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Do Writing Tools Matter? Yes & No. · The Daily Writer

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Daily Writer, where we share a lesson each day to help you cultivate the habits for writing success.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you get heavily involved in the writing community, you have to be kind of careful sometimes.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why is that?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because there's a whole sub-industry devoted to writing tools that supposedly help you be more productive and creative.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, are many of these helpful?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, of course they are.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: For example, I swear by the writing app Scrivener, I write almost everything in Scrivener and can't imagine doing my writing without it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm reading from Scrivener right now because this is where I write my podcast material.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Scrivener is an amazing tool to help you organize your material, especially for bigger projects.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Google Docs, eh, not so much.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I personally find Google Docs to be clunky and slow and doesn't have many features, and it's kind of hard to quickly access material in Google Docs if you have a lot of different pieces of information tied to a project.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just my opinion, of course.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: My opinion and$1.50 will get you a drink from a vending machine.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: You have to do what works for you.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to not get too obsessed with specific writing tools.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: The only measure you should use to determine whether a tool or app is good is whether it helps you get your writing done easier, faster, or more enjoyably.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: John Steinbeck once said, pencils must be round.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: A hexagonal pencil cuts my fingers after a long day.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was true for him, but it may not have been true for every writer.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was just his opinion after all.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: The point is to figure out what helps you, then to get busy writing, not obsessing over all the tools everybody else is using.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So don't get paralyzed by indecision.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Just pick something and start writing.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Focus on the work and don't get too hung up on what tools everybody else is using.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here's your daily question Are you focusing on doing the work instead of overanalyzing which writing tools to use?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: For more, you can visit us at dailywriterlife.com.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, and I'll see you tomorrow.