What is your most effective writing software?

Posted by Tomasz Raburski
Oct 27, 2025 at 11:46 PM

I’ve learned that I need different apps for different forms and stages of writing.

I love Scrivener, but it works only for longer forms (It’s too bloated for quick writing.) I’ve written two academic books in it, and it helped immensely: I could gather there small pieces of writing, notes, and comments, rearrange them, tag and label everything, and keep track of that complicated cloud of fragments. But it’s too much for smaller projects.

When I work on an article, I start with notes in Obsidian and an outline in Workflowy. When the idea ripens, I move everything to a separate project folder and finish it in Obsidian (earlier it was Zettlr).

Final editing is always done in MS Word.