Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure it will be useful to most people, for reasons tangentially related to this post: http://jseliger.com/2010/11/12/scrivener-or-devonthink-pro-w... on Scrivener and Joyce.

The main reason I say is because I think a lot of people, based on the amateur writing I've seen, don't need a fancier way of arranging words so much as they need to focus on 1) the quality of their sentences and 2) how one event drives another in their plots. I worry especially regarding point 2) that Scrivener lets people work in parallel when they should be working in serial, with one event driving another organically. Too much amateur writing I see is, for lack of a better term, plotless: meandering around feelings, or random encounters, or designed to show how deep the author is—instead of telling a story.

Scrivener will help with some things, as I've written elsewhere, but I'm not sure it's really enough for the vast majority of what writers and would-be writers are working on.

In other words:

If you want to be a good writer, concentrate on your craft instead of your tools.

This is a silly dichotomy. A craftsman's skill lies in using his tools, so tool choice is important. it's important for a chef to have a high quality knife that they feel comfortable using, but a high quality knife will no more make a person a good chef than a good text editor, build and language tools, etc. will make someone a good programmer. But good programmers, like good chefs or good writers, will nevertheless spend a goodly amount of money and effort ensuring they have the highest quality tools they feel they need.

For writing (and programming, for that matter) getting a really good tool should be pretty easy. Give me a credit card and google.com and I can buy any number of quality text editing/word processing programs in about 5 mins.

Writers figure out what works for them and stick with it (my wife used AppleWorks forever; George R.R. Martin still uses WordStar on a DOS machine.) Programmers similarly establish their preference (which is why over-30-year old text editors like emacs and vi have such strong adherents).

The original off-topic message in this thread was about how people continue to write poorly, even after they have great tools.

That doesn't surprise me at all. The hard part is learning the craft. For most people, it's also not a lot of fun. It's a lot more fun to "look for the right tool."

> George R.R. Martin still uses WordStar on a DOS machine.

So that's why it takes a decade to turn out a new book.

I know hyperbole is trendy, but it took five years to get "Feast for Crows" out and six years to get "Dance with Dragons" out.

That's 1800 best-selling pages in 11 years. Not too shabby.

I'd rather not rush art. If I want crap to read I can go to a Borders, it's crammed full of every variety of crap at deep discount.

Well, not anymore they're not. Borders is out of business now. But I get your point.

I think the more important tools in this case though are language, grammar, and punctuation.

Agreed. In the case of computer tools, I think the difference between someone productive using Word and someone using Scrivener is going to be pretty small in most instances. For the novel I'm working on now, multiple people are speaking (like Tom Perrotta's Election or Anita Shreve's Testimony), for which Scrivener is pretty useful. But for anything else I've written, I don't think Scrivener would've been a huge advantage. I'm not even sure it would've been a small advantage.

Still, if you're curious about this sort of thing, I wrote in more depth about it here: http://jseliger.com/2011/08/11/how-to-be-a-faster-writer-don... .

To carry this too far, I think the analogy demands that language/grammar/punctuation are the ingredients. They end up in the customer's mouth. The tools, be it edlin or a pear peeler, only make the chief/writer's job easier. You have to use good ingredients, but the tools are a matter of efficiency.

That pretty much depends on the craft. For writing, the tools come definitely far behind the writing. You can do great writing with pen and paper, people have done so for centuries.

You see the same pattern with amateur photographers, who think buying a nicer camera will get them better pictures.

Many good programmers do very well with old, free tools that have been time-tested and improved. You don't need Visual Studio Ultimate-mega-edition, though it will certainly make your life easier in some situations.

A good piece of advise which does not in any way invalidate putting some effort into getting good tools.

To use the chef analogy again, you wouldn't say "sharp knives don't make you a good chef, therefore use dull knives."

You'd say, "focus on learning to cook. Don't spend 4 hours a day looking for the world's sharpest and most durable knives. But yes, do get some reasonably sharp knives. Then carry on with the chopping."

That's like saying a programmer should just concentrate on programming instead of finding a good text editor.

I would argue that the gap between programming tools, languages, and platforms is vastly, vastly greater than the gap between various ways of processing words.

I'm saying that you can have the greatest text editor in the world and still be a crap programmer.

So what are you arguing against then? All we're saying is that Scrivener is a good tool.

Who is arguing? I'm summarizing an important fact: the tools are not as important as the craft.

I'm not sure how your post or the one above it invalidates anything. For writers, managing plot, keeping tidbits and scraps, being able to quickly organize, link, and search, it's pretty damn helpful.

Tools don't substitute for skill, but skill with the wrong tools is wasted.

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