Scrivener Winners Announced!

Yes, bad Tris, I didn’t announce the winners earlier. Note to self: don’t have something like a contest end right before your honeymoon and having big writing deadlines. Other stuff tends to fall off the plate.

In any case, I’ve picked the two winners for the contest—More Back to School Tips and a Contest! Win Scrivener!—and they are:

Alizandum and Fellowweb!

No, they weren’t the only two entries.

I had a hard time choosing who to pick as the winners. In the end, I wanted to pick people who weren’t using Scrivener yet, so getting the current version and the upgrade would be double goodness. Here is FellowWeb’s entry:

Tris, I am currently researching for my doctoral thesis. As it’s not too long ago that I’ve made the switch to Mac OS X, I’ve tried to postpone the decision on which software to use for writing the thesis. After a short look on Pages, I don’t think it would be an interesting option for writing academic publications. It feels too limited (or reduced to mainstream functionality). Although Office for Mac 2011 looks promising, its 2008 version still seems to have difficulties regarding interoperability with its Windows versions – especially on larger documents. So the major benefit of still using Microsoft’s Office suite seems limited. Due to their experiences, a couple of friends couldn’t recommend using OpenOffice/NeoOffice for my purposes. Eventually, Latex seems to be more targeted towards those heavily involved in formulas, which I’m not. In contrast, Scrivener looks like a great way not only to write but also to prepare and organize the actual writing process (e.g. with the corkboard or outliner). I had already heard very positive things regarding Scrivener from David Sparks on the Mac Power Users podcast (http://macpowerusers.com/2009/06/mpu-005-word-processing-and-writing), its review on his blog (http://www.macsparky.com/blog/2007/12/8/review-scrivener.html), and another screencast (http://www.macosxscreencasts.com/en/review/scrivener-review-teil-1-gewinnspiel-rabattaktion/ andhttp://www.macosxscreencasts.com/en/review/scrivener-review-teil-ii-gewinnspiel-rabattaktion/). Having had a first look at it during a test run, one can get a good impression how it’s really taylor made to the needs of “professional writers”. Writing a doctoral thesis means a lot of initial research. Scrivener seems to be of great value especially in this field. Its integrated research support functions would sure be of great help to me and would probably facilitate the switch from researching to actually writing – which seems to be the most tricky part. Especially with the 2.0 version (and its new features) around the corner, Scrivener would be a great tool. I’d be very glad to win. Thank you for the opportunity to participate in your contest.

And Alizandum’s:

I’ve been a student for longer than I care to admit. A series of misfortunate events have rather delayed my graduation… I have always had difficulties as a result of a genetic condition but over the course of my degree they have become almost insurmountable. The last few years have been a real struggle as I have lost more function in my hands and have developed a significant mobility impairment among other things. If I can find a way round these difficulties I would very much like to continue on to further study and perhaps teach if I am well enough. By some coincidence I’m currently researching tools to help me through and found your contest. I’m no longer able to do traditional paper and pen note taking, outlining and drafting. It’s very painful and the results are illegible. I still haven’t adjusted to a paper free workflow and I hope Scrivener can be part of a solution. I love doing research and mind mapping my ideas but the writing is where I fall down. It’s become a recurring nightmare. Any tool to help is welcomed. An iPhone has become a replacement for my memory. I fill it with random thoughts that pop up through the day and in the middle of the night. I want to have somewhere meaningful to put them so I can actually make use of all these snippets. I think Scrivener may be the perfect home for them.I’ve had some help with equipment but not much can be done about my inability to sit upright for long, poor concentration or general cognitive problems. Efficiency during writing time is essential as I’m so limited in capacity. The prospect of writing on my Alphasmart Dana and importing to a Scrivener project for editing really excites me. Sitting in a painful position at a computer staring at a blank, disorganised or disjointed word processing document is utterly soul destroying. I have dictation software but when it comes to free flowing thought I’d rather type. Also, I’m plagued by vocal problems, both physical production and word finding, so dictating will never be a panacea for me.Scrivener would completely revolutionise my workflow and give me the ability to be academically successful again. As a student (and a disabled student with extremely limited capacity to supplement my income at that) I would be delighted and very grateful to receive a free copy of Scrivener. Like another entrant I don’t want to beg but needs must! I must also apologise for any errors in my entry as I’m extremely tired but unfortunately I only stumbled across this contest just before the deadline so it couldn’t wait.Many thanks for considering my entry.

The others were just as compelling and strong…

Oh and the update? Yeah … Keith has revealed more details:The Cellar Door » Scrivener 2.0 – Coming Soon (No, Really) and ooh this is going to be worth the update cost.

So congrats to FellowWeb and Alizandum! I’ll be pinging you shortly on how to claim the prize.