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Nice article, Jason. I'm becoming a big fan of Scrivener, and I believe they have a special going on for NaNo participants that finish this year.

I checked out your NaNo page -- cool influences! I love Chabon, and I have my first Hornby on my to read pile (Long Way Down).

Hope you guys have a few NaNo articles throughout November!

Also, I'd like to note that a very Scrivener-like Mac app, Journler, has recently stopped development: http://www.journler.com/

@swartzfeger: For Hornby, go directly to "High Fidelity" and "Fever Pitch." Though "Long Way Down" is funny and "Slam" was weird and affecting.

I realise that this is about novel writing, but can these tools, or are there other all-in-one tools that can be used just as effectivly for non-fiction writing?

I'm wondering, what about Pages or MS Word?

@corbywan: These tools are actually fantastic for any long-form writing, especially if you need to stay organized and do a lot of research. Andy Ihnatko uses Scrivener to write all his columns, I believe. If you were doing research papers it would be good for that too.

@simon_w: Those are fine word processors but they don't really help you organizationally, I've found—they're much more focused on creating the document itself. On top of that, they've got a lot of features that are dedicated toward formatting and printing out documents, which novel writers aren't really as concerned about. The tools I highlighted, especially this new breed of novel-writing apps, are focused on the writing process than on the output, which I think is the right focus.

Of course, you could write a novel in Pages or Word. I'm sure some people have. Personally, I'd rather pay $40 for Scrivener. ;-)

"There’s also a peek at a fantastic (if brutal) productivity enhancer that blocks off your Mac’s Internet connection and forces you to get some work done."

Perhaps this comment was meant as a joke. It makes no sense for a writer to deny himself access to the largest reference library on the planet, if not in the whole universe.

alansky, on 16 October 2009 - 02:31 PM, said:

It does make sense if it's preventing the writer from writing any of the book in the first place!

@alansky: Just as the Internet is great as a research tool, it is great as a time suck. If you're writing a novel, the Internet is generally (not always, but generally) a time suck, not a resource. When you're doing research, it's a resource. When you need to get the words down, it's not.

I quite like Ulysses (http://www.the-soulmen.com/ulysses/) which has a reduced version Ulysses Core. The software has dropped considerably in price and has improved quite a bit.

The export features are excellent and include exporting to LaTeX which is handy for people who do academic writing since the features of these kinds of tools are useful for more than just novel writing.

My only concern with Freedom is the loss of BackBlaze and Dropbox during the "Freedom" time which hints at it's best used for only short periods.

Jason, Inspirational. I have joined nanowrimo and have Scrivener at the ready.

Unfortunately, blocking out all other activity on my Mac doesn't work because the iPhone is within reach.

Good luck with the novel.

G

I'm a daily user of Scrivener, and much recommend it.

Thanks, Jason!