tl;dr: Get yourself a plain text editor. You probably already have one.
Google docs. Sticky notes. Voice memos. Notebooks. It's a lot to keep track of. Don't you feel frustrated when you have a great idea, put it somewhere, and can't find it later? Ever write a killer blog post and click Publish, only to see an error message along the lines of "Oopsies, our bad, now your post no longer exists ha ha ha"? Ugh.
I’m not a programmer, or a novelist, or a journalist. But I do a lot of writing in the course of my work as an artist.
I compose all of my blog posts, social media posts, and even some emails in a plain text editor.
Not Word. Not OpenOffice, Google Docs, or any other text-capturing software. Not rich text. Plain text.
Why?
1. No weird formatting or metadata. Have you ever tried to copy a letter or outline from Doc to Word to PDF and had the spacing come out all wrong? Did you get up this morning thinking, "I want to fight with Microsoft Word about what is and isn't a headline"? Even copy-pasting "as plain text" isn't 100% reliable between platforms. Plain text is free of formatting, other than line breaks. When I compose in a plain text editor, then copy-paste to the text's final destination, I know I'll have the formatting under my control.
2. No bells or whistles. Sometimes I just need to write. I don't want to distract myself with fonts, line spacing, kerning, and all the things that make my document pretty, but should wait until after I'm done getting the words out. If I'm trying to write and I see a notification, popup, etc., my train of thought is derailed.
3. No vanishing acts. I use BBEdit on my Mac desktop and laptop computers. I save the files locally (see 3a). If my internet connection gets interrupted, my text doesn't disappear.
It's worth noting that I'm a ten-finger typist. I'm not great at writing on my phone. And while voice-to-text is getting better all the time, it still has a noticeable margin of error. So I prefer to write using a keyboard. (When I’m not scribbling on paper, that is.)
3a. My files are stored locally. I'm just not super comfortable with cloud-based storage. If that's a great solution for you, awesome. I prefer knowing that I can access my text files while offline.
BONUS: this makes it easy to recycle content from my archives!
I do back everything up; I use Time Machine for local backups and Backblaze for offsite.
4. A plain text editor is lightweight. No bloatware here. Text files (with the extension .txt) take up no space at all. It's easy to email them, put them on flash drives, etc.
5. Plain text is easily transferrable, for all the reasons I've listed here. I publish content on a variety of platforms, including Patreon, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Slack, WhatsApp, and my Squarespace website. I also use InDesign, Canva, and PDFs to run my business. I use Gmail for emailing. I can paste plain text into any of those without a hitch.
ARTISTS: This is especially useful when applying for shows, grants, residencies, etc. that have online applications. Compose your bio, statement, resume, or whatever in a plain text editor, then copypasta into the online form.
Composing offline, with minimal distraction, knowing that my text doesn't depend on a particular platform, makes a huge difference in my workflow.
Here's my favorite thing about plain text editors: most of them are free. Whatever operating system you're using probably already has one (including iOS and Android).
As I mentioned, I'm a Mac user, and BBEdit is my plain text editor of choice. When you install BBEdit, it will show that you're in a "free trial" period, but don't worry - you can still use the app for free after that's over.
What are your favorite tools for writing distraction-free?