I'm a huge fan of working smarter, not harder. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, I don't know, but regardless, I'm here today to share my favorite writing tool: Scrivener. And awesome news … I've made you a template you can use to write your novel and format it as an ebook, paperback, manuscript for editing, and pretty much anything else you could possibly do with your written word. Yay!

Scrivener often goes on sale, so if you don't have the scratch for it now (it's $45), save your pennies and wait for a sale. I always post on my Facebook page when I see it at a special price. You can get it for Mac or PC, but the Mac version is better, or so I hear. I use the Mac version. Here's the software designer's website.

I used to use Microsoft Word to write my books, but never again! Ack, it has such garbagy code going on underneath that really interferes in the formatting process later. Scrivener is so much better at visualizing my story and also for compiling into a usable format. For the compile feature alone, it's worth every bit of headache you might get from learning the software. That's the bad news; it does have a bit of a learning curve. But in the interest of working smarter, I've made you some videos and put them on Youtube to help you through that part. Here's a link to my Youtube channel that has all my videos, Scrivener or otherwise.

And for the best part … here's a link to the template I made that you can use to write a fiction novel and then format it for ebook or paperback. If you like it, share it! Readers benefit when more great books make it to market. CLICK ON THIS: Fiction Novel Template – Elle Casey

That's all for now; I have a TON of writing to do. Thanks to Mike, fellow author who reached out and let me know a template was a good idea.