A bit of background first. Way back when I switched to Mac from PC, also bought and used Parallels for Mac so I could continue to write in Word Perfect. Word, as a professional writing tool is horrible. I hate it. None of the default Word settings are correct for what’s required for a novel and trying to fix a formatting issue in Word tends to create a bigger mess.

With Word Perfect, however, I can do everything I need to do and fix problems easily. My WP novels automatically number my pages and chapters and allow me to have the title page and headers I want.

I’d heard wonderful things about Scrivener but it was a while before I wasn’t in the middle of a project with a deadline. I decided my current project was perfect for testing a switch to Scrivener. It’s a novella, so I’d have an answer quickly and if it didn’t work, switching back to WP wouldn’t be all that onerous.

Here’s the Number One Important Thing for Me, the requirement that has to be in place No. 1:

I need to not waste time figuring out what/how to do things. I need to spend my time writing.

I don’t mind spending some time learning. But it needs to be quality learning, not frustrating learning.

What Went Wrong

1. The novel formatting template would not allow me to change fonts. As soon as I started typing text using that template with the default font set to my preference, the font reverted back to the original default font. WHICH I HATED. I have a font I like to use that’s easy on my eyes. I read up on changing preferences, googled etc and nothing solved my problem. I could not get the damn template to accept my preferred font. For that reason, I abandoned the novel template and started from scratch.

2. Things went pretty well for a while. Until I decided I needed to start generating some compiled versions. Suffice it to say, I could not make it create a title page that wasn’t recognized as a chapter and incorrectly numbered. I Googled some more, read some more, consulted the knowledgebase and help and there was no set of enumerated steps that worked as advertised. When I tried to search for the words that appeared to be relevant, I got ZERO results.

When I finally, after HOURS of trying, found a way to make a title page that didn’t get counted as a chapter (and that still didn’t work in a way that was at all logical to me) all my chapters ended up with TWO lines for the chapter heading. (Chapter X was repeated twice for each chapter.) Not only that, but page numbering moved, for some reason, to the bottom of the page. WHY? THAT’S NOT WHERE THEY GO FOR A Novel. At that point, I gave up.

3. The Scrivener help file is awful. The Knowledgbase and forum searching are likewise difficult to search and did not return relevant or helpful results. None of the books I consulted were helpful. They were, sadly, based on working assumptions that do not in any way match the way I need to write.

A Few Other Issues

1. Not all writers need or want structure
2. I no longer write chapter scenes. I haven’t for years. But I STILL had to create chapter folders in order to get chapter numbering. WHY? And once I did that, there was no way to create a title page that didn’t screw up all the numbering.
3. The problem with templates is that most people need/want to customize them. Therefore, customizing a template needs to be easy and it wasn’t. The instructions for changing defaults DID NOT WORK.

I can’t waste any more time on this.

I’m totally bummed because there’s a lot other features I would love to use.

If anyone knows how to make any of this work, I’m all ears.