Scrivener 2.0 for Mac <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php" target="_blank">is now out </a>and Scrivener for Windows <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivenerforwindows/" target="_blank">is available in beta</a>. They're both free trial downloads and well worth checking them out.

Scrivener 2.0 is a very substantial advance on the first version, with a cleaner interface and some neat new features (but not too many I'm pleased to say). If you use a Mac and write fiction you really should take a look. And don't worry about the stability either. The last three books I've written were produced in the 2.0 beta (now I can finally say it). Even when it was a beta version I never hit a single problem.

I'm now using Windows, of course, so good as 2.0 is it's of intellectual interest rather than a working priority. The Scrivener Windows beta is an early version -- no line spacing for example, and there are problems with spell checking. These will be fixed later with a final release planned for early next year. I'll doubtless get around to writing about it at a later date. For the moment if you want to understand what I think about Scrivener just <a href="http://davidhewson.com/tag/scrivener/" target="_blank">browse the articles here</a>.

This <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2009/09/09/the-best-scrivener-tip-ever-maybe/" target="_blank">tip on unplaced scenes </a>and <a href="http://davidhewson.com/2009/10/08/scrivener-and-the-mosaic-of-writing/" target="_blank">this one on the general principle of writing as a mosaic </a>are two of the most popular ones.