It’s been a while since I wrote about my setup for various writing projects. It’s changed a bit since then, and is still not particularly robust. Consider this a report on the state of the world.
Devices
Laptop
My laptop has replaced my iPad as my primary writing device. The main reason is the persistence of issues between Dropbox and iA Writer on the iPad.1There have been changes to how third party file service providers can “properly” deal with files. My understanding is that iA Writer is doing things by the book while Dropbox doesn’t play nicely with these features. I don’t blame iA Writer, but the issue remains a dealbreaker. I’ll discuss that more later; there are other app limitations that further wed me to the laptop.
Another reason is convenience. Nearly all of my daily work requires a laptop.2My regular day job certainly requires a laptop just due to managing meetings and documents. Most of my contract work requires heavy use of Google Drive tools, and their features are abhorrent on iPad. I’m often either actively using it, or it’s nearby, making it the path of least resistance to writing whenever inspiration strikes.
iPad
As suggested above, my iPad has been rendered to an auxiliary role. I do still write on it when I feel an additional need to focus, or if it’s closer to me than my laptop which is often left on my desk. However, it’s main use has been viewing reference materials and writing on PDFs. It’s a flexible additional device that is well-suited to a few specific tasks. I’d like to use it more, and I may adjust my writing process to purposefully increase its use, but I need to try other setups before committing to a change.
Phone
My phone continues to be a tool for jotting down ideas while I’m away from any other device. I now solely use Todoist to keep track of both my ideas and my progress on those ideas. More on that later.
Apps and Services
Dropbox
Dropbox continues to be my source of truth for all of my writing projects. My blog is still organized into two folders per year, with each file in mm-dd title format. This will only change if I decide I really want to use iA Writer on my iPad.
iA Writer and 1Writer
I love iA Writer. Its particular design language suits me better than any other markdown editor I’ve used. Its focus mode is just right, its typewriter mode is non-aggressive,3It has a perceptible delay between clicking on a line, and that line being centered. Every other editor with a typewriter mode makes me frustrated while editing because the lines move too quickly to effectively select a particular spot. It’s a small thing, but I find that it matters. its rendering of Markdown while maintaining “source code view” is great, and ultimately it gets out of my way. It’s my main markdown editor.
1Writer is the next-best option on iPad. It has a good understanding of files4It’s the only editor I’ve ever come across that lets you close a file with Cmd+W, which means I never have to worry about save conflicts between my iPad and Mac. and an interesting scripting backend that makes it easy for me to publish to my blog with a couple of taps. It’s not nearly as polished as iA Writer—there’s no typewriter mode, and its PDF export isn’t great—but it gets the job done. Even so, I’m always looking for other options.
Todoist
I needed a tool to keep track of my various projects: writing, tutoring, contract work, and other miscellaneous tasks that come up. I have a project for my blog in a Kanban view where I can easily add ideas. Each week I’ll pick one (or come up with a new one), assign it for the following Monday, and track it from draft to completion. It’s easy to use, has good natural language processing for dates, and is available everywhere. I highly recommend it.
Notability
They’ve never given me a reason to leave. I can send PDFs between any devices or apps, save them in Dropbox, mark up drafts, or create new notes to sketch out an idea. I’m not extremely organized in this app but I still use it effectively.
WordPress
I continue to host my blog using the WordPress engine. I’ve finally stopped tinkering with new plug-ins, and have standardized on some style rules. For example, I frequently use the modern footnotes plug-in, which lets me write footnotes inline using brackets inline with a paragraph. This makes the footnotes easy to insert while drafting, and easy to edit in context, because their content isn’t hiding at the end of the document unlike with traditional footnote syntax.
Ulysses
The siren song of one of the finest writing apps has lured me back in for another year’s membership. While iA Writer is great for most anything under a few thousand words, it’s not great with larger projects. When I begin writing more for the world of The Last Question, I realized I wanted something that allowed files to act as chapters, similar to how I’d structure a large \LaTeX document. It turns out Ulysses now has a “project” view that can compile multiple documents into a single PDF. In addition, its export template system is the best I’ve used, it has a polished interface, and contains several editing and review tools that I’ve found useful.
The only downside is that Ulysses is a closed ecosystem that syncs quietly using iCloud. While it’s all technically an advanced flavor of markdown behind the scenes, the files within are basically inaccessible. I don’t know if I’ll stick with Ulysses long term, but I’ve had fun toying around with it while drafting stories.
Obsidian
For a time I had demoted Obsidian to be a checklist generator for my daily work tasks. Before long I didn’t even allow it that honor, instead moving to pen and paper. But as I plan out my first campaign for The Last Question, I learned about the passionate community of TTRPG enthusiasts who have put in significant effort to maximize Obsidian’s ability to manage all the elements of a campaign. In a single day Obsidian became an indispensable tool for knowing what the heck I’d gotten myself into. It’s fast and flexible, though the details of my setup are beyond the scope of this post. Obsidian is another tool keeping me on the Mac for now. Syncing data to iPad requires the use of Obsidian’s own cloud service. I don’t need to separate my data any further.
Dictionary
I need a dictionary and thesaurus frequently. Even then, I don’t use it as much as I should.
Apple Books
I’ve been sleeping on the Apple Books app. Years ago, I needed an app to read sheet music. In other words, I needed an app that could import a PDF and let me flip through a single page at a time without scrolling. While there are apps built specifically for handling sheet music, at the time I only considered PDF readers and ended up using Adobe Acrobat.
Turns out, the Apple Books app for iPad offers this discrete page functionality and, naturally, accepts both PDF and ePub. I have a mess of PDF and ePub versions of writing reference texts, and I abhor reading books on my computer. But, loading them onto my Kobo would lead to a tedious reading experience because I don’t read these books linearly. The Apple Books app is full-featured for this purpose, and I’m glad it had some recent controversy that brought it to mind and eventually led me to test it out.
- 1There have been changes to how third party file service providers can “properly” deal with files. My understanding is that iA Writer is doing things by the book while Dropbox doesn’t play nicely with these features. I don’t blame iA Writer, but the issue remains a dealbreaker.
- 2My regular day job certainly requires a laptop just due to managing meetings and documents. Most of my contract work requires heavy use of Google Drive tools, and their features are abhorrent on iPad.
- 3It has a perceptible delay between clicking on a line, and that line being centered. Every other editor with a typewriter mode makes me frustrated while editing because the lines move too quickly to effectively select a particular spot. It’s a small thing, but I find that it matters.
- 4It’s the only editor I’ve ever come across that lets you close a file with Cmd+W, which means I never have to worry about save conflicts between my iPad and Mac.