HELP! My graceful, plain text ballet is an elephant in a tutu
I like simple, robust tools. That’s probably why I’m a plain text geek. I love the light, lean efficient nature of plain text.
Maybe I’m a bit old school. Perhaps it’s because I’m a child of the 1970s and still firmly believe that no app will make you a better writer.
If I could effectively work on a typewriter, I would – I’ve got five of the things, after all.
But, Houston, I have a problem.
I’ve been all around the houses with plain text. If there’s an app or an article, I’ve read it.
I’ve got Drafts, iA Writer, Obsidian, TaskPaper, The Archive, Ulysses, Hookmark…
Yet my whole process, which I long to be an efficient and streamlined ballet of linking between files, with all the lightness, grace and poise plain text can offer – well, frankly, it feels like an elephant in a tutu.
And I’m the idiot doing the choreography.
I let my Ulysses sub expire a while ago. It’s a beautiful, impressive app. It does lots of things. I’ve written enthusiastically about it before.
I was this close to renewing the sub this week. But two things put me off.
So many distractions. I’ve recognised that I am a person who is easily distracted, so lots of things to tweak in an app – fonts, themes, markdown colours, etc. – is not good for me.
And Ulysses tugs at my tweaking tendencies.
I was nonetheless tempted by Ulysses’ beauty. It is a very slick app indeed. But when I discovered Ulysses doesn’t support Hookmark, it was a frustrated “nah” from me. I want to be able to easily link to things outside Ulysses.
(I have to admit that looking at Ulysses now in the course of writing this, its aesthetics are a strong point, and I am again tempted… more on that later.)
Instead, I renewed my Drafts Pro subscription. Not only is this cheaper than Ulysses’ sub, I find I have less of a tendency to tweak in Drafts, and a greater propensity to just get on with it.
I also like the fact that, like Drafts, Ulysses is Apple-native; Obsidian, meanwhile, is an electron app. Not that this matters, perhaps.
I’ve flirted with Obsidian plenty. We’ve had a bit of a thing, gone our separate ways and got back together a few times now.
I can see why Obsidian is so popular. And I do think it’s an app that can work really well for you if you’ve got some kind of coding background or you’re really into faffing around with plugins.
Just take a look at any Obsidian video on YouTube and nine times out of ten it’s someone who would know all about the “back end”, and scripting, and all that hand-waving voodoo.
To be honest, I really haven’t got the time or inclination to be arsed with all that stuff. For me, creating an Action is Drafts is challenging enough.
I see that Obsidian is effective and lean and efficient and doesn’t use a database – all that jazz. But there’s just something that feels a little clunky and Heath Robinson about the whole thing. Perhaps that is due to its Electron nature.
I recognise Obsidian’s value and the possibilities it offers. At the moment the main thing I use it for is the kanban plugin, which enables me to see what stage my little YouTube projects are at.
But… But… But… Something about Obsidian just jars me in a way Apple-native apps don’t.
So I find myself in a bit of an overthinking quandary.
Dear, reader, what do I do?
Drafts is a bit like Obsidian with its Actions, and a bit like Ulysses in that it’s possible to tweak the fonts and themes to your personal preference.
And although all these options and possibilities can be intimidating – and also exciting and intriguing – Drafts seems to present them in a more accessible way than Obsidian.
(Looking at Ulysses again now, it’s very easy to export text. It’s very attractive. And I’ve just discovered it is possible to link to Ulysses with Hookmark…
The links don’t look great in TaskPaper, but they look just fine in Obsidian. Oh my word… (Further update, clicking links to Ulysses files in Obsidian seems to create a copy of the file in Ulysses – what the?)
I also have Taskpaper, which I find really useful. I like the ability to fold under headings. Taskpaper’s great for checklists.
I’ve added my Obsidian folder to my iA Writer library, so any files are accessible in both.
Do I write in Obsidian, or in iA Writer? What’s the difference? Is there a difference?
You’ll see how I’m getting myself in knots here…
My TaskPaper folder is also accessible in iA Writer, because then I can also get to these things easily on my phone. Although I never do that.
(A note on iA Writer here. I’ve loved and used this app since its first release. But it has some weirdness, the most notable of which for me is the need to add two spaces or a \ character at the end of a line to force a new line break. I mean, what? Why? No other plain text app I know of has this requirement!)
I’ve pointed The Archive to my Zettelkasten folder in Obsidian, because I think The Archive is a better app for that kind of work – but I still want the files to be accessible in Obsidian. And iA Writer. (And on my phone, just in case…)
Pretty much everything is accessible from everywhere.
Apart from stuff that’s in Drafts, which is where I’m writing this. Because like Ulysses, Drafts stores files in a database; I’m not overly keen on this, but I trust the app.
So what do I do here?
- Write a draft in Drafts then send it to Obsidian? Or just archive it here?
- Make some notes in Drafts then do the actual writing in Obsidian?
- For my projects, do I have a todo template in TaskPaper and link to the TaskPaper file for each project from Obsidian, using Hookmark?
- Or from Drafts?
- Do I make notes in Drafts, todos in TaskPaper, the file in Obsidian and write in iA Writer?
- Give Ulysses another go?
🤦♂️ 🤷♂️ 😣
I wrote this in Drafts. It felt fine. Effective, efficient, no distractions. Then I copied it to iA Writer for publication.
Does this text need to go anywhere else?
Does it need to be accessible anywhere else?
Maybe not.
Perhaps this is all overthinking on my part.
Maybe I should just write stuff in Drafts then archive it.
And send a copy to Obsidian.
Or just send a copy to Obsidian.
It’s possible I may be overthinking all of this.
Overthinking is a thing I do.
What do you suggest?
I’m a writer, editor and YouTuber with 30 years’ experience across business, fiction, other non-fiction, scriptwriting and education.
Martin Sketchley 
Just about describes my own plain text wanderings. Like you, I am constantly tempted back to Ulysses but am not at all sure I like the complications. iA Writer is frustrating, close to ideal but sometimes just goes weird–the latest for me is it won’t scroll reliably, so I find myself writing and can’t see what. Then suddenly it will lurch forward, and later refuse to scroll again. Drafts just works.
Hi Graham – thanks for the comment. At the moment I’m using a combination of paper, Drafts, Apple Notes and Scrivener. Plain text seems to lie at the heart of my frustrations – so maybe it’s time to leave it behind to some degree, sticking with Drafts and The Archive. Obsidian I find just too awkward, despite its many devotees.
Thank you Martin. I had not come across the The Archive before so I have downloaded it. I am not really sure how it differs from (say) NVAlt, so any recommendations where to look for more information would be helpful. I love Drafts, but need to read from my notes when speaking, so that’s where iA Writer’s preview mode is helpful. But I can write in Drafts and just copy and paste into iA Writer for that.
I watched your YouTube video on Morning Notes, by the way, and I am going to give that a try. Subscribed while I was at it.
Hi Graham. The Archive is based on nvAlt, I think. But it is specifically designed for Zettelkasten.
I did the same for my YouTube videos: write in Drafts then copy across to iA Writer for prompts while on camera; but last week iCloud refused to sync iA Writer from Mac to iPad, whereas Apple Notes worked without a hitch. So now I use that.
Thanks for subscribing! Comments on the videos welcome.
Also of interest is that your comments come on the same day that someone took the trouble to email me to say they were “insulted” by the same article, stating that I “dither” and “do nothing” 😆 Gotta love the internet…
I definitely recommend you ignore them! First thing is your article read as a ‘real use case’ and that is very helpful and very different from the ‘I am on YouTube and I have the answers’ mode that some people are in. Second thing it’s your style in the article and the first video I watched that led me to subscribe immediately. Stay with it!