Scivener Day 1- Tools for writing

I have resisted trying out Scrivener for years.  I regularly hear about how awesome it is and well as how hard it is to use.  Being mainly a picture book author, Scrivener isn't something that I NEED every day.

But, then I went wrote my novel this summer.  Finally.

The novel is complicated.  It jumps from 1800's to 2017, includes layers of people, and varied as well as intertwining stories.  Plus, it has lots of artwork in it, no, not mine.

Enter NaNoWrimo and my desire to cross the finish line with this novel.
Enter Scrivener.

Here are my thoughts so far-

Thank goodness I took that one hour tutorial about some fun short cuts and neat things Scrivener is capable of, or I would have given up.

I very much recommend that you use YouTube, take a short class and read about the program before you start using it.  There are so many wonderful things it CAN do, but you won't know about them unless you read and learn about them.  All of the bells and whistles are not obvious.

So today, I spent about 3 hours on Scrivener.  I have to say, it was fun.  I did not do any writing or editing. 
I did-
Get my entire novel put into folders, by books, chapters.
I did a synopsis for each chapter that shows up on the really cool note card screen.
I color coded each chapter (important for me to see distribution of character and times, historical component)
I added a mock cover.
Wrote the title page and dedication.
Included my reference books on note cards
And marked each chapter as either first draft, second draft or TO DO.

Tomorrow I am going to see about layering in photo's of one of my main characters art pieces.
Being able to use them as a reference will be very helpful as will maps and wiki information on certain things.

Here is peek at some of my hard work from today.

I'll try to keep you updated the more I use and learn about this program.
One more day until https://nanowrimo.org/  !