Do It Now!

There’s no time like the present

 

Have I used that line before in my blogs? Probably. And I’ll most likely use it again.

I use Scrivener to write my books and short stories. It works extremely well, I can store everything related to the project in one place, and it saves my work (I also use an external storage device to make sure it’s saved). But I have neglected to learn how to create the appropriate files directly from Scrivener to Kindle…until this week.

What do you do when you don’t know how to proceed? First, you pray. Then you sleep on it. Then (please forgive the sense of flippancy; it’s not intended), you google it. I discovered several great videos on how to use Scrivener Compile, besides the lengthy notes I had from the online courses I had taken some time ago.

The best site, in my estimation, is http://susanrussoanderson.com/2014/02/18/how-to-compile-a-sparkling-mobi-in-scrivener-for-windows/. (I use a Mac, but it still worked fine.) To be honest, I found it even more user-friendly than the Scrivener how-to videos at Literature and Latte, https://www.literatureandlatte.com/videos/CompilingUsingFormatPresetsLarge.mov, although they work too. So take your pick or combine them, whatever works best for you.

The Susan Russo Anderson video mentioned above requires that front and back matter be formatted in the Scrivener program and included “As Is” during compile. But I discovered that the Literature and Latte site explained how to make the text editing usable during compile. So, either way, it works. And the more you play with it, the more comfortable and less confusing it becomes.

I think the secret to learning how to work with a new program like Scrivener Compile is to start small. I have a short story I’ve been wanting to publish for a while. It’s 10K in length, so it includes all the elements I need to practice on, but it’s not novel-length. So I worked with that story. I only Compiled it seven times before I was reasonably happy with the outcome! I have yet to press Publish, because I need to do some promotional things, but it’s saved in draft.

So, if you’ve been procrastinating in some areas of your indie writing, press on today. There’s no time like the present.