Today’s author wasn’t able to make it so I’m taking advantage of the opening to bring up writer apps and ask the question… what’s good, what’s bad and what’s ugly?
I’ve been struggling to carve out time for writing lately and I’ve been toying with the idea of making it more portable to take advantage of stolen moments. My phone, as much as I love it, turns out to be perfect for notes and the odd poem but not for long term projects.
I’ve gotten my hands on an iPad so I’m going to try that out to see if that doesn’t boost my productivity. Unfortunately Scrivener isn’t available as an app yet (what the heck?!?) so I find myself trolling for what’s good.
Here’s my top three favorite apps I’ve found so far. If you have any experience with any of them, please share and suggest others you’ve heard of.
Editorial: Editorial is a plain text editor for iPad and iPhone with powerful automation tools and a beautiful inline preview for writing Markdown.
Writer Pro: Writer Pro is a professional writing suite that introduces syntax analysis and a simple workflow. Syntax Control™ scans English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish text, and highlights your adjectives, nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, or conjunctions. On iPhone and iPad, Syntax Control currently works for English text only.
ByWord: Byword is designed to make writing more enjoyable with Markdown. All the tools you need to write effectively, with keyboard shortcuts, word counters with live update, and more. Sync ll your documents, on all your devices. With iCloud and Dropbox, you can create documents in Byword on your Mac and access them on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. And vice versa. You can edit them from anywhere, on any device you use. Byword includes the most complete Markdown support. Preview your documents in app, then export to HTML, PDF, rich text, or publish directly to the most popular web platforms.
Here’s what other blogs have to say on the subject:
The Top 10 Apps for Writers – Huffington Post
The Best Apps for Any Kind of Writing – Lifehacker
8 Apps Every Writer and Blogger Should Know – Mashable
10 Apps to Help You Stay Focused on Your Writing – Jane Friedman
