The writing tools I use as an author

Lilac Mills
5 days ago
4 min read

Blue text says The tools I use to write my novels above an open book, ink bottle, and quill on a pink watercolor background.

I prefer writing my stories by hand. That's how I began, way back in 2001 when owning my own computer was a distant dream and smartphones didn’t exist. I used the old-fashioned method – pen and paper. I didn’t use a fancy notebook, either. Just a cheap A4 pad and a basic biro. I did progress to prettier notebooks eventually, but sometimes those notebooks were simply too nice to write in – if you know what I mean!

Close-up of a hand writing in a spiral notebook with a black pen.

Writing by hand enables me to cross out or amend scenes that don’t work, adding ones that needed to be added, and generally making sure the character arcs, the romance arc and the plot lines are as I want them before I transcribed my scruffy scribbles into a Word document. And yes, I do use Word because that’s what I know and that’s what's commonly used by publishing industry professionals. Anyway, when I first began writing, I’m not sure things like Scrivener existed. I have tried it though, along with Plottr and other assorted software, but I always came back to Word.

Writing 75-80k words by hand and then typing them up is time-consuming, even with the bonus of being able to edit as I go along, and even if I do end up a fairly well-polished manuscript by the time I’m done. As time went on, I progressed from writing by hand becuase I was under the impression that the way to write a novel was to write it on a computer. That I was doing it 'wrong' by writing it by hand. So I began typing directly into a Word document on my laptop (I use a desktop these days).

Home office desk with monitor, keyboard and mouse, papers, corkboard, and a white chair with a purple cushion.

Let me tell you, it took a while to get used to! However, I did manage it eventually and it speeded up my writing process no end. But it still didn’t feel right. I missed the connection between my thoughts and my pen, so when I discovered I could use a stylus (an Apple pencil) with an iPad, and that there was an app which could transcribe handwriting to text, I leapt at it.

It kind of worked. However, I had two issues with it: the first was that even with a ‘paper’ overlay on the screen, writing with the Apple pencil felt like writing on glass, and I wasn’t keen. The second was that the app I was using (MyNebo) had difficulty ‘reading’ my scrawly handwriting, which meant I spent a lot of time tidying it up – or trying to work out what I’d actually written i njthe first place, because the app didn’t keep a record of the handwritten text once it had been converted to text.

Next I tried dictation. That’s a whole different process and one I struggled with for a while. I trialled a couple of different dictation programmes and software, none of which impressed me and none which I wanted to spend the money on. So, I doggedly kept dictating directly into a Word document, which once again needed a lot of attention before it became something I could use. I don’t think it was keen on my Welsh accent!

Then I discovered a handwriting tablet called a ReMarkable – and no, this isn’t an advert for it and neither do I receive any compensation for talking about it. I’m simply mentioning it here because I found something that works for me.

Let me expand a bit on this gadget to explain why I love it so much. I am the Queen of Procrastination, and lately I seem to be moving up the ranks. Give it a few more months and I'll be an Empress. I love writing. I adore crafting stories and creating characters, and I particularly love it when I write the final sentence of a manuscript. So, why do I procrastinate so much?

ReMarkable tablet with stylus showing handwritten 'I love my reMarkable!' on a white screen.

I have no idea, but what I can tell you is that I’m easily distracted by new shiny things. And by the internet. If I’m sitting at my desk in front of a computer, there’s a 50:50 chance I won’t be working on the novel I'm supposed to be working on, but I'll be designing a cover for a book I haven’t even thought of a title for yet, and probably won’t begin writing for a year or so. Or I'll be fiddling with my website when there is no need. In fact, I’ll do anything to avoid knuckling down to write!

This is where the ReMarkable comes in. I’d been eyeing it up for a couple of years, shillyshallying about whether to take the plunge and buy one. Finally, after a whole week of messing around when I should have been getting stuck into a manuscript with a looming deadline, I bought one. First of all, let me say that I wouldn’t have coughed up for it (it’s not cheap) if it wasn’t for ReMarkable’s generous returns policy. If I didn’t like it I could return it within fifty days for a full refund.

Reader, I loved it!

As well as being able to convert my bad handwriting into remarkably (see what I did there!) legible text, I was able to easily copy and paste this text into a Word doc and carry on from there. Yes, I still need to tidy it up, but not nearly as much as with the other methods I’ve mentioned. I get to write by hand, with the benefit of not having to type the whole thing up afterwards.

So, my main writing tool is my ReMarkable 2 for my first draft. There’s a ReMarkable Pro, but I’m not keen on the stylus because of the ‘writing on glass’ feel – and there is another version that has recently been released, but I have no idea how that compares. I also use Word on my computer, and I sometimes dictate into my mobile phone (again into Word), depending on my mood and how a scene is progressing.

But handwriting works best for me, and I suspect it always will. Just not in those gorgeous notebooks that I buy, because they’re to look at, not to use!