Scrivener.

[snitchnipped]

Well, the outline and word count update are in on my NBB! I did not get near enough written in November as I would have liked, but I was up to my ears in distractions it seemed. I am, as the picture indicates, about 70% done of my anticipated word count, which I think is still going to be slightly higher than the projected 56,000. Of course. Keep in mind though that this was a WIP when I signed up, and I've only added about 15,000 in the past month, despite using it as a NaNoWriMo... yeah, kinda failed at that.

Plus, it doesn't help that I have about 6,000 words written of a sequel to my NBB, and another 2,000 for a holiday-themed story, which may just be a prequel to the NBB. Yikes! So, I HAVE been writing, I just have my priorities all jumbled up.

I very much look forward to getting it in shape enough to share with a beta or two... I'm dying for outside opinions, but it's just too early still. And as soon as I'm done with this first pass, I will sign up for the artwork portion, if there's still time to!

In the meantime, I did some experimenting with metonomia and lady_songsmith about how is a good way to use Scrivener for beta purposes. I used to work strictly in Pages, with my research in Numbers, but considering NO one has or uses those programs and use Word instead, I would find myself stuck in converting/exporting hell. And that would lead to multiple files and versions on my end and just... ugh.

However! Using the beauty of both commenting and revision mode (where you can mark edits in different colors... each pass can has its own color!) in combination with the snapshot function and saving things in a Dropbox.... voila! One file, shared, clearly edited, easy to update, and more importantly, easy to compare revisions.

The only thing that Scrivener lacks for me is the option to make charts and tables. I NEED charts and tables, ones I can edit how I'd like. The "outliner" mode is nice and all, but it's still limiting in what it can track. Plus, I miss the NaNoWriMo progress graph... I didn't realize how much I relied on that thing! It would be beautiful to have something visual tracking a complete work within Scrivener.

How's everyone else doing on your NBBs?