I've Proposed!
Friday, February 5, 2010 
No, not that way. Sheesh, I'm already married.
But I did spend the past six weeks hunkered down, drafting a 30-page narrative proposal for the historical novel I'm about to start writing. And I'm pleased to report that it's good, really good.
My agent had asked me to put the narrative proposal together to help sell my story collection, potentially as part of a two-book deal. But the whole process has turned out to be incredibly useful to me as a writer too--it's forced me to map out the entire book chapter by chapter. Plot and characterization kinks that might otherwise have bogged me down mid-way through the book have largely been worked out already. Hoping this will cut down on my writing time by about ten years.
So today I officially begin. And now that I've got my new Macbook Pro, I'm toying with the idea of using Scrivener for managing the novel. Any recommendations for or against?
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Reader Comments (4)
Hi Seth,
JM here, from Squaw '08. Congrats on finding representation for your collection on fathers and terror. And so quickly, too. :) I've heard wonderful things about Kathleen Anderson.
I wrote my historical novel without the use of Scrivener; I did have to create a system of my own for endnotes (about 20+ pages), as well as three databases: one for recorded events of history as we know it, another for my own fictional world, and a third, which was a merged database of the first two. That being said, it would have been really convenient (not just in an organizational sense but a time-saving sense as well) if I had had a program to assist me with all that. And then, on the other hand (because there is always another hand), I enjoyed creating the databases myself; it helped me remember a lot of facts rather than have to look them up and allowed me to puzzle and play with the pieces free form. I think it depends on the kind of writer you are. I'm intuitive and tend to get stumped by outlines and superimposed programs. I would love to give it a try, though.
Interested to see where you net out.
Again, congratulations, and I look forward to reading you short story collection in print.
Best,
JM
PS I heard from my own agent (I think we landed representation around the same time--your blog about your meeting and how you handled the other agents was helpful to me, fyi), Lisa Bankoff at ICM, that historicals are hot hot hot right now.
Excellent to hear from you, JM! I remember really enjoying the portions of your novel we workshopped in 2008. And the triple database process is downright impressive. Looking forward to seeing your book in print. Keep me posted.
Seth
Congrats!!!!
And I <3 Scrivener (I just did a blog post today on Scrivener). It's got a 30 day free trial--you can check it out and see if it works for you (but go through the tutorial first).
Thanks, Christine. I've been playing around with Scrivener too. Went through the whole tutorial a few days ago, and it definitely seems promising. Checking out your blog post next.