Getting to grips with Scrivener is a cinch. In both respects, this program is a writer’s dream. Precisely how Scrivener is different we’ll get to shortly, but there’s always a few important things I want to know before hearing about how some piece of software is magically going to change my life, for example: how much time am I going to have to spend learning this new wonder tool before it starts adding to, rather than subtracting from, my productivity? And what about the costs? Few of us want to hear that it takes the resources of a medium-sized IT department to purchase and maintain it. Ten years later, Microsoft researchers found that while technology had become faster and slicker, little had changed: computers and software applications still failed to support an iterative, process-writing workflow (Morris, Brush and Meyers, 2007). In 1997, researchers at Rank Xerox (O’Hara and Sellen, 1997) pointed out that the standard desktop computer offered little support for the process writing approach. Since almost every writing task involves some kind of research, that also means we jump back and forth between reading, note-taking, highlighting, and drafting. Rather, we visit and revisit each of these stages multiple times throughout the creative process, jumping backwards and forwards at the whim of the text and our own cognitive processes.

As we move through the stages of brainstorming, researching, drafting, editing and proofing, we do not do so in a neat, orderly fashion. But back in the early 80s, when most people had never even heard the term ‘word processor’, Flower & Hayes (1981) made an influential case for thinking of composition as an iterative process that is far from linear. Ever since their inception, word processors have forced us to write text by starting at the beginning and ending at the end.

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