How I Used Scrivener to WIN NaNoWriMo!

National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) will soon be upon us. The event begins each November, and you can watch this video on how to WIN it using the popular writing software Scrivener based on my success back in 2015.

Back in 2015 I started taking my writing more seriously.

Shortly before 2014 ended—nearly eight years to the day, in fact—I created this website/blog and started writing my first posts here. I began writing the first of three non-fiction books entitled the SMART FOCUS series on the subject of setting and achieving goals. I joined not one but two—which shortly turned into three—local writing groups. And, I began considering conquering NaNoWriMo for the second time in four years. (My first NaNoWriMo win was back in 2009).

Shortly after winning the 2015 competition—which I originally wrote about in this blog post—I decided to share with everyone how I had done so with the help of a now infamous writing program called Scrivener, which I'd been using for a little over a year. (Click here to visit a page I created dedicated solely to this amazing writing app.) I've included the video above to help you get an overview of how to prepare your own story in the coming weeks leading to this year's NaNoWriMo event, which is held every November.

I highly encourage everyone who's ever thought about writing a novel to participate in the NaNoWriMo 30-day writing extravaganza. (Once again, visit this blog post to find out more—and read the winning novel I wrote for free). If you've always thought you had a book in you, chances are you do. And with this special event to guide you, you're much more likely to get it down on the page.

If you already use Scrivener but would like to know more about the ins and outs of its super-powerful "Compile" self-publishing feature, you've come to the right place. Not long after winning NaNoWriMo 2015 and publishing the first two books in my SMART FOCUS series, I created a Scrivener course dedicated to helping writers navigate the sometimes confusing but ever-powerful functions of the compiling process.

The course is entitled Fixing Scrivener Compiling Headaches, and you can find more details about it by clicking the button below. Clocking in at just over 6 hours, this course is sure to answer most—if not every—question you may have about navigating Scrivener's compiling functions and features.