My initial writing setup or how choosing simple tools can help you create more
No Scrivener, no paper, and no over-engineering this.
Hello there!
As much as I like Scrivener, it has one major flaw - it's stuck on just one device. And as much as I love my notebooks, I’m not using paper for writing anymore.
Here’s why.
Since the dawn of time, artists and creators of any sort have used pen and paper to do their magic. I love keeping things simple and you can’t get any simpler than that. However, for this particular adventure, I decided I won’t be using paper for several reasons:
it's hard to organize
it’s impossible to search through, and
things get out of hand when you have several projects going on at the same time.
My strategy has always been to take what works for me at the moment and let go of the rest.
There are still some very good uses for notebooks — I'm journaling to set the mood for a writing session and I use a “catch-all” commonplace notebook where I'll keep interesting ideas to ponder on.
But notebooks are not part of my writing system.
Just because something has been done in a certain way for hundreds of years doesn’t mean you need to do it the exact same way. If it works, keep it. If it doesn't, just take what you like from it and adapt it to your life with as little friction as possible.
Focus on doing the work not on perfecting the system.
And it so happens that we already have another tool we carry around everywhere with us. Not using it would be a missed opportunity, right? Yes, it’s the pocket computer we call a phone.
So before I started this writing journey, I did a little phone transformation. I deleted all social media and “consuming” apps and installed a bunch of “creation” apps, such as Google docs, Notion, Forest, and more.
The idea is to have everything synced between my computer, tablet and phone so I can write anywhere. I want to use most of my spare minutes to do research, capture ideas, ponder a plot hole, take notes on a character, or just, you know, write.
Why does this matter to me?
Well, I’m not very good at sitting alone in an empty room.
And as we well know, writing is a solitary endeavour. But I found out that if I can write anywhere, I don’t need to stay alone at home all the time. For example, I play D&D and I use the idle time before a session to write. I also organized friends who were keen on writing, or drawing, or painting minis into a little club, where we could create in shared solitude.
I love this idea. I grew up in a family where reading together in a room was considered a social activity and I want to keep up this glorious tradition.
So my setup includes two apps for now:
Google Docs for the pre-writing and writing and
Notion for the world building and character database and for capturing and organizing all the ideas that come my way.
The only downside is that they require internet connection but I’m fine with this.
I tried Scrivener but it has one major downside for me — it exists on only one device. If I want to write on the go, I'll need to take my laptop everywhere with me and that's just not an option for me.
I also tried a bunch of apps on my phone that had no way to use on a computer. This was also a deal breaker because I organize information and do most of my editing on bigger screens.
In time, as my needs change, I will add more tools to my setup, if and when I need them. I like to keep things simple and grow systems from the ground up. Forcing a complex system from above and trying to adapt to it is not the goal here. The goal is to create my thing — to write my stories — and to have fun.
Here are several questions you can ask yourself when you're setting up your creative operation:
What do I already know and use every day?
What is important to me?
What are the must haves for me to do great work and have fun?
What is the path of least resistance?
As I mentioned before, I'm taking Brandon Sanderson's lectures on writing. One of the countless gems of wisdom from those videos is to make writing a habit first and worry about everything else after that.
And this is what my initial writing setup is all about.
Thank you for reading and have a wonderful week!
💛 Lina
