Getting back into writing #1 - Remembering What I'm Supposed to be Writing About

Subtitled 'OMG, I Just Created an Ebook!!!'

After three weeks of not writing, my first and biggest problem is to get back into the story. I have a really hard time recapturing voice but I also forget important things about the story shape and lots of little details I should know. And here's the crunch: if I start reading it in Scrivener, I'll get caught up in editing. You know the kind of editing where you sit around altering the shape of a sentence, then put it back again, then try a new shape and so on, and on, for hours. I just won't be able to stop myself. I could easily blow the whole of September just editing what I wrote so far. Since my levels of self-discipline are inadequate to the task of stopping myself, I really need my draft in a format which just won't let me do that. I'm astonished at how easy it turned out to be.

PREREQUISITES

There's more than one way of doing this, but in my case, I started with Scrivener on my computer, containing the Manuscript in Progress, OverDrive on my iPad, containing a bunch of library books, and a Dropbox account.

STEP 1

I followed these instructions for compiling an ePub document in Scrivener. Well actually, I followed about 10% of these instructions, since I didn't care how dirty my new book turned out to be so long as it was readable. It was so easy, I couldn't believe it.

STEP 2

I saved my new eBook in my Dropbox account and waited for it to sync. Yeah, it's kind of slow around here.

STEP 3

I followed these instructions for getting my new eBook into Scrivener. Basically, all I had to do was navigate to my Dropbox account in Safari, click on the ePub file and choose 'Open in OverDrive' when asked.

STEP 4

And there was my book, sitting around in OverDrive next to a bunch of fancy real books with well-known authors! I opened it, and it looked good. Surprisingly good. Who knew it could possibly ever be so easy? I seriously thought it would take me all morning to figure this out!

RESULT

Now I'm all set to read Manuscript in Progress on the train without any possibility of tweaking it. That will be a new kind of experience for sure!