#writing programs

Before we dive in, I want to be transparent: I am not affiliated with Obsidian’s management or development team in any way. I’m simply a passionate user sharing my experience. This isn’t meant to spread any hatred toward Google Docs, Ellipsus, or any other writing app—each has its own strengths and loyal user base. We’re all just writers looking for tools that help us think and create.

I also want to extend a sincere thank you to the Obsidian Help Forum and the broader Obsidian community. Their generosity with plugins, CSS snippets, and troubleshooting advice transformed Obsidian for me from a raw Markdown editor into a genuinely writer-friendly app. I couldn’t have built my current setup without them.

Here is my guides tag containing more information about how to start as a writer on Tumblr (tid-bits & tips).

Q&A posts below:

Theme setup (tips, sites along with links);

Setting up your blog (aesthetics, post layouts, along with links);

Hi Lovely!

I actually write in 4thewords, which is a site where your word count beats monsters. You can organise your projects like below

And then within those projects you can have seperate files per chapter like so:

However, I will admit that, as a pantser, I don't have much in the way of notes. I have heard Scrivener is very good for organising if you're the kind of person who writes scenes and then stitches them together or has lots of notes to organise, but I don't have any first hand experience. I've also heard good things about Ellipsus, but again, I don't have personal experience of it!

I do use Word, but grudgingly, and only for spellcheck and editing - and I'd like to get rid of it if I can.

Here's a tutorial if you'd like to do the same.

Moving Your Fics from Google Docs to Proton Docs

You will of course need a Proton account for this. Please note that the instructions below are performed on desktop.

Part One: Getting Your Stuff Off Google

1. Navigate to your Google Drive.

2. Under the big Search bar, you'll see a dropdown menu called Type. Click it and select Documents. This will display all of your documents.

3. Click on one document to highlight it, then hit CTRL + A to Select All.

4. Right click and select Download.

5. Your documents will download into a zip file. Unzip the folder and extract your files to another folder on your computer.

NOTE: Google uses its own file format to handle documents. When you download your documents, they will be Word (.docx) files.

Go through your downloaded documents and make sure they're all there before deleting them from Google. You can delete by selecting all using the method above, right clicking, and hitting Remove.

Part Two: Upload Your Fics to Proton

1. Navigate to your Proton Drive (proton.me/drive). It comes free with your Proton email.

2. On your PC, highlight all the documents that you want to upload and simply drag and drop them into your Proton Drive.

3. You're ready to rock and roll.

NOTE: When you upload your documents to your Proton Drive, they will retain the .docx file type described in the above note. Once you open a .docx file in Proton Docs, a copy will be made of that file. You will see this when you navigate back to your Proton Drive. You may delete the extra .docx file and continue to use the Proton document instead (recommended).

at the top of the screen, there's a tiny icon that will claim to show if your work is saved, displaying either synced/disconnected/error. DO NOT TRUST THIS. sometimes, it will say 'synced', but the work will NOT be saved anywhere except in the site data/cookies. so if you clear your cache consistently (something i have to do to keep my computer from crashing) you will irreparably delete all your progress.

there is no way to tell the difference between 'synced' meaning saved to their servers and 'synced' meaning saved only on your browser. there is no warning for this on their website, no page that says "do not use this site with these browsers or with your browser on this mode" or anything. the ONLY way you can find out about this through their site is if you go to their help center or submit a bug report to find out why your writing vanished, and only then will you be told that this is a common issue and whoops! too late now, there's no possible way to fix it.

and I have recently discovered Plottr that im going to use for my rewrite and it looks really useful so far! (excuse the "something happens" example I was just trying to show how it looks lols)

they aren't completely free but they do offer free trials. I do think scrapple is 100% worth the money and have been using it religiously for years. ive just started using Plottr but I like it so far!

and unrelated but if you like keeping track of your work or you like setting deadlines: pacemaker is amazing for that hehe (and the free version has all the features you need!)