I Want a Better Writing App
[Note: I wrote this a week before Writer Pro was released! And guess what! It's taken me that long to publish it!]
I write on my phone a lot. For pleasure, to get ideas out, to work things through, to produce, to share. But none of the apps I've tried actually address the process of writing. Sure, I have maybe weird requirements in that I do most of my writing on the subway so I have no internet. (This is when I am least distracted and I can just...write.) I edit things over a few days before I publish rather than being spontaneous. And I tend to do a first pass at editing on the phone and then I move to the desktop if I want to be more ruthless. (Tap/hold/drag only gets you so far.)
So many of the writing apps I've looked at are only concerned with the interface around the writing part and making it beautiful/minimal. Cool! I think y'all have gotten that done. But I need a tool that can help me refine my writing and prepare it for publishing. (I am *not* asking for a tool to actually publish!!) and I mean "publish" in a loose way. It may be for private or public consumption. Sometimes it ends up in an email, sometimes on a web page, sometimes in a (gasp!) a PDF. Sometimes I want it to go to one of my numerous Tumblrs or my personal blog or my business blog. Sometimes it just ends up being notes for myself. Products like Editorially and Draftin are great...but, no internet. So much of my writing ends up languishing in this phone's local directory. (If it's a blog post that's never published, is it a blog post?)
I know it is not easy to design and produce an app! However, I have some suggestions to writing app developers for my weird/selfish use case:
Modes: Draft/editing/to publish/archived. I have a huge directory of text files and I have no idea what is in what stage. Tagging? Toggle? Some way of organizing.
Also the ability to associate more metadata please.
Time shifting! Auto sync: queue my text file for syncing to my chosen publishing tool for that particular piece of text the next time there is a connection. Not just Dropbox. Bywords has a feature that is similar but I don't use any of those services. Make a service-agnostic option (JSON...? Hell, Markdown). Harder said than done, obvs.
Saving to Dropbox/"the cloud" without creating an error when I don't have an internet connection (I'm looking at you, Writing Kit). I've had to resort to emailing unfinished text files to myself with my current writing app and the lack of versioning is driving me up a wall.
Nag/nudge notifications: it be GREAT if my phone gently reminded me of something that's in draft mode. "Hey, looks like you haven't worked on that in a few days. Wanna take a another look? Or have more ideas?" Sometimes I just need a few days to think something over and let it percolate, but sometimes I just...forget. And then I look in the app a month later and I'm like, WHY DID I NOT FINISH THAT.
Personality: following up on the previous item, give the app some personality. (You don't need to go all Clippy the Paperclip though). I'm not a professional writer by any means, but I enjoy writing and will take all the encouragement I can get.
Bonus: Associating photos: Nothing fancy. But hey - I've got this photo of a prototype I was working on that would be perfect for the post. Associate it with the writing please!
That said, please make it focused. I don't need to be presented with 500 options all at once. Step me through the tasks - writing/editing/publishing - in a way that makes it easy to understand.
Lastly, yes I would pay good money for this and think others would too.
