software review – Fluid Imagination

The community manager Craft, one of the apps I use, found out I use it for managing D&D campaigns and asked if he could write a story on my process. About a month ago, we had a video chat, where I surprised him by telling him that I use D&D in the classroom, and we spent the next half hour or so focusing on that experience.

Today, he posted the story that came from our conversation.

Innovation often emerges from the unlikeliest of sources. Kyle Callahan, an educator in the US, found his inspiration in the legendary tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). While most associate D&D with fantastical adventures and epic battles, Kyle has turned it into a tool for enhancing classroom experiences.
– Using Dungeons & Dragons to transform the lives of kids (with a little help from Craft)

Back in December, I mentioned I really needed to write a review of Craft. With their recognition of my work now online, it seems like a good time to write that review. And so…

I first downloaded Craft as a note-taking app after it won the Mac App of the Year in 2021. I’ve tried a bajillion different note-taking apps over the years, but none of them ever fit seamlessly into my workflow, and, more importantly, most of them were aesthetically displeasing.

My dad bought our family our first Mac (on my insistence) in the early 90s, an all-in-one Mac Performa, and I’ve been happily locked into the Mac universe ever since. As a teenager, I read the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (1990s version) for fun, even though I didn’t know a lick of code and wasn’t planning on learning any. I was there for the transition to the PowerPC, the return of Steve Jobs, and the introduction of the iMac, iBook, and iTools. I helped beta-test the horrendously buggy first versions of Mac OS X, bought the first version of the iPod, weathered the transition to Intel processors, derided the first iPhone as just an expensive iPod but changed my mind when Steve Jobs changed his and allowed third-party developers to build software for it with the introduction of the App Store in iPhone 3G. I’m writing this on a MacBook Pro while wearing my Apple Watch and listening to Apple Music through my AirPods. If I were a rich man, I’d be counting the days until the arrival of my Vision Pro, but alas, I am just a teacher.

I only bring this up to say, when it comes to software for the Macintosh, I’m very particular about the way it feels. It has to be, in a word, Mac-like. This is a very difficult feat to accomplish.

A few days after I started using Craft, I mentioned to my wife that Craft is the first app I’ve used since Scrivener (my primary long-form writing app) that totally feels like it gets me. I bought Scrivener in 2007-ish, so it’s been 16 years since an application has impressed me as much as Craft has.

It’s not just that it’s pretty, though it is.

It’s not just that I can share attractive documents easily, though I can.

It’s not just that it includes a built-in AI Assistant, though it does.

It’s not just that I can link to other documents by simply typing the @ symbol, though I do love that.

What makes Craft such a great app is that using it is fun. The software just flows. When I need to focus on my words, it gets out of the way. When I want to focus on the way my words look, it gives me some attractive options without letting me get distracted by an infinite number of choices.

And when I need to connect a new idea to an existing one or make a note of a new new idea without leaving the one I’m working on, it gives me a smooth process for building the link that doesn’t require me to abandon my current thought.

Craft is there when I need it and invisible when I don’t. In short, it is software for effortless engagement. It helps me reach and maintain my flow state, and as a writer who spends an inordinate amount of time at his keyboard, I can’t think of a better goal for software.

In a couple of weeks, Literature & Latte will release a major upgrade to Scrivener, a market-upending, writing application they first launched back in 2005/2006. The software has received incremental improvements throughout the intervening years (including one major release at version 1.5), but this is the first upgrade the company feels comfortable charging its existing customers for. After years of development, the company is releasing Scrivener 2.0.

Before it comes out, however, we should take a moment to celebrate the wonder that is Scrivener 1.x.

Scrivener was designed to make the process of writing easier. Before Scrivener, most writing applications followed the word processing model, which was, itself, based on the model of the typewriter: writing begins at the top of the document and ends at the bottom. Word processors don’t change that model, choosing instead to make the middle of the document their battleground—”my word processor is better than yours because I can add tables in the middle of the document;” “no mine is better, because I can drag and drop images into the middle of my document;” “no mine is better because I can track any changes people make to the middle of my document;” etc.

The genius of Scrivener is that it tries to model not a typewriter, but a writer’s mind.¹ While it contains some of the basic features of a word processor (it shares its text engine with Apple’s pre-installed TextEdit), Scrivener can be more accurately described as a project management application, where the project in question is a large and complex piece of writing.²

Writing is a notoriously messy operation, but word processors assume that the process of word writing is a fairly simple enterprise: a writer has an idea for a story (or research paper, or law review, or documentary script, etc.), so she sits down in front of a blank “sheet of paper” and types it up; case closed. This, of course, is pure fantasy. Writing involves collecting half-formed ideas, turning them into a series of communicable thoughts, and then developing them into an organic and intelligent whole. It’s not a process that lends itself to the linearity of the page—which is why Scrivener 1.x doesn’t even include the concept of the page: pages are for readers, not writers.³ And that’s the difference between word processors and Scrivener. Word processors assume that writing is just like reading; Scrivener knows better.

The feature list of Scrivener 1.x is long and involved, and this is no place to go into it. But each one is the result of a seemingly-agonizing battle (example) in the heart and mind of Scrivener’s chief (and until recently, sole) developer, a “gruff and quirky” chap named Keith Blount. Where Microsoft Word and other “writing” applications often feel like the result of way too many compromises, Scrivener feels like it springs from a single vision. That vision may not always align with your own, but once you give yourself over to it, you can predict (and be surprised by) its actions the same way you can predict (and be surprised by) the actions of a beloved character in your favorite novel. Scrivener is not just software for a writer; it is software by a writer, and it carries the authority that all art—if it’s good art—should carry.

And in just a couple of weeks, we’ll get to experience that writer’s next masterpiece. I am nervous for the upgrade, the same way you get nervous when you’re about to crack open the sophomore effort of a novelist you like, your mind plagued with concerned questions: will this one be as good, but at the same time, be different; will the author give me the same thrill I had when I first discovered his work; will the author be able to overcome any cynicism that may have crept into my worldview during the intervening years; will the work change my life for the better—differently but again?

We’ll soon find out the answers to those questions. But in the meantime, I just want to say thanks to Keith (and his growing team) for all the joy that has been Scrivener 1.x. Good writing software doesn’t do the hard work for you. But it makes it feel a lot less like work.

Footnotes

Even the name of the program reflects this choice: where Microsoft tries to improve the word, Literature and Latte tries to improve the scrivener. ^↑

The best illustration for this is the keystroke ⌘N, which in all Mac applications, creates a “New ___.” In Microsoft Word, for example, ⌘N brings up a “New Document”; in Scrivener, it creates a “New Project.” ^↑

It should be mentioned that Scrivener 2.0 will include the concept of the page, but only because screenwriters depend on page counts to understand the length and shape of their movies. ^↑