A former TechCrunch writer's favorite writing apps 📝✨

GV Partner and former TechCrunch writer M.G. Siegler is a man of few words, except when writing. Today he shares his favorite writing apps for the iPad, iPhone, and Mac, and writing habits he has developed.

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Back in my (full time) writing days, I was perhaps atypical. I would basically never write a draft of anything. Instead, I would write and publish immediately. It was all about speed, speed, speed. These days, I’m a lot different. I wait. And wait. And wait.

I find myself increasingly using drafts, even beyond simply for long-form writing. Twitter. Instagram. Basically anything that will let you save a post to come back to later. A large part of this has to do with having a day job beyond writing and simply not having the time to devote. But the part I’ve grown to respect is actually getting something down and then revisiting it later with a “different” set of eyes.

These are the apps I use for writing:

For taking notes on the go, I generally use Bear. I love the design and simplicity of the app mixed with the ever-growing functionality. I do use Apple’s built-in Notes app for a few other things, mainly because there’s now a super quick short-cut to get to the app via Control Center in iOS 11 (not to mention the Apple Pencil shortcut for the iPad Pro).

When it comes time to sit down and write, I’ve been switching between Ulysses and iA Writer. Each has different pluses and minuses  — Ulysses has many more features (and is a paid product), but recently I’ve got back to liking the more spartan look-and-feel of iA. I also like Byword, which is more similar to iA, and is featured on Product Hunt today. 😉

When it comes time to actually publish, Ulysses, iA, and Byword all work with Medium via an API to publish directly to that service in draft form. I’ll usually do any last edits there. I’ll also write directly in Medium’s very nice, simple editor if I’m replying to responses or writing shorter things. I’ve never actually lost a draft using Medium’s editor, but old habits die hard — I’ve lost too many in the ether of the CMSes of yesteryear :)

One more thing: If you're the kind of writer that lives life on the edge, give The Most Dangerous Writing App a chance.