unboxed today (recently named one of Writer’s Digest’s best websites for writers for the 18th year in a row).
There are some great comments already. Come join the fun!
If you’ve ever struggled to get words on the page, or just want to flex your creative muscles, I recently discussed the power of writing prompts on WriterUnboxed.com. You’re invited to come on over and, if you’re brave, play along. Yes, the squirrels are somehow relevant. 😉
