Scrivener and Freedom
I use Scrivener to write. I also increasingly use Mac Freedom. If you write novels, blog for a living, are a scriptwriter or a research student who writes long papers you will find Scrivener useful. It comes as a trial version (with a fabulous 30 uses, rather than 30 days, so if you’re like me, I used it up over the space of 3 months before parting with any money. But even then, it’s so cheap for what you get. It truly is. Lots of people have praised Scrivener, some have picked up on the more useful and/or advanced features and I’m sure there are even video tutorials out there.
Mac Freedom cuts off your internet connection. Nice, I hear you say. But it stops you being distracted. If you sit down and set the timer for 120 minutes then you know you can’t use the Internet for 2 hours, so your mind is pushed towards the task at hand. Some people have willpower. I have Mac Freedom.
When you use them together they display their true awesomeness.
There are times when writing that I don’t know if something is factually accurate or if it clashes with another element in the narrative. Today I needed to know which of the big UK festivals Nirvana played at in their heyday. In my research folder I have their last UK gig, but that’s not enough. So, I highlighted the point where I’d included this potentially inaccurate information, and with a right-click appended it to my research file. I edited my research file to ask a question, alongside the info I had already collected. Later I’ll do my research and update the file.
I now have a two-way record of something to check/research. Awesome. If I hadn’t used Mac Freedom I would’ve spent the next two hours drifting around the Internet watching videos of Nirvana at Reading Festival, or trying to find footage from the time I saw them live. This way I carried on writing. Albeit via a distraction in the form of this blogpost.
