In the last article I explained how my desire for a plain text workflow that’s as simple and lean and efficient as plain text itself was making things complicated. Or at least, my overthinking was making things complicated. I thought I’d found a solution. Then the perfect plain text productivity app went and snook up on me…
The problem is that I feel as though my file organisation is a mess. Maybe that’s because it is a mess.
There are many great plain text apps out there, but, for me at least, finding a way to use them together effectively has proved challenging.
Even as I was writing the last article it was clear that I may have too many apps all doing the same thing.
Whatever the case, certainly something needed streamlining.
I realised that what I was doing was looking at the features of all these apps and trying to work out how I could use them, rather than thinking about what features I actually need.
So I changed focus. I set out to determine how best to manage my plain text, rather than work out how to best use the apps.
Working out what you want and need is difficult, though. Apps such as Keyboard Maestro are incredibly powerful and useful – but you’ve got to be able to take a step back and take the time to identify where you might need to use their powers.
The thing about Obsidian is that it can be as simple as you like. But it’s the plugins and tools and ways to manage your information that really make Obsidian worthwhile. And that takes time, effort and patience to learn. I spent a morning trying to work out how to create a “map of content” – and now I don’t really look at it.
I want plain text’s light weight, speed and leanness, with the baked in functionality and aesthetics of a polished app. But I think I got swept along with all the enthusiastic geekery on the internet.
If you just want a simple app to write in, I’m not sure Obsidian’s the best option. I guess it may be an appealing free option, but even if you do want something free there are other apps.
Anyway, I was still looking at Ulysses and Obsidian and iA Writer and Drafts, and trying to work out which one it would be best for me to write in and where to store my notes and so on. Because all of these apps are slightly different; they have different features and handle our writing in different ways.
The shortcut shuffle
Something as simple as keyboard shortcuts can make one app more appealing than another. For example, I find the CMD 1 of Drafts and Ulysses to show/hide the draft list really intuitive. iA Writer has CTRL CMD S; Obsidian has OPT CMD. Fair enough, but with the latter apps I have to pause momentarily and think about it every time.
And I know these shortcuts can generally be customised, but having to do that just adds to the stuff you’ve got to do before you can do the stuff. And at some point you’ll forget you’ve hacked this fudge or fudged this hack or whatever you’ve done to make it work how you want, and when it doesn’t do what you’re expecting on some new or strange machine, you’ll be scratching your head as to why.
Far better if it just works out of the box, rather than having to work to make it work, right? Right.
Then there are differences in text handling. In iA Writer and Obsidian, equals signs around text will highlight that text – a feature I use quite a lot. Drafts doesn’t have that, as far as I’m aware. Neither does wrapping text in tilde characters format it as strikethrough. There may be something I’m missing here; if that’s the case I’m sure someone will point it out. (Stop press: someone has created an iA Writer-style theme for Drafts that enables these features.)
My ultimate plain productivity tool
To help me work things out, I sat down with the ultimate – and to be perfectly honest my favourite – plain text productivity tool: my notebook. And in that notebook I made a list of features I want from an app.
This is what I came up with:
- Simple plain text
- Markdown optional – here again these apps handle this stuff in different ways; I’m not particularly bothered about seeing markdown, but there it is
- No subscription, or a relatively cheap subscription model
- A pleasant writing environment
- Cross-linking; a feature I don’t use too much outside my Zettelkasten, but a nice-to-have
As I looked at this list something was clear to me: iA Writer ticks every box. As well as offering all those attributes, iA Writer also allows me to publish easily to Medium and my website. And by adding my Obsidian vault to iA Writer’s library, everything is accessible in both apps.
Based on the evidence, iA Writer should be my go-to app – a space in which to write, focus and publish.
So, I thought to myself, write in iA Writer, use Drafts for capture, Obsidian for Kanban and reference, and The Archive for my Zettelkasten – but with those files still all available across most of those apps should I want to reference them.
And then you’ll never guess what happened!
The perfect app crept up on me.
And the winner is…!
I suddenly realised I’d written both this and the previous article in Drafts.
There were no issues, no friction; I just got on with the work and a piece of writing emerged. When I wanted to publish, I just copied and pasted into iA Writer for posting to Medium.
So, Drafts, huh?
I must admit this surprises me. I’ve loved iA Writer since its first release (I wish that textured background was still an option…). But with the setup I have in Drafts – the iA Writer Light theme coupled with Avenir font – the writing environment feels light and elegant.
Much as I find with Scrivener, Drafts just sort of disappears when I’m writing; I can pay it no greater compliment.
CMD 1 to show/hide the Drafts list is intuitive, as is CMD 2 to switch between workspaces and CMD 0 to show/hide the Actions list. Drafts also plays very nicely with Hookmark.
I really like the way a draft’s heading automatically updates in the Drafts list, without requiring any file renaming. The syncing is reliable and there are a wealth of options and actions available.
Sure, Drafts stores files in a database and there is a sub, but the sub is modest, particularly when compared with Ulysses. But I trust Drafts not to lose my data or lock me out somehow, there’s built in backup, and it’s good to support a lone developer.
So it would seem that, with its customisability, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, Actions and robust performance, Drafts is the place for me after all. And even though I’m not a programmer, I also quite relish the opportunity to create my own useful Actions.
I’m a writer, editor and YouTuber with 30 years’ experience across business, fiction, other non-fiction, scriptwriting and education.
Martin Sketchley 