Ask HN: Did anyone write a book in Nano?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36957669

by neontomo • 3 years ago

19 52 3 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I discovered that some people deliberately choose to write stories in terminal-based text-editors like Nano or Vim, because it forces you to spend more time on honing the story instead of being distracted by formatting and other fancy features. I'm attracted to this idea, in the same way that the dwm window manager forces me to focus my attention.

I was curious to know if anyone here actually did that, and what their experience was. Did it make you more productive? Was the editing process a mess? Any anecdotes?

zer0zzz• 3 years ago

Didn’t GRRM use Word Star?

https://www.reddit.com/r/freefolk/comments/s770y1/this_is_th...

neontomo6• 3 years ago

That's interesting, I didn't know he was nerdy in "that way". I wonder what his thinking behind it is.

Dennip• 3 years ago

Maybe he started writing in it and never stopped!

invalidname• 3 years ago

He's used to it and it's distraction free.

cowsup• 3 years ago

He cited autocorrect / spellcheck as his main gripe against modern systems [0], though I’m sure some of it is also just habit.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27407502

RcouF1uZ4gsC• 3 years ago

Unfortunately, he doesn't know how to quickly scroll backwards and forwards and jump to sections in Word Star to review his old stories, and so he is unable to tie up all the story lines and bring the work to a conclusion. Hence, he is forced to always keep writing more and more new story lines.

doix2• 3 years ago

I discovered that some people deliberately choose to write stories in terminal-based text-editors like Nano or Vim

Vim and nano couldn't be more different, the only similarity is that they are terminal editors.

I wrote my thesis in vim + LaTeX (along with most of university assignments).

I find it does make it much easier to focus on the content. I setup some basic layout at the start, write all the content and then maybe tweak the layout towards the end.

Since it's plaintext, you can use git for version control. Plus vim has a great history tree (rather than being linear), which saved my ass a few times.

Disclaimer: vim is basically my religion ;)

neontomo6• 3 years ago

Yes, I've used both. Personally, I like Nano because it's just so simple. There's something about tools that are scaled down in complexity, but not being so simple that they're unusable, that I enjoy a lot. I can see Vim being the better choice for a thesis, especially considering the history tree. Did you edit it in a word processor after?

doix2• 3 years ago

Did you edit it in a word processor after?

No, straight to PDF, I suspect that's how most people use LaTeX [0]. It's kind of hard to explain if you've never used it. But basically you setup rules for how things should render (separately) from the content. You shouldn't need to edit it in a word processor afterwards (ideally anyway).

Personally, I like Nano because it's just so simple. There's something about tools that are scaled down in complexity, but not being so simple that they're unusable, that I enjoy a lot. I can see Vim being the better choice for a thesis, especially considering the history tree.

Yeah, that's fair. I've used vim so much that I find nano unusable. It's not about the history tree (just a minor feature that happened to come in handy), it's the jumping between sections efficiently and reorganizing sections quickly.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

etrautmann• 3 years ago

Oof wow definitely not. The magic of latex is in the automatic figure numbering, captions, table of contents etc. For a thesis length document, it’s crazy to me to imagine doing that in word.

That being said, I had some typos in my thesis without an auto spell check, which I was surprised to discover later.

BaseballPhysics• 3 years ago

Vim + vim-pencil + goyo + limelight is my go-to distraction free writing environment.

I'm not sure I'd say vim and nano are that different when you're writing prose. But the minute you start doing any kind of moderately complex text manipulation, the differences definitely become more obvious.

wenc2• 3 years ago

I wrote my dissertation with vim+latex too but I would say it’s not distraction free. The output was beautiful but the writing process was far from easy.

I had to google tikZ notation and math symbols and error messages to debug issues (including bibtex issues). Word-wrap was a pain (I want to wrap paragraphs) and spelling/grammar checks were painful too (because of mixed prose and math syntax — too many false positives)

I think the only people who can write distraction free in plain text are prose writers, where the need for structure is limited. It’s a romantic idea to be able to write a masterpiece on a typewriter.

The rest of us who write complex structured docs need a bit more help. I write Markdown in VS Code these days and I need help with tables for example. Markdown has very limited support for anchors links etc. and images so I need plugins for those too. I also use LogSeq and definitely appreciate the plug-in ecosystem there too.

I would say don’t romanticize distraction free plain text writing. It’s really only good for the simplest forms of writing.

imachine1980_• 3 years ago

i love micro in this space of simple terminal base editor, is like nano but whit more modern commands like Ctrl + s to save or Ctrl + x to cut https://micro-editor.github.io/

massysett• 3 years ago

You say “story” so I guess you’re writing linear, narrative fiction? In which case sure, try Nano. If the story lacks any hierarchy or structure that you’d like to indicate with typesetting, why not use Nano.

If on the other hand you are writing a book with nested hierarchical headings, sidebars, illustrations, etc, Nano will be no help at all. As another poster in this thread noted, you could use Nano to write LaTeX. But LaTeX certainly isn’t going to get out of your way.

So this is really an issue of picking the right tool for the job. If your job is simple, a simple editor will work. (But so would a complicated editor: I use Word for simple documents all the time. You don’t have to fiddle with the knobs just because they’re there.)

2143• 3 years ago

The basic premise is that separating content and presentation lets you focus on just the content (or presentation).

This idea is frequently used by computer programmers.

ilyt2• 3 years ago

Do you do your editing while writing ? If yes, just stop. Problem solved. Just start a day with editing, and only editing, previous day work.

Maybe look for a distraction-free (which usually means "fullscreen + bars removed") plugin for your editor.

neontomo6• 3 years ago

Thank you. It's great advice, which I keep coming back to. I struggle with it though, because I end up wanting to perfect something (especially if I can think of an improvement already, why not put it in, and then I'm down the rabbit hole of editing).

ilyt2• 3 years ago

Yeah I get that a lot at work.

Maybe having a TODO file would help ? Just switch, add the improvement to todo-list, switch back, "empty" todo before next writing session. That at least would stave off a "I will forget about the improvement I just thought of" fear.

mongol• 3 years ago

A famous Swedish author still types on typewriter for this reason. However, I assume his editor cleans ups his scripts in ways others can't count on.

neontomo6• 3 years ago

Monospace is an added bonus.

barbariangrunge• 3 years ago

Try a markdown editor sometime and never fiddle with formatting, fonts, font sizing, layout, etc again, at least not during the writing stage. I like Typora, obsidian, and especially ulysses

copperx• 3 years ago

To be fair, you can do the same even with Word if you stick to using styles. And if you don't like seeing the formatted output, you can switch to outline view.

NoMoreNicksLeft• 3 years ago

Mostly, the only formatting you don't want to put off can be taken care of with <p> and <h#> tags. Depending on the genre, style, and so forth, maybe the occasional <blockquote>.

I wouldn't want to do non-fiction though... that'd just be torment.

I don't know if it will make you more productive, but it won't make you any less.

downvotetruth• 3 years ago

"AppEndText" - Ctrl+d to exit:

  v=;while read -rN1;[ "$REPLY" != $'\04' ];do clear;v="$v$REPLY";echo "${v: -1}";done;clear;echo "$v"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24739220

ArekDymalski• 3 years ago

To eliminate the temptation of editing while writing I recommend Enso: https://enso.sonnet.io/ as it forces you to separate writing from editing. And regarding anecdotes let me quote an advice form mashup artist Aggro "mix drunk, master sober". It catches the spirit of division between creation and correction perfectly.

ezedv• 3 years ago

I haven't personally written a book during Nano, but I know a friend who did. She found the experience both challenging and rewarding. The intense writing pace boosted her productivity and creativity. The editing process was indeed a bit messy, but she appreciated the raw creativity that poured out during Nano.

HPsquared• 3 years ago

I like to use notepad for drafting written work. Just plain text, no distractions.

version_five• 3 years ago

I use vim for programming. I used to use it for writing (generally in markdown) which I then convert to html. But recently I (sacrilegiously) started doing my writing in word. I actually find this less distracting. I use only the most simple formatting and then convert to html or whatever the end format is.

GeneWilburn• 3 years ago

I use Ghostwriter in Linux and iA Writer on a Mac and iPad. These are distraction free Markdown editors with excellent Markdown support. I use Vim for programming but don’t care for it for writing articles. For finishing I use Pandoc to convert Markdown to Word format, HTML, or TeX.

Scarbutt• 3 years ago

FWIW, there's a community around Emacs that focuses on writing. Lots of articles have been written about it and there are some "famous" authors that have written books/novels in it. Yes, you can use Emacs in the terminal if you want (which I do cause I like using tmux for my workflow). But then, I don't see the issue with using Google Docs (you can just treat it as nano) unless you care about a local workflow and don't want to store in the cloud.

jjice• 3 years ago

I've been writing a technical book slowly over the course of the past little while. It's split into fairly small sections so each one has a file that's technically markdown, but it's mostly just headings and lists for things that aren't raw text and code samples. I use vim since it's easy and light for work on my laptop, and I just like it for plain text editing at this point.

More productive? Not by a notable amount I'd say. Editing is straight forward - 1 sentence per line makes finding things easy.

I'd also say that the tool you use for most things doesn't matter as much as the act of doing (age old advice here on HN). If you get distracted a lot then maybe it's worth a shot, but by no means is Google Docs not up to snuff if you just want to get some words written down.

bccdee• 3 years ago

I wrote a manuscript in vim a couple Novembers ago, for NaNoWriMo. I used a couple plugins, primarily Goyo [1] to add some margins, but otherwise, yeah, plain vim.

I don't think it was really any more productive than my current workflow in Obsidian. Vim keybindings are more useful for editing than for writing (and for editing code in particular, where the changes you're making are much more structured). The extra features afforded by Obsidian don't really make a difference during the actual writing process, but I find they're really useful for outlines and other preliminary work, which is something of a point against a vim-only workflow unless you want to use vimwiki [2] or something.

Granted, Obsidian is still a markdown-based tool, so there's still some level of minimalism going on there, but by that point we're really discussing markup vs word processors, which is its own conversation—and to my mind, a much more important one. I much prefer working in markdown (via pandoc) than in a word processor, because plain text is easy to edit and process through the terminal, and because it lets me separate style choices from content.

I find that the markdown live preview that editors like Obsidian and Typora provide (and which vim doesn't) is a really nice compromise between a slick composing experience and the technical affordances of markup. Between that and Obsidian's hypertext features, I think I'll stick with Obsidian for the foreseeable future.

[1] https://github.com/junegunn/goyo.vim

[2] https://vimwiki.github.io/

sourcecodeplz• 3 years ago

I use Sublime with word count and grammar plugins. It is nice because I have tons of color schemes for different types of stories.

ai_ja_nai• 3 years ago

Vim is a very good editor in the simple task of editing text files of every size. Wrote master thesis with it

mattl• 3 years ago

I wrote a book and two movies in Emacs.

Yes, way more productive. One movie was a collaboration too... he also wrote in a plain text editor, but I think it was TextMate on the Mac.

One thing I also like about writing in plain text (later using Fountain, a Markdown variant) is that I can ignore formatting rules completely. Also, we were saving everything to Dropbox, and I had a server checking out the Dropbox folder and monitoring it. After a while of no changes it would "compile" a new version of the project by concatenating the files and generating a PDF using pandoc and other tools.

I expanded upon it a bit more here: https://usesthis.com/interviews/matt.lee/

thefurdrake• 3 years ago

I don't use Nano but I've considered it. It seems like writing on a tty would be the closest digital equivalent to using a typewriter, though, and I've found that a single-function device for writing reduces distractions significantly.

Not really the same as Nano/vim, but I recently switched to using Obsidian/IAwriter and writing everything in plaintext markdown. I haven't used a "real" word processor more than 10 times in the last few years I'd say, and then only for professional stuff. The reduced overhead is something I don't see myself ever going back from. Similarly, I think Nano-only would be a viable approach.

kunthar2• 3 years ago

ahaha using the question as a dumb detector.

kunthar2• 3 years ago

Ahaha using the question as a dumb detector.

ashton314• 3 years ago

Neil Stephenson uses Emacs for his writing. https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/11h6hg5/comment/jasb...

themadturk• 3 years ago

I've written three novels (unplublished) in text editors, including Vim but never Nano, and on all sorts of devices from PalmPilots to phones to tablets, laptops and desktops running all major operating systems. I'm doing editing of one novel in Obsidian right now. I try to stay away from word processors until the very latest stage, because everyone I know who would critique or edit only use Word. For linear fiction, which uses only parts, chapters and scenes, Markdown works just fine and Pandoc works really well for converting to other formats.

beej712• 3 years ago

vim+markdown+pandoc for me. Works great, especially since I'd rather edit anything in vim rather than any other environment.

In addition to writing books, I've also used this to make epub conversions of existing books.

If you're writing for a publisher, a lot of them prefer barebones formatting anyway so they can do the page layout themselves.

neontomo6• 3 years ago

Do you have experience writing for a publisher? I've written a book before, and self-published, but the idea that the publisher would prefer the barebones is new to me. Does the author usually have input into the final design?

beej712• 3 years ago

I didn't use a publisher, but I've talked to a couple that said they'd take just a doc file, and please don't format it.

Paul-Craft• 3 years ago

I use Emacs for all my writing. As far as producing documents, if it's math-oriented, I'll tend to use LaTeX and render to PDF. If it's for my blog, I write that in Markdown, though I'm considering switching to Restructured Text or some other format -- it's hard to get what I want done in Markdown without adding a crap-ton of extensions, i.e. distractions.

Emacs certainly can be the ultimate time waster in and of itself, and I won't deny that I've spent a lot of time configuring my init files. But, the basic experience is pretty much a blank screen, until you hit the control or meta keys, so I consider it pretty well suited to distraction-free writing. And, when you get to editing, it has some world-class text manipulation capabilities that make it hard to beat.

rcarmo2• 3 years ago

I usually draft my posts in vim (even on the iPad, thanks to a-Shell). The only pieces of text I don’t start in a terminal are e-mails.

neontomo6• 3 years ago

Any particular reason?

rcarmo2• 3 years ago

Less distractions

schwartzworld2• 3 years ago

Game of Thrones was written in word perfect.

I wrote about 2/3 of a children's book with Micro and that was a fine experience. Markdown for formatting, so the content is portable to other editors if I really needed the escape hatch I guess.

wenc2• 3 years ago

written in word perfect.

I think it was WordStar 4.0

https://www.theverge.com/2014/5/14/5716232/george-r-r-martin...

schwartzworld2• 3 years ago

Right you are. I remembered it was something old.

Ask HN: Did anyone write a book in Nano?

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