In the words of comedian and game director Brennan Lee Mulligan, who goes by George RR Martin: “Have you ever tried writing? “It is the saddest, most difficult and worst thing in the world.” As much as I like his comedic chops, Mulligan is wrong about this: I always find writing to be wonderful and terrible in equal measure, whether I'm writing something about a tech company's latest mishap or working on my personal projects. .
However, this year brought me a private victory of sorts: I finished the first draft of the novel I've been working on for over three years. At around 110,000 words, it's become something of an epic, which means I'm now entering into a pretty ruthless editing phase. Let me tell you: editing your own work that way? Now that is worse than writing.
As a writer (of almost any variety) today, the two easiest options are Microsoft Word and Google Docs. The latter is a bit lighter than Microsoft's Office suite (along with Sheets and Slides, knockoffs of Microsoft's Excel and PowerPoint), but at the end of the day, they do the same job: you can write words on virtual paper. I'm not here to talk about Word; I only used Docs because it's free, and a mishap with OneDrive many years ago in which countless unfinished projects were deleted from the cloud has left me a little wary of Microsoft's offerings.
Of course, there are more specialized applications when it comes to writing long-form creative pieces. If you're in the business of writing novels, you've no doubt encountered the likes of Scrivener, Atticus, and Dabble. Virtually all of these apps are paid, whether it's a one-time purchase or a monthly subscription.
I paid for Scrivener several years ago, hoping it would give me the boost I needed to start (and complete) a new novel. It's a powerful tool, packed with useful features geared specifically toward novel writing. If Google Docs is missing something, it is this: a proper function for organizing chapters is very useful, even leaving aside the rest of the functions it offers.
However, the problem I had with Scrivener is that it almost offers also a lot. The app includes a comprehensive research tool, which some users may like, but I'm perfectly comfortable opening a new browser tab and doing research without help. The Scrivener website notes that “the main caveat to using Scrivener is that you have to put in the effort to learn it,” and while I've never shied away from learning how to use new software, the numerous online courses to teach you how to use this particular application are nothing more than How discouraging. Even once I felt like I had it down, Scrivener just felt… cluttered.
What's wrong, doctor?
Google Docs, on the other hand, is beautiful for its simplicity. I'm the type of person who wants minimal distractions when writing; I usually don't even listen to music and try to avoid checking my phone or leaving the document page. Docs allows me to eliminate a good chunk of the entire interface with a quick keyboard shortcut, giving me nothing more than what I need.
So while I won't judge anyone who uses a more complex tool to shape their creative writing projects, I'm sticking with Google from now on. As the old saying goes: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.