Scrivener for the first draft

Writing a first draft is almost a completely different sport compared to editing and revising. It’s the most creative part of the writing effort. The work flow incorporates outlines, research notes, references, organization, re-organization, and more. I’ve recently been trying out a new program for writing first drafts: Scrivener.

Scrivener (Win and OSX) is a program designed to seemlessly combine word processing with several other writing tools including note organization, outlining, equation editing, and layout. It can work with EndNote (youtube), too.

It’s great to have all of these other tools right at hand and integrated. There’s less task-switching time.

The only shortcoming I can see is the lack of a “Track Changes” function like Word has. So it’s not great for collaboration, but it might reduce the time until the first draft gets done by reducing the time it takes to refer back to notes and other materials.