So National Novel Writing Month – NaNoWriMo to you Web-savvy types – is right around the corner. I know a few of my fellow pensmiths will be participating in the event, and I’m more than happy to offer my support, encouragement and advice. But I, for one, won’t be participating.

The simple reason for this is my current novel isn’t done yet.

However, since November is a big month for writing and the tools writers use, the time will not pass me by idly. Scrievener has released the beta for the Windows version of their lauded writing software, and I’ll be testing it out. I want to see what it can do, how it makes the job of a novelist (in my case) easier. In addition to providing feedback to the Scrivener team on whichever feature I’m focused on, I hopefully will give writers some idea of what the software can do for them. Some of the posts will deal with a particular feature of Scrivener while others will simply discuss how it’s been useful to me in my editing, outlining or querying process.

My goal, other than helping the development team out and supporting my fellow writers, is to have a completed draft and solid query ready for December.

My current draft, while decent, still needs work. The beginning isn’t quite what it could be. It needs to grab attention and set mood & theme right away. It does a better job now than it did but it could still improve. Other scenes in the novel need to be streamlined, expanded or completely rewritten in a couple cases. But the first order of business will be to get it organized and laid out, and that’s where Scrivener will come in.

Provided I can get it running, of course. And it doesn’t melt my processor or something.