A Lesson Well Learned: Too Much New at Once
I mentioned somewhere or other yesterday I was going to give Scrivener for Windows a go and I’m not a give up kind of guy, but I experienced a great deal of frustrations today as I was trying to work on our upcoming adventure line of missions for Agents of Oblivion. The problem was not with the software, nor was it with the writing. The problem was coupling those two elements together. I’m just now gearing up for horror-espionage adventures, so I needed to address the organizational issues of the adventure [1. Not too bad, as they are a variation of our standard adventure template.], come up with the initial mission [2. Something that would set the tone for the kind of adventures I envision for AoO. A dash of Mission: Impossible. A touch of The X-Files, and a lot of me.], and also deal with the fundamental differences between SuperNoteCard and Scrivener. I’m not knocking Scrivener. I think it will be ideal for some future writing I have planned, but for right here, and right now, it does not do what I need it to do.
Newer and shinier is not always better. I was trying to turn a perfectly good fork into a knife and I couldn’t. Sure, they are both tools, and you’d think because one has more tines it could do more and it can [3. If I want to stab something.], but totally inappropriate for the job. My good idea turned out to be bad, but it wasn’t a total loss of time. I learned a good bit about the strengths of the software and how favorably SNC, which is not as pretty a workhorse, can do a bang up job. I’d rather have an industrial strength hammer than a shiny, dime store knock-off made from cheap metal. I am almost amused by getting bitten by something I warned you of just the other day. It happens to the best of us and the rest of us. An interesting aside is as soon as I resolved myself to jumping back to SNC rather than trudging forward, I felt immediately relieved, a creeping headache dissipated, and the buttery words flowed with great rapidity. Knowing when to give up can be just as important as knowing when to persevere.
Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!
