I have a lot planned for 2015, how about you? Key highlights include (hopefully) moving out of the state, expanding my freelance business, reading books as actively as I did before college, and of course publishing some more fantasy stories. 

I’ll admit that I’ve never been able to write a story from start to finish. I’m the sort who writes in fragments, forming my key scenes and knitting them together with all of the in-between stuff that fills out the overall story. I actually have the ending to the next two or three stories already outlined – I just have to figure out how to get there. Although this method probably helps me avoid the dreaded writers’ block, it can sometimes be difficult to stay organized. Until earlier this week I had about 4-5 files dedicated to scenes from various parts of Children of Fire Pt. 4. My desktop folders are a mess of oddly-labeled documents with titles such as “character x and character y” or “maybe chapter 5.” Chapter five of what, we may never know.

I purchased Scrivener at the end of the summer last year when the sales and coupon codes made the price too low to resist, but I never really got around to learning how the program works and it ended up buried. Earlier this week I dusted it off and started organizing all of my random scenes and chapters from book 4. So far I think this will be helpful and keep me on track. I will say that anyone who has scrivener should take the time to browse through the interactive tutorial that comes with the program – it outlines a lot of really useful features you didn’t know you needed to keep your manuscripts and notes organized and make you feel like some sort of functioning adult.

Here’s a sneak peek at my book 4 progress in Scrivener, with some spoiler-ish section titles blotted out of course 😉 In the background you can also see a peek of another side project of mine – art for the next cover of my friend ML Candelario’s next release.

Do you use special programs for your writing? What do you hope to accomplish in 2015? Happy new year!