Why Bloggers should Compose Posts on Scrivener

Scrivener? You may be saying. Isn’t that just for novelists and book writers? Why should I use that— pay money for that— when I am just a blogger?

OK, that’s another problem. If you blog, and your blog has more than just pictures or videos— if there are words— You Are a Writer. You may be an unpaid writer, and you may be so insecure that you haven’t adopted the identity of ‘writer’ yet— or you just add ‘not a REAL writer’ — but you are a writer. Deal with it.

Scrivener is a tool that writers use to write their work. You start a Scrivener ‘project’ and you can make any number of folders for chapters and divisions of your work, and under the chapters you have pages called ‘text’ which are often used for the scenes of a fiction chapter.

I use it for my blog. I no longer compose my blog posts while online, using the ‘new post’ thing on my blog. I have a Scrivener project for blogging. I have folders for my individual blogs— there are a few active blogs— and sub-folders for the date range.

Why do I do that? Several reasons. The main one is that blogging is insecure. My very first blog, before I started my Blogger account, was on a blogging service which no longer exists. I’ve had more than one blog on services that no longer exist. Since I have my back blog posts preserved on Scrivener now, if my whole blog went down I could re-create it somewhere else.

I’ve been having a bit of a time with Blogger since I moved my blogging efforts back to that service. I’m wondering how committed Google is to blogger. I’ve been having troubles commenting on other Blogger blogs. Google could discontinue Blogger or turn it into a paid service at any time. 

Also, I’ve heard, also about Blogger, that people have had their whole blog taken down for no reason, by mistake. It’s never happened to anyone I know of, but it could happen. If it happened to me, I wouldn’t lose my posts.

Finally, bloggers are WRITERS. After you have been blogging for a while, you may have enough posts on a certain topic to gather those posts together, make a new Kindle project for them, add more material, and publish it as an e-book or a printed book. 

The down side of Scrivener is that it does cost a little money. Once you have it and get used to using it, you won’t want to do without it. Now, before I first bought Scrivener I downloaded a free Scrivener alternative called YWRiter. That would work to preserve your blog posts as well.

Sometimes you have to take sides

I don’t like the muck of politics. People argue with one another, imply the other side doesn’t care and/or eats babies for breakfast, and condemn folks without taking a minute to look for facts.

But some times you have to take sides. There was a writer in Germany long ago, Hedwig Courths-Mahler. She wrote a lot of little novels she called ‘fairy tales for adults.’ She was so popular that some of her novels were reprinted to send to soldiers during World War One.

But then as her writing career was winding up, National Socialism came along. Someone came to her and said she should re-write all her novels to make all her heroes ‘Aryan’ and all the villains Jewish. She didn’t do it. She gave the excuse that she was ‘too old’ for all the work. She didn’t risk her own life and those of her daughters by REALLY taking a stand, but at least she didn’t go along with the suggestion to turn her life’s work into National Socialist party propaganda. 

Today’s Socialists are making similar demands of writers. Include this, condemn that in your writing work: or else! They want ‘diversity,’ and when you write about Appalachian teens bullied for being ‘hillbillies’ you are told that doesn’t count. And they when you write about a ‘diverse’ person that does count, you are told you are the wrong race/gender/sexual orientation to write about that kind of ‘diverse’ person.

I guess the Socialists are teaching us that some people just don’t count. The lesson Hitler taught the Jews, Gypsies and Jehovah’s Witnesses and that Stalin taught the Ukrainians, Christians and ethnic Germans of Russia. But what about the people that do count? Is it fair to demand that Black people always have to write about Black people and disabled people have to write only about people with their particular disability? Why not let the protected ‘diverse’ people at least write about whatever they want.

Even though I am a former/recovering Marxist, a woman, and a person with Same-Sex Attraction (Gay), my current political perspective makes me a non-person to the publishing industry and the mainstream of writers. But in today’s writing world, thank goodness, one can always become an Indie and write what you want. You won’t be well compensated or anything, but within reason you can write what is in your heart.

I am lucky. My writer friend Declan Finn invited me to join a FB group called Conservative-Libertarian Fiction Alliance, which has since moved to MeWe, a more welcoming social medium. I’ve met a number of fine writers there who are not part of the mainstream or the ‘Establishment’ or the Socialist movement. I’ve read a lot of books and short-story collections that I’ve learned of in the group. 

We need to make the most of our current opportunities. I predict it will be harder for non-Socialists of all kinds to succeed much as Indie writers. In part, because the new Socialists totally do not know when they are calling for censorship. They just want to condemn ‘racists’ and other ‘haters,’ which in their mind can apply to anyone of any race, sex or condition, that does not toe the line to what they believe. 

How Fiction Writers can save 'The Culture'

If you are conservative, have ever been conservative, or are one of the wonderful liberals who listens to conservative friends without ending friendships, you have heard people complaining about ‘The Culture.’ What people often mean by it is that increasingly, ‘The Culture’ favors left-wing points of view and mocks or demonizes other points of view.

An example of this? The eternally-running Law & Order series. I’ve watched them for years, especially Law & Order: SVU. I’ve even named a kitten ‘Mariska’ after actress Mariska Hargitay. (Mariska the kitten is an elderly cat now.) But there are very many episodes of L&O:SVU that show a lot of bias towards Catholics and/or Evangelical Christians. Many issues have pro-abortion, pro-gay-marriage, pro-child-transsexual messages, and people who have honest disagreements are invisible or demonized. (If I had a child with transgender feelings, I would NOT want him to wear dresses to school or in public when even girls mostly don’t wear dresses anymore. Being different gets a child bullied.)

Contrast that to the original Star Trek series. Back in 1966, television shows had to appeal to all viewers. Not just liberals, not just conservatives. Though show creator Gene Roddenberry was very liberal,  Star Trek episodes didn’t push his radical ideas. They were fun to watch. Some episodes even had strong appeal to conservatives. Any liberal or socialist messages you find in the original series were very subtle and so perhaps not intentional. 

It’s very difficult for conservatives and Christians to produce our own TV shows and movies and get them out to the public. But today is the best time ever to be a fiction writer, even an Indie fiction writer (one who self-publishes rather than getting a traditional publishing deal.) 

When I can’t get anything decent on television— no original Star Trek episodes, Bonanza, Wagon Train, Lawman or John Wayne movies— I read. I often read books by authors who are Indie or small press writers who are conservative or Catholic or something else I relate to.

One author I read is Declan Finn. I’ve known him online in various writer-groups for years now. His blog is on the blogroll of this blog. He has a new series out called ‘Saint Tommy, NYPD.’ It is about a cop who is experiencing some of the phenomenon some of the saints experienced during their lives: bilocation, for one. That is, he is given the gift of being in two places at once. Behind the perp he’s chasing, and ahead of him. His gifts give him the ability to deal with the demonic-evil criminal element in NYC. 

Here are the books in the series. I’ve read the first 2 and loved them, and can’t wait to get the third.

Hell Spawn

Death Cult

Infernal Affairs

The benefit of turning to alternate entertainment is that left-wing messages in entertainment can affect us. We watch and watch, and before long we are saying, abortion isn’t so bad, euthanasia isn’t so bad, gay marriage doesn’t affect ME so why fight it, those bakery owners SHOULD have to bake a custom wedding cake for the gay couple….. It’s like brainwashing. When everyone in our entertainment thinks a certain way, somewhere in our heads we start believing everyone in real life thinks that way.

Writers and would-be writers: be encouraged. You have a chance to change the world for the better. ‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report: if there be any praise, think on these things.’ And write about them!