In keeping with the two project theme this week, I’ll cover both bases for what I’ll be attempting to accomplish while on the road.
The first project, the writing, is actually pretty simple for me while traveling. I do most of my creative writing within Ulysses. It has just enough organization to keep my various writing projects in some semblance of order. But it’s minimalistic enough to stay out of my way and just let me get to the writing.
For me, this is a huge plus. I’m a big settings guy. I’ll waste away days just tweaking settings instead of actually buckling down and doing the work. (Incidentally, this was one of the reasons why I decided to give Micro.blog a whirl. I had been using WordPress for years, but I would always get completely sidetracked by playing with settings every time I wanted to just sit down and write something. Micro.blog does not get in my way like that.)
Ulysses is great for me, also, because everything just syncs in the background, regardless of the device I’m using. So I can just work on my tablet, or even my phone, and know that the work will be synced to my laptop without issue. So I’ll be doing my drafting in Ulysses.
I will be trying to use iA Writer as well when it comes time to actually convert my story into a script. I’ve never used iA Writer’s screenwriting features, but I do believe it actually has them. That’s something I’ll be testing out this week. Worst case scenario, I’ll just follow the script guidelines and draft it by hand. But I’m hoping iA Writer fits the need here.
For the other project, though, the blogging on the road, this will involve some experimentation. As I’ve mentioned before, I use MarsEdit to do all my blog post writing. I don’t bother with drafting in Ulysses first, although I certainly could. (Really, I love Ulysses!) Since I’m posting every day, I wanted something that felt separate, something dedicated specifically to the task. And MarsEdit has been doing the job perfectly for me. I just open up a new post, type away until I like what I see, and hit the very satisfying “Send to Blog” button. Done and done.
But there is no MarsEdit for mobile. Le sigh. So what can I use? I post my daily entries on two separate websites, one using Micro.blog and one using WordPress. (I’m doing this for reasons. Maybe someday, someday soon even, I’ll stop and just pick one. But for now I’m testing to see what I like and what I don’t.) I very much don’t relish the idea of writing up my entries in the dedicated Micro.blog and WordPress apps, though. I’ve been burned in the past with WordPress specifically, having been putting the finishing touches on a long piece only to have the app crash and everything lost. I’m sure the app is better now, but trust is hard won and easily lost.
So what do I want, then? What is the goal? Really, I want MarsEdit on mobile. But since that doesn’t exist this week, I want as close as I can get to that. So I’ll be spending this week playing around with the various writing apps I already have on my phone and tablet, examining each to see what they may offer in the realm of publishing blog posts. My hope is that, by the end of the week, I’ll have found a nice solution that will allow me to write and post all from within a single app.
To give myself some guard rails, I’ll attempt for now to stick just to evaluating the apps I already have installed. Embarrassingly, that doesn’t narrow the field greatly. I’m looking at my phone right now and I have the following:
– Ulysses (because I love it)
– Drafts (another daily go-to for which I continue to find new uses)
– Scrivener
– Bear
– Ulysses (yes, somehow I have two versions of it installed, because I love it and I’ve never bothered to try and figure out why there are two of them)
– iA Writer
– Byword
– MacJournal (this has burned me before, too, though, and it’s not even in the iOS App Store anymore)
– WordPress (though I never actually write in this)
– Micro.blog (I do replies in this, but never posts)
Yeah, that list is too long. We’re not going to talk about the number of apps I have on my phone. But that’s the list. I’ll be playing around with each of them to see if I can get any of them to do the job the way I want it done.
The goal will be to find, ideally, one single app that will let me draft a post, do any necessary edits, add any applicable tags, set the title, and post to two different blogs. Bonus points if it can also handle images. And double bonus if it syncs and allows me to edit previously published posts (though that is not a must have, more a want than a need).
As always, I’m open to any suggestions. If you’ve already worked this problem and know how to make it work with any of the apps I’ve listed here, please reach out and let me know! And if you use a different app that does the job marvelously, I’m always looking for an excuse to try something new and shiny.