Tag Archives | blog tours

Staying Sane While Doing an Insane Blog Tour – Using Scrivener

4f665ebc-8ed4-4f00-b9d7-74f064619cf3And on another level, I might be insane for posting this BEFORE I’ve really started the tour, but, well, here goes. Maybe the title should be How I Think You Can Stay Sane While Doing an Insane Blog Tour.

Actually as I started signing up with different bloggers who graciously offered to host me for my first official blog tour, I did get a might twitchy. All those posts! How to stay organized! Well, I turned to my favorite writing organizational tool: Scrivener.

I wrote a post a while ago about using Scrivener for other things besides your WIP; in that instance using it as a writer’s toolbox. Today, I’m going to talk about how I’m using it to help organize my blog tour.

One of the things I’ve been doing with my project files is keep everything related to that book in the Scrivener file. So, when it came time to query, I created a folder and under it inserted related items I’d need at my fingertips, like the query, synopses at different lengths, the blurb, one sentence pitch, logline, etc. This was very handy when I was doing online pitch contests–I’d just go to that project’s Scrivener file and find the appropriate length, copy and paste into the contest entry.

So, it was a natural progression to make a folder in my book file for Guest Posts and add document placeholders under each for each stop on the tour. Here’s a screenshot for BEER AND GROPING IN LAS VEGAS:

scrivener_blogtour

For the blog stops, I put them in order of appearance. Every time I get a confirmation, I put them in the correct spot, and also add the event to my Google calendar. I’ve even found an interesting phenomenon happening–I’m usually one of those people who seem to only be motivated by deadlines. I knew I should write a lot of these ahead of time and send them off, but they weren’t really due yet. And so it was hard to make myself do any before I really HAD to. But getting this set up, it made me feel like I had everything nicely contained and it then made me want to start filling it out!

The nice thing about this is that I can take snapshots of previous versions and export in whatever format that particular person requires. I can also quickly click around and copy an answer to an interview question that got asked in another. Same with all the little bottom stuff (bio, blurb, links). It’s all right there and I don’t have to try to remember which post had what and only be able to find out by opening every single Word document. As the posts go live, I’ll add a link to it as well.

For those using Scrivener, remember you can also designate what the status is, and then see an outline view–very handy to see what you still need to write, etc. For Mac users, you probably have even more options, like color coding the docs in the left pane according to whatever you want, like maybe a different color if you’re still waiting for interview questions, or still need to schedule a date, etc.

Anyway, that’s how I’m using it and thought I’d share for anyone else. Are you using Scrivener this way? If so, do you have any other tips? Do you use Scrivener outside the box?

Oh, and if you have any slots in January and you’d like to host me, let me know 😉 Here’s a list of my current blog schedule.

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