My Favorite Writing Tools 1: Notebooks, Pens, Note-Taking Software, and Writing Software

Other writers procrastinate by binge-watching Netflix or reorganizing the contents of their hard drives or scrolling Twitter for 6.5 hours. I procrastinate by playing with new productivity tools (and scrolling Twitter for 6.5 hours and occasionally binge-watching Lucifer and… wait, where was I? Oh, yeah, productivity.) I geek out on notebooks, writing software, pens… basically anything that lets me feel like I’m doing something writing-related when I’m actually farting around.

But when I’m not farting around, I do appreciate having a solid suite of tools to help me organize the jumbled mess that spews out of my brain in search of a place to splat. I’ve tried a bunch (see: farting around), and I’ve found a few that work well for me.

Analog Notes – and My Favorite Pen

LEUCHTTURM1917 Notebook

A few years ago, I went to a presentation on bullet journaling at a library conference and decided to try it. I messed around with a few different notebooks before finding the LEUCHTTURM1917 Classic dotted A5. It’s probably the most popular and best-known notebook for bullet journaling, and even though I don’t bullet journal anymore, I still love my LEUCHTTURM. I use it to journal and freewrite, to brainstorm ideas, jot down key points from books I’m reading, copy down quotations I like or find motivating… basically, I use it to capture whatever interesting stuff grabs my attention. Also, because I have the maturity of a 12-year-old, I put stickers in it. I buy stickers when I travel (my favorites are from from national park gift shops) and paste in all my I Voted and I Gave Blood stickers. I even have my I’m Vaccinated stickers in there. Those’ll be interesting to look back on in a decade or two. But I digress.

Back to writing. I love having a lovely notebook with smooth, thick paper for brainstorming and freewriting. Using it helps me get unstuck, and it feels so genteel and literary.

Pocket notebook

I love my LEUCHTTURM, but it’s a little bulky to carry with me all the time, so I also keep a tiny notebook or notepad in my purse for jotting down ideas that come to me when I’m out and about. Why not use my phone? I do, but I’m slow typing on my phone, autocorrect is my sworn enemy, and I hate speech-to-text. I’d rather scribble my brilliant plot twist on the back of a CVS receipt than fight with my phone (and really, you could write half a novel on a CVS receipt–or use it as a jump rope. But I digress.)

I don’t have a favorite purse notebook. I usually use one I’ve picked up free at a library conference or some other event. The nicest one I’ve ever used was a Moleskin (like this one) that I got from a vendor rep years ago. LEUCHTTURM also makes a pocket-sized notebook. I might have to treat myself to one of those.

Digital Notes

Evernote

Despite my grumbling about autocorrect and typing on my phone, I do jot short notes on my phone, usually when I’m outside exercising and don’t have a notebook handy. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll use the built-in notes app, but Evernote is a better choice.

Evernote stores your notes in the cloud and has all kinds of cool features like notebooks and tagging and capturing content from the web. I have a notebook stack called, “Writing,” with notebooks for each of my novels in progress as well as a notebook called, “Ideas,” that’s pretty self-explanatory. The best thing about Evernote is that it makes my notes accessible via all of my devices as well as via the web. You can get a phone app (Android or iOS) as well as a desktop app for your computer. Basic access is free. A premium plan ($7.99/mo) gives you more monthly uploads and bigger notes, lets you sync unlimited devices, access your notes offline, and more.

Evernote is worthy of its own post, which I might or might not get around to writing, but in case I don’t, check out these excellent posts on how writers can use Evernote:

• An Evernote Guide for Writers: 5 Ways to Use it for All Your Projects – The Write Life
• A Novel Strategy: How to Organize Big Writing Projects – Evernote blog
• How Great Writers use Evernote: Best-selling Author Jeff Goins – Evernote blog
• I Wrote a Novel Entirely in Evernote. Here’s How. – Evernote blog

The last post listed above shows you how to use Evernote in a way somewhat similar to how Scrivener works. Not coincidentally, that’s the next tool we’ll talk about.

Writing Software

Scrivener

If, like me, you’re older than dirt, you may remember being taught to use notecards for writing term papers. You’d make your mom buy you a pack of index cards, and you’d use them to take notes on whatever boring topic you were assigned to write about (don’t get me started on the history paper I wrote on the Russian Revolution. Zzzzzzz.) Then you’d shuffle the cards around until your notes were in some kind of order and use them to start writing. Scrivener lets you do something similar–only with a lot more text and features.

Writers seem to fall into 2 camps with respect to Scrivener–they try it and love it, or they try it and completely don’t get it and go back to using Word/a paper notebook/a stone tablet. Since I’m including Scrivener in my list of writer tools, you probably guessed I’m in the first group. Scrivener lets me manage scenes, chapters, research notes, character sketches, revision notes, versions, and more–all with one tool. I can keep everything I need for a project in one big Scrivener file. I can also move scenes and chapters around easily and configure the compile feature to spit out my ramblings in a bunch of different formats, from Word to PDF to ebook.

The one big downside of Scrivener is that it’s complicated. Like, 2-hour tutorial complicated. I’ve been using it for 6 years, and I still haven’t tried all the features. But I still find it indispensable.

How about y’all? Whether or not you write, what do you use to organize all the information that enters your orbit?