My Tools

These are my current tools to help me write. It's possible that may change in the future as I solidify the process, but you can head to that page to learn more about how they all fit together. My tools and my process may not make sense to you, and I'm not advocating them for you, but I'm still figuring things out as I write my first novel. You do what works for you.

Hardware

The typewriters

When I can, which is usually at lunch when I'm working remote twice a week for my day job, I bust out one of my many typewriters. They get rotated to get some use, but the one doing most of the work is my Hermes 3000. I've been collecting typewriters since 2018 and writing on them is truly an engaging experience. I highly recommend getting one and trying out some of your writing on it. There's a great sublime documentary about typewriters and some of the famous people that use them called "California Typewriter" (you can watch the full documentary for free on YouTube).

My iPhone

I simply use the optical character recognition function in the camera app to copy the text from my typewritten pages and "digitize" them (Galaxy Quest, anyone?).

My Macbook Air

Aside from being my main computer, I just love the compact, sleek form of the Macbook Air. I have the 2022 13-inch model and it's incredibly fast.

My notebook

I tend to write my ideas first in a notebook and expand on them. Asking questions and developing characters and scenes. Coming up with "What if" questions and highlighting the best parts to use to start my story. Yes, I know the famous talk where Stephen King said notebooks immortalize bad ideas, but you need to do what works for you.

And I get that there are decent notebooks for less, and saying that I only use Moleskine notebooks sounds pretentious and snobbish, but I honestly haven't found a quality of notebook better than Moleskine. And I've tried dozens of brands over the years to try to shake the pretentiousness from my very being, but alas, I keep coming back to them.

The only other notebook that comes close is the Leuchtturm1917 bullet journal I use for my daily, weekly and monthly routines which has pre-made bullet journal log pages already created.

My pens

Just like my Moleskine notebooks, I never strayed away from the bold 1.0mm Pilot G2. I've always liked thicker ink when writing, and short of using a Sharpie every day where the ink would run through the paper and I'd be forced to write on one side of the page, the G2 is close enough to writing with a thicker-inked pen that I could get.

I have the original Fisher space pen that is also smooth and allows you to write upside down if you ever need to take notes lying in bed (just like Jerry in that Seinfeld episode).

Software

Scrivener

It seems like writers either really don't like Scrivener or they love it. I don't know if I've heard any writer take a middle opinion on the software. Yes, at first, it can seem daunting with all the settings and preferences and buttons, but the more you use it, the more you see you could never go back to Word.

Imagine having a file folder to place all your research, sketches, images, links to inspiration ... everything you've been collecting to draft your novel all in one place. There's no other software that comes close.

Camera app

Related to my iPhone in the hardware section, the camera app allows me to scan my typed pages and copy the text into Scrivener. There's some minor clean-up, but it's pretty much a copy-and-paste job.