I thought I’d put together a short cheat-sheet to help get over the Scrivener speed bump. It just points you to some connections between Word things and Scrivener things.

I hope it’s of use to some people.

Find it here.

(btw, my book, Scrivener for Writers, will be out early in March – watch this space)

Good Words

How to publish a manuscript from Scrivener to CreateSpace (or any other print-on-demand service that accepts PDFs)

Amazon’s CreateSpace can be an excellent way for independent authors to round out their offerings by reaching out to readers who prefer “real” books.

But to do so you need to generate a PDF rather than a .mobi or .epub file, which can turn into a tedious, time-consuming, and/or frustrating process. You risk winding up in a time-sink of finagling with Microsoft Word or another word processor, using InDesign ($$) or other specialized software, or having to hire the job out (potentially $$^2.)

This short passage from BLDGBLOB seems to me a description of how to go about making art (from what is around you) or indeed, to write creatively (from what is around you). Dismantling your environment and refashioning it into the tools of your own escape, what else do artists do?

BLDGBLOG: How to dismantle your door: A Man Escaped (1956)

Breaking out, in A Man Escaped, occurs through the strategic dismantling and reassembly of all designed objects that aren’t architecture. Blankets are cut down to strips then rewoven into rope, finally wrapped and strengthened with wire from the bedframe. The hinges of a small cupboard door are bent and refashioned into grappling hooks. A mere spoon—then another—is sharpened to a chisel with which to cut through the soft wood of the cell door.

It’s as if the tools of escape are, in fact, already hidden all around us, disguised as the overlooked equipment of everyday life—the mundane bits of furniture, clothing, and internal ornament that, provided we teach ourselves how to reassemble them, will lead to an unparalleled state of post-architectural liberation. Put another way, the limits of architecture are exposed by everything normally stored inside it.

We are spent,
our civility undone,
desire squirted out,
secretions secreted.

What was continent is
incontinent.
Collectively our seed fell on stony ground.

Time to discover what we got for our savings,
like, fuck all.

We spent jackasses after making babies,
lying on our sides
gasping for toys tat toffee ipad laptop clipclop nice shop apple store more.

There is always more,
it comes from China you know,
to satisfy the yearning.
There is always more,
but we are spent.

Punk was a generation-defining social movement which accidentally gave birth to the fanzine—a Xerox-nourished zygote that slowly grew and mutated—decades later—into independent publishers and POD. The startling realization that you could do things yourself—put out your own record or publish your own counterculture “magazine” (I use the term loosely as most fanzines at the time were hand folded and stapled stacks of photocopied pages)—was fueled by the true original indie labels like Stiff Records in London. Without Stiff we would not have the punk anthem “Neat, Neat, Neat” by The Damned or My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello, and that would be a loss to the arts too bitter to contemplate.

I can write anywhere if I can get the spirit to move me (or I have a
heart-stopping deadline) — passenger seat of cars (no motion sickness),
trains, planes (usually drunk), the middle of the jungle, etc.

I try to change locations during a long writing session to keep
myself going — this might be as simple as moving up to the kitchen and
sitting on the annoying bench that hurts my back but keeps me awake, or
it might mean just lying on the floor in some kind of weird cobra-pose
for an hour and writing there. My office has a giant wood desk that’s
more like a table than a desk.

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Here is ever Scrivener keyboard shortcut in alphabetical order. Enjoy.

Scrivener for Mac Keyboard Shortcuts

Keep your research close