When I studied media at college, our class basically had to share one computer. So rare and revered was it, it even had its own private room, a kind of grandiose cupboard into which we would all pile when it was time to do some – gasp – wore processing. I can’t quite remember now whether it had blue or green text, but the screen was black and, even then, using it felt like being in some old sci-fi show, where it would just be the coloured text, the black screen and nothing more, and the height of the keys on the keyboard was such that it was more painful to use for any length of time than the cruddy old typewriter I was still bashing away on at home. It wasn’t exactly the most satisfying thing to use, but still it did feel like a treat whenever it was cupboard day. It was like we were Dr Who or something.
I think that mainly spoke to the financial situation of the college, rather than the technical advances of the time, since not long afterwards my mother borrowed a PC from work. For the next couple of weeks I probably called round to see my folks a lot more often than I had ever done previously, just to use this amazing piece of equipment. I mean, Windows Paint (or whatever it was called) – it was like, wow, this is just amazing. The Word software was also just mind-snapping although, of course, there was no real point in me writing anything on it since there was no way to save anything; no printer, no discs, no cloud.
I think it was only a few months later that my mum got her hands on a couple of really cool electric typewriters. They had a little grey LED window just above the keys and would print the words as you typed them across the paper. I even seem to recall you could choose from more than just one font which was, back then, to me at least, just wonderful. I used that for quite a while, writing stories and articles and reviews.
And then, for my birthday in 1995, they bought me a PC.
It was enormous, that kind of creamy-white colour, with a gigantic monitor and tower. And, even better, my mum managed to persuade the school where she worked to let her have their old printer, since they were upgrading and no longer needed it. Roughly the size of a single bed (not quite, but you get the idea – this was the Dark Ages, after all) it sounded like an aeroplane parking in the garden whenever you used it. That didn’t matter, of course, since I felt like – because I knew I was – a very lucky boy indeed.
At that time I was producing music magazines, and being able to do everything in-house rather than traipsing off to the photocopy shop sometimes two, three times a day was fantastic. And the technology now at my disposal, the fonts I could use and the formatting I could do! It was like living in 2089 or something, like I was at NASA. Shortly afterwards I discovered the suite of Serif software, allowing me to layout whole pages of the magazine right there, on screen, with images and everything, and that was it – I could imagine no greater technology, that mankind could improve on this no further. Verily it was surely the zenith of human achievement.
I worked my way through a few different laptops over the subsequent years, the software improving all the while yet, as it became a much more mundane proposition, I began finding myself oddly restricted by Word, particularly when I started writing more and more fiction. I took an online writing course, wrote tons of stories, but began to really dislike the programme. It always seemed to me so obstructive, like it would get annoyed with me if I tried to do anything it didn’t like, that it was predisposed to do. It felt like a cage, imposing its rules, offering its stupid and incorrect suggestions about grammar and spelling, and that’s the last thing a creative mind needs. Oh, and that damn paperclip thing. I’d forgotten all about that until just now, and I know it will begin haunting my dreams again, just as it used to.
Then, one day in early September, while I was going about my duties where I worked – a newly-built sixth form college on the other side of town – I saw this vision, this goddess. A new teacher, just starting in our department. The image of loveliness, it also turned out that she was funny and charming and clever, and she loved the kind of music that most people would never have heard of, and she liked books and coffee and cats and wearing big boots and polka dot dresses. To shorten this a little, we wound up getting married last summer, but that’s not why I’m mentioning it here.
She was a Mac girl, and I had absolutely no experience with Macs or much else of anything Apple-y other than my trusty iPhone 4 and so, when I started to go round her place, she would often let me play around with her mainframe (stop sniggering at the back). I thought it was just the most amazing bit of equipment, in my opinion so much nicer and easier to use than Windows. And so, the following year, having come into a small amount of money, this most beautiful and generous of women treated us to a MacBook Pro apiece, which was fabulous not just for the obvious reasons, but also for the look of astonishment on the Apple Store assistant’s face, going up to the counter and saying, ‘We’ll have two of those, please.’ Not something that probably happened every day, a couple of scruffbags like us coining it large like that.
With this premium device came the introduction to much more premium software. The choices of programmes to use for writing, although still limited back then when compared to now, meant I could experiment with different applications in the Great Search for the Right One. Several contenders came and went over the next few years until, I guess six years ago, I discovered Ulysses. So many options, so many ways to construct stories and documents and manuscripts. It was all going swimmingly and I used it for, perhaps, four years, enjoying the syncing between devices – we were all-in Apple by then – and being able to write notes or sentences or scraps of dialogue wherever I was, whatever I was doing.
Still, it wasn’t quite 100% what I was searching for. I don’t know that it was any issue of the software itself, apart from its exporting options weren’t exactly right for me, and all the different themes and whatnot on offer got to be a bit rabbit-holey, but anyway I did continue to have half an eye open for something else. I always thought that picking the right writing programme was a bit like buying new shoes; you might find a pair that are perfectly well made, with which you can find no real inherent problem but, if they don’t quite fit, if the cut doesn’t quite give you maximum comfort, then they ain’t the ones for you.
Eventually, having read about it for a while, not being convinced I liked the corkboard look and worrying that the reviews calling it ‘too complicated’ meant it would be more complex than what I wanted, I decided to give Scrivener a try. And you know what? That was the Cinderella moment. The glass slipper fit like a glove (well, you know what I mean) and I’ve been using it ever since. At some point I’ll probably write about the other pieces of software I use in my writing, the devices I find most valuable, just to suggest a few ideas if you, as I once was, are still looking for The One but for now, so far as my work on the Mac goes, I think I’m now finally content, finally committed.
If you would like to give it a go, just to see if it is the one for you, you can download the 30-day trial version of Scrivener at
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