Workflows: Writing
I write a lot. In fact, typing is what I do all day long. I write code, I write a lot of blog posts for a few different places, I write emails, I write novels amongst other things.
First of all, if you’re a writer, what software you write in is the least important thing. People who moan that they can’t write until they find the perfect distraction free writing software aren’t writers.
Nether the less, there are two places I write.
(We’ll discount coding right off the bat for now, as I’ll cover this in a later Workflows post.)
Bottom line: I write in text edit. Yeah, the Mac’s built in, default text editor. And, I write in plain text. I save everything in .txt files.
For something like blog posts which will ultimately end up on the web, I write in markdown, not HTML or anything else. For those who don’t know, markdown is a markup ‘language’ created by the John Gruber, which is super simple and super easy to write. I use markdown for its simplicity. To make text italics, you use single underscores or single stars (as you’ve most likely seen me do on the Twitter) like so: _italics_. To make something bold, you use double underscores (or double stars, which is more common) like so: **bold**. A new paragraph is a double line return, code is indented, lists are made with indents and stars and so on and so on. It’s so simple. *italics* instead of <i>italics long</i>.
I paste this markdown right into Wordpress when I’ve written it and Wordpress (with the help of a plugin, although some blogging platforms like Squarespace support it out of the box) converts it to valid HTML.
I then save my posts with a timestamp and title right into a ‘Posts’ folder on my Mac. Simples.
I also keep a folder full of text files for different purposes.
For example, I have something called ‘running files’, which are mostly lists. I have one for domain names I want to register, one for books I want to read, one for blog posts I want to write, etc. I save them as ‘rfx books to read’, where rfx stands for ‘running file’ with the x to make it greppable.
I name blog posts ‘bpx TITLE’ and so on with all the types of things I need to write. This super simple method of keeping everything in text files and making it nice and searchable works super well for me.
In seconds, I hit alt+space, type “o rfx bo” and hit return and I’m in my list of books to read all without having to move the mouse or fire up a big app. Neat, huh?
Any long form writing I have to do happens in plain text (usually with markdown). If, by some unhappy circumstance, I need to send someone a word file, I’ll send them a PDF. If they want to edit it, I’ll send them .txt files even if they ask for Word docs (yeah, I’m that guy). I save all these files with a timestamp and short name.
Also in my txt files, I use a few odd phrases. QQQ means it’s unfinished and needs work. PPP means it needs to be posted/emailed/actioned somehow. And so on. Why? Well, such phrases only appear when I’ve typed them for this reason and are super greppable. Now, that, is a pro tip.
What about order? Yeah, I do write novels and sometimes you need order. So, I use Scrivener. Scrivener is amazing at ordering text. If you’re writing a novel or dissertation or screenplay or whatever in Word, you’re nuts. You need to be able to organise chapters and characters and plans separately and drag and drop and reorder and etc. So, I still write most text in text edit, then I copy it to Scrivener when needs be.
(Oh, and all my txt files are synced in the cloud through Dropbox so they’re on my iPad/iPhone/Ubuntu machine/Mac Mini/whatever when I need them. I’ll talk about that process in a further Workflows post.)
So there you have it. Copious amounts of text and I avoid Pages and Word like the plague. Plain text, timestamps, super grepable nonsense, markdown and Scrivener when I must.
This works for me. It might not for you. I like simplicity and calm and hate toolbars and formatting. Use it if you like – I hope it helps a little.