The Best Mac Writing Tool For Real Mac Writers

As much as I love my iPhone and iPad, much of what I do to make a living is pound away on the Mac’s keyboard. Writing projects abound and keeping them organized and keeping me productive requires something special.

Allow me to declare this the best writing tool for writers who love the Mac. If you write and get paid for it, or write and hope to get paid for your masterpiece, invest a little time in my favorite writing tool of all time.

The Writing Center

Let me preface my gushing with the obvious. Different strokes for different folks. As many writers as there are in the world there are just as many ways of writing.

So, is it even possible for one Mac app to tower head and shoulders above any other? That, of course, depends upon you, your needs, your experience, and other unquantifiable elements.

However, that said, Scrivener is the best tool for writing that goes beyond notes and commercial documents.

I’m talking creative writing, writing for a living, writing which requires organization, research, notes and all the elements you won’t find in a 500 word review of a writing tool.

Scrivener comes with pre-built project templates to get you started in an organized fashion on novels, stories, scripts, essays and much more.

As you’d expect, Scrivener is project oriented so you can view all of what you’re putting into your work on one screen. One large screen.

There’s the obligatory fullscreen, distraction free mode, but there’s also a throwback to reality– a digital cork board which easily rearranges notes and elements.

Project drafts are easily organized in the left column Sidebar, so one click brings you face to face with what you need for that element of the project. As you write you’ll see live word and character counts, and whatever you write can also be marked up with notes (so you’ll know why you wrote what you wrote).

Text formatting tools are standard fare for Mac writing tools. The structuring tools give you a way to organize elements, and includes a full-featured outliner. Ideas can be tracked using labels and keywords. Everything is saved and backed up automatically and instantly.

Everything? Scrivener is good for project research as well. It imports images, media files, PDFs, and web pages. Even audio files can be transcribed from within Scrivener. I could continue my gushing because there’s a huge list of features common to most of us who slave over a hot keyboard during the day and into the night.

If you write for money, or write for love but hope to make a few bucks down the road, start here. Scrivener is less a writing tool and more of a writing platform and worthy of the nominal price tag.