Tag Archives: writing

Taking Notes … in Scrivener

Posted on by
Comment

I get tired of looking up the same things up over and over again and do something about it — with a software tool that I already have.

My memory for little facts and figures is something I can neither understand or explain. I can tell you the phone number for the house I grew up in (and left in 1977), as well as phone numbers for my grandparents’ homes and even my aunt — all of whom have been dead for more than 20 years now. (Heck, my dad’s parents died in the 1980s!) But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the pixel dimensions of a YouTube video thumbnail, which is a piece of information I need every time I publish a video on YouTube.

Little things like this haunt me. I found myself looking up the same information, over and over. It was a frustrating waste of time, especially when I didn’t have a way to look it up. In case you’re wondering, the Internet isn’t always available when you’re on a boat in a remote area of British Columbia. (And yes, I’d have a Starlink by now if I did’t think Elon Musk was such a shithead. By I digress and I definitely don’t want to discuss the Space Karen here.)

So I started taking notes.

It didn’t go very well. The problem is, I took notes on paper. Notebook paper, usually. But I didn’t always take notes in the same notebook and I’d sometimes misplace notebooks with notes. And I travel a lot and usually forget to take the notebooks with me. So I start new notebooks. And even if I did stick with a notebook for more than a week, the notes weren’t organized in any way. It was just a mess.

And then I thought about my To Do software, which exists on my computer, my phone, and my tablet. I can add an item to my to do list or consult the list or check off a completed item pretty much anywhere I was because I always had at least one of those devices at hand. The app on each device shared the same databases and automatically synced. Clearly, I needed something like that for note-taking.

I know Apple has a Notes app, but I’ve never been able to get it to sync between all my Apple devices. But there was one app I already had on all the devices and it was already sharing one database: Scrivener.

Scrivener is supposed to be a writing app. People on social media who write books (or want to write books) rave about it. They rave so loud and frequently, that I’ve tried using it to write books. I’ve tried at least three times with three different versions of the app. And I’ve failed as many times as I’ve tried.

The trouble is, I’ve been using Microsoft Word since 1989. I have written all kinds of things with it, including entire books and the scripts for video courses about it. I know Word (and Excel, for that matter) better than almost any other software I use. Scrivener does things Scrivener’s way. I do thing Word’s way. I just couldn’t be bothered learning enough about Scrivener’s way to use Scrivener to write books. Why learn to use a new tool when the old tool is working fine?

I could, however, use it to take notes.

My memory issue extends to the work I do as a silversmith. When I make items such as earrings and bracelets for sale, I need to have consistency in the way they are produced. I don’t make one of each earring design. I make dozens. And I don’t make them all the same day. The only way to ensure that I was making them the same way every time I made a batch — given my crappy memory for details — was to create what I called a “Recipe Book” for my jewelry.

Years ago, I created a Scrivener file, which lives in a Dropbox folder. (Dropbox is a cloud computing storage service where I put things I want to be able to access from all of my devices.) The Mac OS and iOS versions of Scrivener all have access to this file. I created folders for the type of item, such as Findings, Earrings, Bracelets. And then subfolders inside each of those folders such as the Sheet Metal, Wire Earrings, and Bead Earrings folders inside the Earrings folder. And then actual pages inside the appropriate folder. Each page listed the “ingredients” — materials, supplies, and tools — and steps for making one specific item.

Jewelry Recipes Example
Here’s one of the pages in my Jewelry Recipes file, which has expanded over the years to include descriptions of the stones I use in my work as well as boilerplate text I use in online shop listings.

This works like a charm, provided that I create page for each item. For example, my Split Bar Dangle earrings page describes the earrings, shows a picture of them, and lists all the materials, supplies, and tools I need to make them. That’s how I know that I need 3 inches of 1/4 inch wide 24 or 26 gauge fine silver bezel wire (among other things) for each pair. I don’t have to guess what I used last time I made them or measure a pair I might still have in inventory. I have the recipe and I can follow it, step by step, with the same ingredients.

What if I created another file that just had miscellaneous notes in it? Organized onto pages and maybe with folders to keep things easy to find?

It seemed like a no-brainer, so that’s what I did.

This is a life-changing (for me) productivity hack. Not only am I using it to note down the dumb things I find myself looking up online (and elsewhere) over and over again, but I’ve also begun using it as a place to keep notes for projects I’m working on.

For example, I’m currently preparing to get my boat on a charter program next season and I need to take care of some upgrades. As I do research and get answers from knowledgeable people on the TugNuts forums and elsewhere, I copy and paste the info into a page in my Notebook. When I need the info, it’s right there.

Notebook page example
Here’s my note page for the upgrades I need to complete on my boat this winter. Everything is right where I need it.

So sure, Scrivener might be “the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.” (Per Literature and Latte’s marketing material for Scrivener. But it also makes a damn good notebook app, keeping your data anywhere you need it.

Now if only I could stop buying empty notebooks…

Journaling My Year

Posted on by
Comment

I start, on January 1, to keep a daily journal and 10 1/2 months later, I’m still at it.

Over the years, I have tried and mostly failed to keep a daily journal of the things going on in my life. I’d start with good intentions and then stop, mostly because I forgot to keep writing. Then I’d start up again, swearing I’d keep at it, but then stop.

What I Tried

I tried handwritten journals in beautiful blank books. Stopping midway through one of them was especially painful since I really wanted to fill them and have a record of a long, uninterrupted period in a really nice looking book.

I tried using calendar-style planners with a whole week on each spread. Not much space to write there; I could simply put down a few bullet points about my day. These suffered the same fate. I have many partially completed calendar books floating around my home.

I tried marble notebooks like the ones we used in elementary school. The local Fred Meyer sells them for just 50¢ each once the Back to School buying rush is over. I have a lot of them. (I have a paper addiction.) They fared no better than all the other handwritten options.

And yes, I tried digital journalling. I tried apps designed just for that purpose. (I was very excited about Apple’s Journal app until I actually tried it; what good is a digital journal if you can’t export or print it? How many people will be using the same Journal app in 20 years? Definitely not me.)

Scrivener Document Sidebar
As you can see in the sidebar for my Scrivener Journal document, I was very bad about writing journal entries.

I also tried using Scrivener, the darling of the writing world. I created a Journal file with folders for months and files for days. The screenshot of the document’s sidebar shown here should give you an idea of how that went.

Understand that my desire to journal every day has been very intense throughout my life. Heck, this blog was started as a journal of sorts. Not a daily journal but just a journal of the interesting things I was doing or thinking that I wanted to share.

That desire ramped up as I aged and I started forgetting about things I’d seen or done. The only remnant — or trigger, in some cases — of a memory was a photo I took at the time. But I don’t take photos of everything. I worried that I was permanently forgetting the things I did, things I might want to remember in the future.

Things that would be so simple to just jot down right after they happened.

In a journal.

Another Try

This came to a head when I was trying to write up the days of my Great Loop trip in the My Great Loop Adventure blog I created to document the entire trip. It isn’t easy to blog in detail every day so I slacked off. And then, when I was trying to fill in the gaps in the blog, I realized that I just couldn’t remember the details I wanted to share.

I needed to do something about this. My memory was starting to get iffy and I didn’t want to lose days of my life. I had to try journaling again and stick to it this time.

The Journal I bought
I bought a yellow one in the largest size; they come in a lot of colors and three sizes.

I started on January 1. I prepared by buying a very nice journal book on Amazon (don’t judge me) that had 365 pages. One page per day. They were not dated or numbered but they did have spaces for both bits of info. And lines close enough together to fit a few hundred words.

I started on January 1 in Key West FL, where I was on my boat with my friend Jason. And, for the first time ever, I’ve kept to it, providing an entry for every single day of my life. It’s now October 16 and I have entries right through yesterday.

Covid Entry
I backtracked to fill in the pages for days I was really suffering with Covid. All I remember from those days was sleeping.

I’ll be honest: I don’t always write every evening or the following morning like I want to. Sometimes I miss a few days and have to go back. I’ve found that going backwards from the current day usually helps. The only days when the entry is unreasonably short were the few days that I slept nearly the entire day due to my bout with Covid in August.

Why It’s Working this Time

Why am I finally doing so well at journaling this year? I think there are three reasons, one of which I already touched upon.

  • Motivation. I’m tired of forgetting days and weeks of my life. I’m tired of looking at photos I shot 3 years ago and seeing places I forgot I’d visited. I don’t think my memory is any worse than the average person my age — it’s not like it’s a problem — but the only way I see being able to remember stuff is to jot notes about the day at day’s end or the following morning.
  • Success leads to more success. After ten and a half months of keeping this up, I feel that I’d really be letting myself down if I didn’t continue to do it. So the more I write, the more I want to write.
  • 365 single pages to fill. The book’s design makes it easy — and, in a way, required — to journal every day. There are exactly the right number of pages to fill. (Actually, there were 366 days this leap year, but I can always insert an extra sheet if I have to.) Second, the pages aren’t that big. There are only 25 lines! That’s nothing for someone like me. And who says I have to use every single one?

I bring the journal with me whenever I know I’ll be away for more than just one night. I try to write my entries at the end of the day, but if I miss that, I’ll try to do it in the morning when I’m having my coffee in bed.

What I’ve got so far is a summary of what I’ve been up to so far this year. Sometimes I write about when I woke up, how I slept, and what I ate. Sometimes I write details about a travel day’s experiences. Sometimes I write notes to myself about how I have to do something or change a dumb behavior. And once in a while, I write what’s on my mind socially, politically, or romantically.

And yes, I can squeeze a lot into 25 lines when I need to. I don’t write full sentences. It’s not like it’s going to be published anywhere. It’s just something I can look back on in years to come to remember what those pictures I might have are all about. Or to fill in the gaps when I didn’t take pictures.

One thing is for sure: it’s definitely going to come in handy when I fill in the gaps in the My Great Loop Adventure blog.

Pronoun Woes

Posted on by
11

This old reader/writer knows the difference between singular and plural pronouns.

I just finished an audio book that kind of bugged me. The problem: the use of plural pronouns to apply to a singular person.

It was jarring. Most of the characters had the usual singular pronouns of he/him/his or she/her/hers so the text I heard as I listened was extremely easy to follow when the reader read about those characters. But one main character used the they/them/their pronouns. As a result, anytime the reader referred to that person, it sounded as if he were talking about multiple people. My listening brain came to a complete halt every time.

I’m old school. Although I understand the reason why people don’t want to use a male or female pronoun, I really wish we’d come up with a pronoun that didn’t already exist as a plural.

It’s difficult to understand text that refers to one person with a plural pronoun when the text could easily refer to multiple people. Many times that the reader referred to this character, I had to figure out if it was just that one person or multiple people. It was extremely distracting from the story.

I want to blame the writer, but I know why he did it. He wants to help make gender neutrality more acceptable to the general public. He wants us to get used to it. It’s a noble goal. But it drives some of us nuts. I would definitely have enjoyed the book more — with a lot less distraction — if he stuck to standard pronoun usage for his characters. Hell, he already had two lesbian couples in the book. How much did he need to support gender issues in what was basically a science fiction drama?

And now I know folks are going to step forward here and comment that we’ve been using “they” to refer to singular unspecified gender individuals for years and that it’s in the dictionary or that it’s in some widely used style guide. But it’s only been in common usage for people who don’t want a specific gender identity for a short while now. And I’ve been reading and writing for more than 50 years. It’s not as if I can flip a switch in my brain and it all works out fine for me. “They” refers to more than one person in my brain and most of the brains out there.

Clearly, we need a new set of singular pronouns. Can we fix this please?