A tale of two computers
First, a minor digression.
I have two computers (technically three, but the third is sitting unplugged with a possibly dead SSD and has not been used in four years): a Mac and a PC. They both work about the same and I find general performance pretty much equal, with a few quirks here and there.
The PC is much better for gaming because Mac gaming remains in a state of LOL. Apple is as good at building a gaming culture on Macs as it is at regularly releasing Mac Pro computers and keeping them updated1In the last 10 years Apple has released a Mac Pro in 2013 and 2019. Neither has seen any substantive updates since release.
For coding, either works. My coding is bad enough that I can’t really see a difference between platforms.
For graphics, there are plenty of options on either side. I have been using Pixelmator Pro more often lately, which is Mac-exclusive. But for just viewing images/photos, I prefer using the Photos app in Windows.
The weather app on Windows 11 is better than the one on the Mac.
For writing, there are, again, oodles of options on both computers. Annoyingly, some of the best options are platform-exclusive and/or have that pesky subscription model attached to them.
The main point of this digression is this: I regularly switch between the Mac and PC based on the specific task I’m doing. For general purposes–browsing, chatting with interweb pals, writing in my super-secret diary and so on, they are functionally interchangeable. So if I am, say, working on the Mac, I’ll keep doing so until there’s something I prefer or need to do on Windows, then I’ll switch over–and vice-versa.
And here the digression ends, as this post is about writing.
A renewal of interest in things I’ve written
I’ve recently re-read or am in the process of re-reading some of my older stuff, and the distance afforded by not having looked at some of these stories for years has given me a chance to appraise them with fresh eyes. I’m pleased to discover the writing holds up. This has sparked renewed interest in my long form (novel) writing. Maybe I should try to finish one of these lonely, abandoned National Novel Writing Month would-be epics!
So, the reality is, I could write a novel with a pencil and a couple of lined exercise books–and I did just that when I was 19! But something being possible doesn’t necessarily mean it is optimal. When I write, I do it using a fancy computer like the Mac or PC I have. But then I need to choose the software, and this is where the rabbit hole begins.
The rabbit hole
When I was last writing regularly, I used Ulysses. I have railed against its subscription model before, though they have interestingly reduced the yearly cost by $10–which suggests it is not working well for them. They have also entered what I call the bloat stage, where they add new stuff that doesn’t enhance the writing experience at all, it just provides bullet points on “this is what your subscription is paying for.” That said, the core of the program is fine, the sub cost per year is bearable, but…it’s Mac-only. Remember how I switch between my Mac and PC a lot?
All I really want is a writing app similar to Ulysses that works on both platforms and is not web-based.
I look over the usual suspects:
- Scrivener. Still unwieldy, with an ugly UI (yes, it matters to me!) and works terribly on cloud drives (the exact opposite of Ulysses in that regard).
- FocusWriter. It’s fine, but a little too spartan. It’s barely better than Notepad in terms of features, though you can pretty up the UI. I feel like it’s great for writing short stories, but would fall flat on novels.
- yWriter. This seems to have so much of what I want–and more, taking a real kitchen sink approach to novel writing (somewhat reminiscent of Scrivener), but it’s such a weird design, with windows for everything. It looks and feels cluttered, kind of the opposite of what I want when I’m just writing.
- Microsoft Word. I mean, I have it, but it really falls down on editing long documents, which novels tend to be. Also, fighting its formatting could be an Olympic sport.
- SmartEdit Writer (formally the way cooler-sounding Atomic Scribbler. This feels like a hybrid of Scrivener and yWriter, and also openly discourages saving to the cloud. It’s not as cluttered-looking as yWriter, but I am still not a fan of its UI.
- Probably a few others I’ve forgotten.
So it seems I mostly want a few things:
- A clean UI. What a lot of people (and marketing types) now call “distraction-free.”
- The ability to handle long form (novel) writing. This means being able to break down writing into scenes/chapters that can be easily edited and organized individually.
- Works with cloud saves, for better portability. This is no longer as critical, and I can save files to my NAS to achieve a pseudo-cloud functionality. Something like Scrivener turns your writing into a messy collection of files, increasing the risk that something will go wrong, and making cloud-based saving a pit of vipers. Who wants their writing to be a pit of vipers? Other than vipers, that is.
- Works on both Mac and PC. So I don’t need to switch when the muse (or discipline) strikes.
Conclusion
I don’t have one! I’ll probably keep using Ulysses on the Mac for now, because there’s less friction there. I’d otherwise have to start exporting the stuff I want to work on and spend more time fiddling instead of writing.
Exciting updates coming soon, maybe!
