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ConnectedText vs. Scrivener
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Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 5, 2012 at 11:21 PM
After spending several months writing intensively in Scrivener for Windows, recently I switched over to ConnectedText to give it a try. I was encouraged by Steve’s blog post the other day about the freedom that ConnectedText allows the writer. Also, I’ve come across this blog post which showed how to mimic Scrivener for Mac in CT:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2008/06/connectedtext-scrivener-for-windows.html
These are just early days, as I’m still at the baby stage with CT, but here are some observations about first impressions vis-a-vis expectations, and experience with Scrivener. I needed to write up some handwritten notes about the conceptual structure of my evolving dissertation, while also developing the concepts further. After reading Steve’s blog I imagined it would be a very quick process of typing things up (actually I’m dictating with Dragon), and branching out into new topics. To my surprise, the effect of CT on me was the opposite. It slowed me down and made me pay a lot of attention to what I was writing, as I was being attentive to words that may need to be turned into hyperlinks to new topics. Also, switching back and forth between the edit mode and the view mode slowed me down, as I was paying attention to the way things looked. The wiki format made me self-conscious somehow of the fact that it is a public format, and so I was looking at it with other people’s eyes. Needing to use headings, so I can have a table of contents, also slowed me down, as I had to think of the structure, what would make a good heading etc. This was all very different from writing in Scrivener, which does fulfil its basic promise, namely that it withdraws as a writing tool, so you can write without distraction.
Verdict: I’m still evaluating the experience, but the upshot of using CT for writing so far has been that my paragraphs are smaller, my sentences are shorter, and in general my writing is more precise and less verbose, as I had to make sure I was staying on message, as promised by the given header subtitle, and to not digress on themes that I packed away via hyperlinks to other topics. In summary, CT seems to be forcing me to be more concise then I would have been in Scrivener, where I tend to just keep on writing. At the particular stage of writing where I am, CT’s disciplining effect is very helpful at the moment, though I could see other scenarios where I might want the freedom of Scrivener again.
I see from the Taking Note blog that people also use ConnectedText with Scrivener, so this is not necessarily an “either/or” situation:
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2011/04/connectedtext-and-scrivener.html
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 5, 2012 at 11:29 PM
P.S. But the reason I started this topic is because I would be interested in other people’s opinions on how the two compare and how others might be choosing between them or preferring one over the other for particular writing tasks.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 6, 2012 at 02:04 PM
I have yet to really put CT to the test of writing long, more formal works. At my office, I am not required to write such documents. In my personal life, I do, but I am not very happy running CT through VMWare Fusion on my MacBook, where the whole thing is clunky, and it slows down my computer. (I don’t know what’s at fault—Fusion, CT, the fact that I’m using Windows XP, or some combination of those things.) I will say this, however, I was looking forward to working on a certain project that has been hanging over my head for the past year—one written by someone else, but which needs massive re-writing. I haven’t had luck making progress on this project with Scrivener, and CT just felt as if it would work well. But the cludginess of the whole system made me abandon that avenue. (For the record, I’m now trying it with Ulysses, which shares some attributes with CT.)
But to get back to your question, I think CT would have been a good choice for this project because I could decompose the manuscript very easily, then use the outliner to reassemble the useful pieces. It also does versioning (which I haven’t tried out yet), which could have been useful.
I’m still so intrigued by the possibilities of using CT for this project that I’m almost tempted to purchase a low cost netbook just to run it. (The only thing stopping me is that I suspect my wife might actually kill me if I did this [definite smiley face].) So I’d welcome reading about other experiences with CT and writing.
Steve Z.
Posted by Hugh
Mar 6, 2012 at 02:53 PM
Steve, as an aside, would more RAM do the trick? I run Parallels on a Mac Mini, and I’ve been surprised (a) how much cheaper third-party RAM is than Apple’s offering, dramatically so - IIRC I bought mine from Crucial (b) how effective it is in making Windows applications work better. The only snag is that it’s not something you can test beforehand - it’s a gamble. However, some of your Mac applications will definitely work faster.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Mar 6, 2012 at 02:58 PM
Hugh,
That’s an excellent suggestion, one of those “why didn’t I think of that” solutions. Thank you for that wake up call.
Steve Z.
Hugh wrote:
>Steve, as an aside, would more RAM do the trick? I run Parallels on a Mac Mini, and I’ve
>been surprised (a) how much cheaper third-party RAM is than Apple’s offering,
>dramatically so - IIRC I bought mine from Crucial (b) how effective it is in making
>Windows applications work better. The only snag is that it’s not something you can
>test beforehand - it’s a gamble. However, some of your Mac applications will
>definitely work faster.