Not sure if I’ve mentioned it before, but I have a real love/hate relationship with software. What I can’t bear is using multiple software packages with which to complete one job, but I guess when you have a habit of using various techniques to complete your work, it’s a tough ask for one package to do *everything*. Affinity are almost there with both their Designer and Photo platforms (They’re blummin’ lovely) for the artwork side of things, but I do find myself still sketching using Sketchbook Pro because it’s do darned natural to use…though it’s limited resolution does restrict it’s use. I now use it for preliminary sketching before porting and up-rezzing into Affinity. Both Designer and Photo now have page rotation in increments which really helps (You can turn the page, just like you would working on paper) but they are yet to have the fluid, completely flexible control that Sketchbook provides…but they are catching up!
On the music side of things, I adore Propellerheads Reason. Fairly recently upgraded and can’t quite get my head around how awesome it sounds. I also recommend Cockos’ Reaper for basic sound mixing. Lost count of the amount of times I’ve heard of people struggling with Audacity (As powerful as it is) to do heavy editing on a large sound file, yet Reaper makes it all so naturally. Once you get your head around the idea of non-destructive, physical editing, you’ll never sit twiddling your thumbs every time you try and remove a section from the beginning of a 30 minute stereo file again.
All this leads me to my latest software love affair. Scrivener. People just wouldn’t shut up about it. It can’t be that good, I thought and this was all before I even began listening to the Bestseller Experiment, who by their second(?) episode had not only bigged up the package, but had been offered sponsorship by the makers of the program.
I had a book to write. I was going to instigate my own NaNoWriMo over the course of a month, so, in true procrastinatory (Is that a word?) mode I thought that I would try out something new to make things interesting as they offer a 30 day free trial. Little did I know that I had chanced upon not only the tool of choice, but something that would ultimately mould my workflow into something pretty darn efficient…and I’m still learning new stuff that the thing can do.
What I found most helpful was that the program organises things in a way very similar to my own brain – except it does it, there, in the computer, rather than take up your brain space. It’s also flexible enough that you can reshape things to make more sense to you, personally. Website reference info can be imported into your document, negating the need to “nip” to Google every time you need to check the weight of a Swedish pistol in the 18th century and the avoid the lure of Facebook each time you open up Safari. Image reference files and your own character descriptions sit alongside your scenes, chapters and notes in a file system reminiscent of standard file structure – yet totally separate from the “body” of your work, so word counts are not affected by your meanderings and Tolkeinesque ventures into world building detail.
Seriously, it’s a joy to use and I very much doubt that I’m even using 20% of what it’s capable of.
All of this is a long way round to stating that on this, the first day of August and the first day of a new regime I haven’t managed to get anywhere near my daily word count because I’ve been fixing lights, filling new bookshelves, sorting out artwork for clients after doing a full day at work…oh…and rabbiting on about Scrivener on my blog…but I’ll get there!!
In lesser news, I’ve fallen in love with the new All Saints album. Don’t kill me. It has lovely William Orbit noodlings, which are always a familiar, warm place to stick your ears.
