I found the earliest seeds of “The Last Like” book in my notes back in 2021. In the five years since then I have written in all kinds of places. Now I'm writing in the Science Museum in London,where one of my kids is spending and extraordinary long amount of time on the various videos on display on medical treatments.Eventually, I decided to just write instead of scrolling on my phone, and so here we are.
Writing apps I found useful
I'm writing this now inUlysses. I have used all kinds of writing apps over the years: almost all sharemarkdown as the underlying structural language. IA Writer, Mweb, BBedit, Noteplan…I can't list them all. I don't like Word, or other editors that force me to click to create structure. Same reason why Scrivener probably never stuck with me.
Dictation was the real game-changer
I also dictate a lot. I spend hours cycling each week and I am almost always dictating thoughts or ideas for a new piece. I use Letterly and Voicenotes mostly for this.
AI has sped things up
Then I use AI for all kinds of tasks and inputs. I'll write about this in a separate post. For example, I gave the first draft of this post to Claude, and Claude automatically put in the links to the various apps I mentioned. Claude also identified a bunch of typos, some of which I fixed, and some I thought were OK to leave in. Claude also suggested to re-order the paragraphs, and to pull up the “museum story” but again, I think it’s better to leave as is. So my use of AI varies. Oh and now that I posted the first version of this post, I thought I’d want a sort of “reference” section below the post to list the apps mentioned here. Again, I just let Claude take care of that
Other apps I used
Other apps: I used Plottr and Aeon Timeline as well. I found them helpful but they didn’t dramatically change my writing process. They helped me “see” the structure though and that in and of itself was also helpful.
Dictation has made the biggest difference: it’s always there, taking in raw thoughts and ideas with almost zero friction. I was tempted to dictate this text but instead just wrote on my phone.
Now my kid is done with this floor and we’re off to another section. And I’m done here for now.
Tools mentioned
Writing
Dictation
Planning
Also mentioned
- Markdown, John Gruber's original description
- Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries, Science Museum, London