Mac, Windows, Linux
Follow Your Inspiration And Worry Less About The Technical Side
If you are a writer or a copywriter, you know how that inspiration comes down to you. All you want is to continuously write and not be bothered by technical issues. You want your research to be in one place, right next to the copy that you are writing. When you search for the best software to write your novel or blog post, what you mostly see is Scrivener. Undoubtedly, this is the most popular choice and probably the best one. However, what happens if you need something simpler or cheaper? What about all that other software out there?
Scrivener
So, first thing first. Scrivener is my favorite app by far. I was ecstatic the first time I saw it and got to work on it. Scrivener enjoys massive approval and support from USA Today and New York Times bestselling authors, journalists, screenwriters, and so on. This is a direct sign that Scrivener is the best novel writing software. It could be a little hard to get used to it in the beginning and the book-creating process is somewhat complicated. However, it is worth it in the long run.
The first thing that I didn’t get, was that you have to create different projects for each project. Silly, right? It is all in the word «project». I was just creating different folders in the same project. After I realized that you can have multiple projects created and access them separately, things were a lot easier and intuitively understandable. An honest rookie mistake. So, if you, for example, run different projects (eg. your blog, your novel, your school paper, etc.), you create a different project with the respective name. I have created a project called «DonateWord», where I had separate files for blog organization (color scheme, menus, etc.), blog pages, and blog posts.
Scrivener displays the word count at the bottom. This feature is essential to me. Plus, you can select a paragraph, and it will automatically show the word count in that paragraph.
What I enjoy the most is the two-view windows side by side. You can have your research on your right-hand window and your copy that you are currently writing on your left-hand window.
A Distraction-Free Mode will allow you to concentrate solely on your work.
Dark Mode makes it comfortable to work in the evening. Cons: I have encountered a problem of inserting web links in the «research» part. They do not render as a web page.
Paid: $49 One-Time Payment.
Write! App
This is another great book-writing app. It is suitable for any kind of writing such as content writing, note-taking, book writing, etc. The app introduces Light and Dark modes to better suit your needs based on the time of the day. There is a spellchecker, which is essential because no one wants to have typos on his page.
Focus mode allows you to concentrate on a paragraph at a time. If you want, you can also work in Full-Screen Mode.
Picture from Write! App website
You can set daily and productivity goals. Moreover, you can store your writing in a cloud and access it from any computer. There are 15 text styles available and you can format your writing accordingly.
The app allows you to publish, share, and send your work directly from the working environment, which is very convenient. You don’t need to open additional applications.
The app doesn’t offer a free trial period, but it comes with 7 day money-back guarantee.
Write App will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Paid:
24,95 € Including VAT.
9,95 € Including VAT For Students.
Evernote
Simple and intuitive to use. With the basic plan, you can synchronize the app on your desktop and mobile. This way you can have all your notes at your disposal whenever you need them.
The premium version (€6,99/month), among other very cool features, increases your upload limit and enables you to work offline. But you can access the web version of the app on every browser.
I use Evernote a lot. I wasn’t able to find how to create notebook stacks in the app itself, but you can do it on the old web version of the app.
For this site, I have created several notebooks that I added to a notebook stack called Donate word. Notebooks that I thought to be essential for me were:
- Donateword Basic, where I saved my colors, CSS codes that I use to customize my website, and so on.
- Donateword posts, where I am writing my posts.
- Donateword research, where I save all the research files and web pages.
One disadvantage that I have noticed is that you can see how many words your post contains, but you can’t see the word count for each paragraph. That would be a very useful feature when you don’t want to write too much on a certain subject.
Paid: Premium Version €6,99/Month.