NEW POST | Tomi Oladepo
I recently found that my writing productivity increased by, to be modest, ten percent, when I changed my writing font on the computer, and chose a more “jovial” font type. Batang stimulates my writing juices on the thesis right now.
I’m not sure there is a science to explain this yet, but I always found Times New Roman (the default for most) cumbersome; maybe because when it comes to writing on Microsoft Word, Times New Roman is awarded ancient of days; but you see I am far from ancient. I am a young cheery academic who loves to dress up and change her hairstyles faster than Lord Sugar can say “you’re fired!”. How I find the time amazes me, but it is probably the only fun thing keeping me sane on this journey so far. Hence, when it comes to my fonts for writing, I am happy to find out that I need it to be equally liberating and perhaps even stylish.
Don’t get me wrong, on the blessed submission day, if Times New Roman is the requirement, I will deliver in Times New Roman. Until then, I’m having fun with my fonts in order to have something worth delivering at all.
The extra writing stimulant might also be that I no longer write on the Microsoft Word software (thank goodness!) I got the sexy Scrivner that fellow researchers on Twitter were raving about and I wasn’t disappointed. People who know me know that when I get happy-mad about a product, one or two people around me end up buying it – it happened to Apple (loads got the iPhone), it happened to my decision to go all-natural with my hair (3 friends have cut-off their chemically processed hair, more on the way) and now, I’ve got two friends actively using Scrivner as well. May I just pitch in that these companies are free to employ me, especially Apple. When I believe in your product, I don’t need a marketing degree to convince an unbeliever.
Back to Scrivner. She liberated me, hallelujah. I am actually writing this post on Scrivner, and it feels like the most normal thing in the world. Scrivner allows me to set up as many pages as I want on a writing project, hence I can change my fonts per page, just the way I swap hairstyles. This keeps my motivation and interest in the document alive.
In addition, Scrivner allows me use icons to customise my draft pages on the project. For instance, I use the “Light-Bulb” icon to design the page that hosts all my “eureka” moments on the thesis. My PhD Thesis is the title of the Scrivner document I set up for my research. In the “binder” rests the outline of my entire thesis in as many pages as I want. In no way do I feel confronted by a long sea of white pages that I need to fill up with text, as I did when using Microsoft Word.
I can’t tell you everything about the wonders of Scrivner for a PhD student, because even I still feel like Alice in Scrivner-Wonderland. However, I can assure you that with my discovery of love for variety in writing fonts, and my use of Scrivner, I am definitely sipping on Writers’ Delight – a great drink for someone in her third-year looking to get her writing gymnastics on an A-game.
Photo Credit: Benjamin Von Wong/CreativeCommons
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