Two things made me want to write about my writing setup today, the fact that my Craft trial is ending today, and also the theme for the blogging challenge warmup week.
Before I go too deep into my thoughts around Craft, I’ll go over my current setup, and how I write.
As for devices, I write either on my MacBook Pro or my iPad Pro. My preference is the iPad, but the only keyboard I use is my mechanical keyboard, and that requires me to be sitting at my desk in my office. So that’s why I’m still split across two devices. And also why I’m desperately waiting for Apple’s next event, because I’ll hopefully be ordering a new iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard.
Regarding the apps, this has been slowly getting simpler, with my writing happening in either Craft or iA Writer (more on that in a moment). I use my own app Text Case to handle various text transformations, and also a custom app I built for myself to expose the Ghost API to a few Shortcuts to enable me to publish from any app.
When I publish my writing, this is done via my Ghost blog which handles my blog and my monthly newsletter. Occasionally I also add a featured image to a post, and these either come from myself or from the integration with Unsplash. I’m also starting to use Micro.blog again, so I might have to start thinking about that within the context of writing apps soon. But for now I’m using Gluon and the website for my Micro.blog reading and writing.
Now to explain the two apps. For quite some time I’ve been using iA Writer as my writing app, but a few weeks ago I decided to give Craft a go. I’d already been using Craft for general notes and research, but I experimented with using it as a blogging tool.
Now my free trial of Craft is a day away from expiring, and I needed top make the decision whether I wanted to continue with it, and pay the £44.99 a year subscription fee. While I’ve been happy with Craft, there are some flaws. So it’s probably best for me to stop now, and see what other options are available before locking in the year subscription.
As for writing for my blog, I’m thinking about checking out 1Writer, Werdsmith, and possibly Drafts. But I’m still undecided what other app will be the new home for my personal notes and research material. If you have any recommendations, then I’d love to hear them.
This post is part of the warmup week for the March Blogging Challenge, the theme today is Setup.