Writing Tools

My handwrting and paper filing system gets worse, and most of what I write beyond jotting now goes via a keyboard. An MX Keys, generally.

Here's my current set of tools, and their purposes:

OmmWriter – for when I want to concentrate on writing, and only on writing. It looks lovely, has satisfying clicky typing noises, and I love its soundtrack of worn carriages on minor European branch lines.

Bear – for when I need something to be everywhere immediately, I flip open Bear on the iPad or laptop or phone. Apple Notes, too, when my phone's managed to offload Bear.

Scrivener – for the heavy lifting. With rich metadata and vastly rearrangabe parts, I use Scriv for re-structuring articles, reviewing conference submissions, and writing big stuff. Scrivener's sister app, Scapple, is nice for throwing words down a diagram. I'm using both less, which makes me feel disloyal.

And that's becasue of the next two...

Roam – for building from notes, which means pulling ideas in plenty of different directions, and seeing where they hang together. As far as opposible thumbs for thinking go, this one has given me an all-new grip on my imagination.

Miro's always neat. Ideas that breed in Roam go to Miro to show off. What's more, I can invite anyone to collaborate with me on stuff, in a medium that's rather more built for side-quests than a linear doc.

However, if I'm being realistic, while I use all of these extensively, I write for this website on this website, and I'm not certain why. So, last and not at all least:

Ghost – becuase I can publish straight from Ghost, I find myself working in its editor more and more. Yet it's not markdown, has fuzzzzy search, limited layout, leaves my typos unmarked, doesn't do change control, doesn't facilitate links to my other stuff, has iffy undo and if I happen to delete something I want, it's gone. I'm not sure if I use it out of ease-of-action or ill-dicipine. Maybe both.