Emacs
Emacs is a programmable text editor, which I use to do my writing. I also use it to browse the web, listen to music, check email, chat, and anything else I possibly can. I’m even writing this post in Emacs.
For writing, I use a version of Emacs Org mode, which gives me easy markup, lets me export my writing to HTML, PDF, or just about any other format under the sun. I could use markdown and pandoc, but right now, I’m sticking with Org mode, since it’s easier for me to extend it.
I’ve written a bunch of packages for Emacs (and published almost none of them) that help me with my writing. The biggest one is writing-mode. For each file type (.txt, .cpp, etc.), Emacs has a “major mode” that handles syntax highlighting, indentation, etc. Writing mode lets me keep the vast features of Org mode separate from my writing, since I don’t need even 1/10 of them.
My fiction writing setup involves a different file for each chapter, and a planning file for the entire series. The planning file is in Org mode, which lets me break each book into a separate heading, and each chapter into a subheading. I have functions in my writing mode that lets me pull up the plan for a chapter alongside the chapter as I’m writing.
I also have a counter in Emacs’s “mode-line” that tracks how many words are in the current chapter. This counter is red until the count hits my minimum word count of 4500 5000 4000.
A few general odds and ends that Emacs gives me are auto-capitalization, which automatically capitalizes the first letter of a sentence; auto-correct driven by spellcheck; abbreviations for character names (e.g. pd expands to Professor Dumbledore, hg expands to Hermione, r expands to Rose); dictionary completion; grammar tools (languagetool) and prose checkers (proselint).
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