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I’m delighted to have as my guest today, Alinka Rutkowska, a fellow Wrimo and a huge Scrivener fan.

Alinka’s first novel, published under her pen name, Ally Capraro, is due out a week today, on 29 March!

How important is Scrivener for you, Alinka?

I couldn’t have written my novel without Scrivener. I’m a children’s author, I mean, I used to be, until I started dreaming of writing a novel. And when I heard about NaNoWriMo, I decided to make that dream come true.

Only that, with picture books, I was used to writing drafts of 500 words. And I was done. It took me half an hour. And now I was supposed to write 100 times as many. Hmm. I wasn’t sure I was cut out for it, but still that dream …

Then, I heard about Scrivener – that every author needs it, well maybe except for children’s authors. So I went for it. I took a leap of faith and bought the software.

Best. Decision. Ever.

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block?

A whole blank word document is a scary thing. But with Scrivener, all I had to do was write a 500 words scene. And then another 100 of those.

It made all the difference. I wrote my outline of 100 scenes and then I wrote 3 to 4 scenes a day – it was completely doable and I was shocked – I was actually writing a novel!

I managed to complete it in 24 days instead of 30. And I’m a mother of two with an online business.

I am positive that I could never have written it without Scrivener.

Which Scrivener features did you find most helpful?

It was easy to pick up where I left off.

I could see the titles of my scenes in the left-hand margin, I could read them when I clicked on them.

I had the helicopter view while focusing on the details of the scene at the same time.

And then with a click of a button, I could export the whole thing at any stage into any format.

Who did you go to for feedback?

Every couple of days I would send the exported files to my mom, husband and best friend.

I was getting a lot of compliments. But they were from family, so they didn’t really count, right?

So I decided to see if my writing was really worth something.

I started posting daily on WattPad. I used the rtf export for that.

And you won’t believe it – people were loving it – they said they couldn’t believe it was the first draft of my first novel.

Now that I call an ego boost – all thanks to Scrivener.

A bit about Alinka

Alinka Rutkowska is a multi-award-winning and #1 internationally bestselling author and coach.

She is the CEO of LibraryBub – the first service, which connects indie authors with libraries.

She’s been featured on Fox Business Network, Author Marketing Club, The Author Hangout, Examiner, She Knows, She Writes, Blog Talk Radio, The Writer’s Life and much more.

Click here for a free copy of Alinka’s book: How I Sold 80,000 Books.

If you write using Scrivener and would like to have a guest blog, contact me!

The ScrivenerVirgin blog is a journey of discovery:
a step-by-step exploration of how Scrivener can change how a writer writes.
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