Writing involves a lot more than just writing. One thing we all have to think about at some point is: where do we write? It’s easy to just write in the first place you can access easily, but taking a few minutes to figure out how to organize yourself and keep yourself accountable can save you hours in the long run. So, here are some platforms to ease the writing process:
Google Drive, Overdrive, etc.
Use a cloud platform for drafting your works! I cannot stress this enough. You do not want all your hard work to be dependent on the fate of one device. If anything happens to it, all your work will be gone. Also, you want to be able to access your writing from any device in case you get a burst of inspiration away from home. So, make sure you write on something like Google Drive. (Obviously, the cloud platform you use will depend on personal preference.)
Notion
This is really common among young writers for organizing thoughts. Its aesthetic and user-friendly interface make it easy to customize how you brainstorm, take notes, and keep track of everything to do with your writing. You even can add task lists to make sure you hit all the steps of the writing process.
Scrivener is rather similar to Notion, but it has more functionality. Unfortunately, it’s not free and there is a larger learning curve.
I wouldn’t recommend writing your actual WIP on either of these because they aren’t particularly compatible with typical drafting softwares (above), but a lot of people do use them for first drafts. (So, it’s up to you!).
Freedom or Focus
One of the cons to writing online is that, well, you are online. With access to YouTube, online books, and blog posts about everything we want to write about, we have all gotten distracted while writing. Even if we originally step away from our project to do some research, we often fall down a rabbit hole of unnecessary reading.
We may know, deep down, that we should either research before or after drafting, but it is hard to do so with the internet at our fingertips. That’s why Freedom and Focus exist. These apps block all websites except the one you need to work on for a certain period of time, making sure you are fully focused and separated from the real world (including the notifications that go along with it).
There are slight differences between the two softwares (in terms of cost, functionality, etc.), so you should do research and maybe try both out to see which one works best for you.
All in all, it’s important to take some time to figure out what you need to be the most productive writer you can be. Exploring these and other options can help you do that.