Ulysses: One App to Rule Them All

I used Scrivener for several years and hereby acknowledge its awesomeness, in this, the opening sentence of my post. If I were a write-one-thing-at-a-time kind of guy, I probably would not have sought an alternative. But I’m not. In the seven years that I’ve written fiction with daily intentionality, I’ve contracted Polywipism – a condition that results in the division of my attention between many projects. Although I can sustain singular project focus when needed, I have the tendency to jump from WIP to WIP to WIP during my writing sessions.

As glorious as Scrivener is, with its rich feature set, comprehensive project scaffolding, and tantalizing author-centric marketing vibe, it’s simply too heavy for my scattered writing style. My project hopping in Scrivener resulted in some technical drag – several open windows, lots of files to manage, and a little friction when writing on multiple devices. Enter Ulysses.

One app to find them

Ulysses is an intuitive, extensible, and feature-rich text editor for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. It gives me complete control of how my work is organized and allows me to have all of my writing accessible in one sleek interface. I’ve defined a custom taxonomy using Groups (effectively folders or collections) and all of the sheets within that content hierarchy are automagically synchronized across all of my Apple devices via iCloud.

One app to bring them all

That buttery-smooth synchronization is a must-have for my day-to-day writing. Between work and play, I spend a silly amount of time on a MacBook. It’s a fine machine, but by the end of the day, I want to set it on fire and dance around its blazing aluminum husk. When feeling intense laptop angst, it’s nice to be able to grab a different device (instead of matches and gasoline). It’s particularly useful when traveling or otherwise away from keyboard. If I find myself in a plane, train, or automobile, and don’t want to break out the laptop, I can turn to my iPad or iPhone. Ulysses keeps all my projects in easy reach wherever I may roam.

“Au contraire mon frère,” you say to your screen, wondering for a moment why you’re speaking en français. “Scrivener has cross-device support and syncing features.”

Oui. Scrivener does allow sync across different device types, but it’s not quite as polished. The Dropbox-based mechanism requires active participation in the process: make an edit on MacBook, click a button, close Scrivener, open Scrivener on iPad, click a button, make changes, click a button, open Scrivener on MacBook, click a button. If you forget to click a button, say to sync your changes on iPad, and proceed to write again on MacBook, you end up with a conflict file. From there, you must manually merge the content before continuing. (To my fellow developers: think merge conflict in Git.)

In Ulysses, the sync happens automagically in the background when changes are made, or every 60-seconds, whichever comes first. No buttons to click, no caution to exercise, no time spent managing your writing system. You simply open the app and write.

And in the darkness bind them

Books that is. Like binding. Get it? Yeah, I know. Terrible. My apologies to Tolkien for my blatant bastardization of his brilliance.

My adoption of Ulysses is not only about the cross-device support. There are a few features that really make the app indispensable, along with other useful functionality that is also found in Scrivener.

• You can organize your library any way you want and have all of your writing a click away. I have top-level groups like Blog, Fiction, and Non-Fiction. Inside Fiction there are folders for each of my works in progress and a Flash folder. The former has one sheet per chapter and the latter use one sheet per story.
• You can set up multiple writing goals and deadlines. I currently have three daily goals set for blogging, fiction, and my to-be novel. If I write in the latter, it increments the associated goal and the fiction goal. Goal hierarchy and inheritance, FTW!
• You can style your writing in Markdown, which I like. Beyond formatting, I like having the ability to insert inline comments that aren’t treated as manuscript text.
• There are integrations with blog platforms, like WordPress and Ghost, that allow you to publish directly from the app.
• Material Sheets allow for notes alongside stories. You might have a Sheet called “Chapter 1” and beneath it a Material Sheet titled “Chapter 1 notes.” The notes do not impact your writing stats and are not included when exporting (compiling) your work.
• Did I mention cross-platform syncing? Sorry. That horse has been sufficiently bludgeoned.
• Your word count, reading time, and other stats are readily available.
• You can attach images and notes to each sheet.
• You can export to text, html, pdf, epub, and docx. For each format, you can endlessly tweak the available styles or create your own.

Final thoughts and invitation

There is no one-size-fits-all process or toolset when it comes to writing. It is deeply and necessarily subjective based on oodles of variables. What works for me doesn’t necessarily work for you. What works for me today won’t necessarily work for me tomorrow.

That said, what works for you? I’d love to hear about your process and preferred writing weaponry. Comments are open.