More date work & Scrivener 3

Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

The first job I did on Tuesday morning was yesterday’s writing prompts post.

The second job I did was the first of this week’s date work, as I ran out of time on Monday. So to hurry me along a bit, I finished all of August, as the last week is only two days.

That means I’m now on September, which is where I’m supposed to be in March. I could have just jumped right in for September, but I was afraid of missing something that I might be able to rustle up quite quickly.

Alas, that didn’t happen. But I still have tons of ideas for when I’m twiddling my thumbs … if ever I’m twiddling my thumbs again … Sigh! Does anyone remember twiddling their thumbs?

Scrivener

I found out that the new Scrivener for Windows may be on the horizon, so I thought I’d set up a dummy project and download the latest beta, so that I’m at least a bit familiar with it when it arrives.

Before that, I also updated my Calibre, as it was struggling to open the recent ebooks I created in Scrivener. This is because Amazon have scrapped KindleGen and Scrivener is set up to create mobi files in KindleGen.

Apparently, Amazon have moved towards epub files now, like the rest of the world, and that’s why it’s forcing everyone to use KindlePreviewer. Also apparently, KindleGen is still buried deep in there somewhere. But I couldn’t get it to work following the jargony advice in the Scrivener forum.

I hurled off a message, via Facebook, to the developer of Scrivener, and aside from asking me to send my query in to the support desk, he hinted heavily that us Windows users will soon be dragged out of the dark ages.

Before I sent off my support message, I had another go in the latest Calibre, and that was working now. So before I logged a ticket for the KindleGen issue, I thought I’d try the beta to see if I can get it to work in there.

I even launched the new interactive tutorial. I know already that there’s something apparently missing in the new version that I use a lot in the old version, but I also know that that too is buried somewhere deep within the software.

I crossed my fingers, backed everything up, downloaded all of the beta files to a special beta directory, and off I went …

Well, what can I say? Other than WOW!

I did get through most of the tutorial, but then it started to crash and throw me out, and when I tried to do things a certain way, it stubbornly refused. So I filed that support ticket anyway.

I went to bed a bit annoyed that the new Scrivener wasn’t doing everything that the old Scrivener does and during the night other things occurred to me, such as headers and page breaks and a few other things. So when the cat woke me up at 5:30am on Wednesday, I did a search on my phone …

… and I discovered that the sneaky devils had already released Scrivener 3 for Windows. The day before! So I was right when I suspected that it was on the horizon. I just didn’t realise it was such a close horizon.

I gave up battling with the cat at 7:30am and got up, going straight to my desk to try the things that had occurred to me overnight … and there it all was working perfectly. Aside from the things I’d already logged.

So I took the plunge and downloaded the new version in all its glory. And guess what? Everything seems to be working!

I’ll work with it in trial mode for a few days before upgrading my licence, and make note of any issues as they arise. Then I’ll go through the tutorial again, and anything I can’t find, I’ll update my support ticket with.

As I’ve spent a lot of time faffing when I should be writing, I’m going to leave it there for now.

Catch you on the other side … whenever that may be. (Wish me luck!)