My writing setup

At this week's Homebrew Website Club, I asked everyone what tools they use for writing. Participants shared a range of tools, from BBEdit, a text editor for macOS, to "Written? Kitten!", a web-based text editor that shows a photo of a cat after you have written a certain number of words. Delighted by the variety, and inspired by a blog post written by Tatiana Perry where she shares her writing setup, I thought I would ask the question on my blog: what tools do you use when you are writing?

I use two tools for most of my writing:

1. Typora, a text editor with support for markdown, and;
2. Google Docs, Google's web-based document editing tool.

I use some other tools (i.e. GitBook) when I am writing in an environment that involves custom elements. For example, GitBook has many custom elements you can add to code documentation. Writing elsewhere then adding those in would be less intuitive.

Let's talk about Typora and Google Docs in more depth.

Typora

Typora is my go-to for personal blog posts. It is fast, reliable, and renders markdown as I type. When I add a heading with the markdown symbol for a heading (#), Typora renders the text that follows as a heading. I like to write in markdown. The rendering of markdown content in real-time is ideal for me. I can see my post structure as I go.

Typora does not have a table of contents or a task panel in the application. It is mainly a text window. There is a word count in the top right, but it is only visible if you hover over the top of the document. You can configure the editor, but I find the default configuration (amended to use dark model) is perfect for me. Simple, intuitive, and reliable. That's all I desire and need in a writing tool.

Google Docs

I have been using Google Docs for technical writing at work for years. I find Google Docs easy to use. Importantly, Google Docs has excellent collaboration feautres. I can share a document and receive inline feedback. I can accept and reject suggested edits. I can work on a document with another person at the same time. For collaborative writing, Google Docs works well.

In addition, Google Docs supports offline writing. This is useful because I do not always have a reliable internet conneciton. I know that if my connection stops, I can still write. With that said, I sometimes manually copy-paste my words elsewhere to be doubly sure that I don't lose them.

One qualm I have about Google Docs is it is hard to get images out of a document. There isn't a single button you can click to download an image.

Also, if you copy-paste a Google Document into a Content Management System that supports images such as Ghost, all the images have Google Docs URLs. I am unsure how long these URLs last, but I do know that they should not be relied on for published works. I published a blog post that got a lot of attention at work and all the images disappeared. We had to manually add them to our CMS again.

What tools do you use to write?

I would love to know what tools you use to write. I encourage you to write a blog post to answer this question! This one was written in Typora. If you do write a blog post, send me an email at readers [at] jamesg [dot] blog, or send me a Webmention so that I know you have written a response.

Also posted on IndieNews.