Writing with Tools
I have always wanted to write more. Every time I get the itch to write something substantial, there is a pattern that plays out. The first thing I do is think “I need to find a great app to write in†and get totally sidelined by downloading and trying out writing apps.
This makes no sense, of course. I know most of what I read is written in BBEdit, Scrivener, or Microsoft word, and that it doesn’t matter. It’s all text, and all a writing app needs to do, most of the time, is make sure the keys you press on the keyboard show up as words on the screen.
But, as I am typing this in Editorial on the iPad, I am looking for a word count and not seeing one. Now I am distracted. It also doesn’t support iPad multitasking. That’s no good. Hmm, what else do I have.
So, now I am in Byword, which supports multitasking and which has an on-screen word count indicator, although it takes up a lot of space. Must resist.
The next challenge is how do I get text from Byword onto my blog. It would be nice if I could use a WordPress extension. Let’s see if that works.
Nope, although I could post directly to Tumblr if I wanted to. Maybe this is why people rave about the Workflow app. Back in a minute.
Playing with Workflow. Hang on.
Ok I think I have a workflow that will let me post this, and Workflow is cool, but it seems that if I want to edit this post later that would be a whole different process. Still, if this makes it to the blog then at least my tool indulgence has resulted in some output.
Nope, when I tried to run the workflow, I got a cryptic “unsupported URL†alert.
But I see Byword has direct support for publishing to WordPress. Let’s try that.
Does anyone else find the tools this distracting?
I published this in Byword, but I don't see how I can update a post in Byword, so here I am I the WordPress app updating this post.