Having my own PC was a game changer, AND I had access to a printer because I lived with an older sister at the time and she’s a teacher. I didn’t print nearly as much but now that I had my own computer, I didn’t feel like I needed to. I saved the ink for manuscripts until I got my own printer and then used it so liberally that I was effectively wasting paper because of the excitement of being able to print. There’s a good chance I no longer possess 80% of those notes. I still have one or two of the OG manuscripts but dumped everything else in my bid to reduce the amount of paperwork I’m hoarding.

I try to keep a balance of digital notes on the computer and have notebooks for physical notes where I either write on the go or try to cross-“platform” my notes in hopes that it’ll help my brain. As much as my writing exists in the digital world, my brain operates much better when I have a physical copy of something. That’s why I still print my worksheets. I just try to either print them smaller or make sure that I’m using them as scrap later on and they’re not just going straight to recycling after the one use.

I’ve moved away from Microsoft Office in the last year but before then was still using Scrivener for larger projects. Now, I use Scrivener and 4theWords for majority of my writing. Backing up the writing and sometimes making LibreOffice files (I switched from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice so open/create word documents as Writer documents now).

I love Scrivener. I’m definitely not using it to it’s full potential but have been using it for all of my major projects in the recent years, getting better and better at understanding the software as a writing workspace.

I still take notes. I love Japanese notebooks (specifically I love flat spines that allow the book to be laid out flat) and so have a tonne of those that I use for physical project books. I have a bunch of other exercise books as well because I love to hoard stationary for the sake of a “future project that I might need them for” (I’ve had my current stash for almost eight years …).

I’ve tried my hand at Obsidian as well but my primary places for writing are Scrivener and 4theWords. My 4theWords has no grammar/spell checking and Scrivener doesn’t catch grammar very well so it keeps me on my toes during editing. WordPress also doesn’t seem to have a working spellchecker anymore so I apologise if errors slip past my eyes. I will say I do miss that from Grammarly and Microsoft Word but they have both moved in a direction opposite to where I’m moving and staying. I’ve never completely relied on Word for catching all of the edits and so it’s not as bad as I thought it might be, but my eyesight is worsening over the years and the digital words often blend together, shielding typos from my backspace.

In terms of motivation, I use the productivity game Spirit City. I think it’s a combination of the body-doubling and the pomodoro in there that helps me. I also have a better understanding on what my “mood setters” are. Of course, some days nothing really helps, but we all have those. If we nailed a perfect routine and had the perfect tools, we’d be too powerful, I suppose.

I use Notion to track some bits and bobs outside but almost all of my writing happens in Scrivener, 4theWords or notebooks. I’ve tried ClickUp as well as a way of sorting and managing my work and projects but more and more began getting put behind paywalls and it’s very easy for the free storage do get gobbled up. Notion isn’t as easy to structure and so far I haven’t figured out any real calendar/scheduling system (I’m running with 0 plugins), but so far the most annoying thing is really just the AI push from it, which seems to be everywhere anyway and was definitely in ClickUp. If I had the flexibility of creating pages in Obsidian like I do in Notion, I’d probably switch back.