As you all know, I’m fond of posts that show the versatility of Emacs by documenting its use by writers. At first glance, writing—a novel, say—seems to be the direct antithesis of what most of us use Emacs for. But when you think of it, it’s all just wrangling text and we all want to do that in the most efficient way possible. That’s were Emacs comes in.
Scott Nesbitt has a nice post entitled 5 Emacs modes for writers. Those five modes are:
I depend on three of the five. I use Org mode for virtually all of my writing these days so I don’t need Muse. Applications like WriteGood mode remind me of my eighth grade English teacher so I avoid them for admittedly emotional reasons. I use a different app for word counting—also called WC mode—but either one will serve. Any or all of these tools will make whatever writing you do easier.
Nesbitt also mentions Fountain mode (if you’re doing screen manuscripts), Markdown mode (if you prefer Markdown or have to use it in some instances), and Writeroom mode (if you want to write on a blank screen). Years ago, Jerry Pournelle used to sing the praises of an editor called (I think) WRITE. It was for CP/M and would doubtless be considered primitive today but it had the virtue of being distraction-free by offering a blank screen with no tool bars or other widgets to seduce your attention. If that sounds attractive, give Writeroom a try.