I often use Scrivener during the early development phase of a book. It’s fantastic for organizing research, notes, character ideas, and scattered scenes while a project is still taking shape.

Once the structure of the book solidifies, I usually move the manuscript into Atticus for the final writing and formatting workflow.

Atticus is my primary writing and formatting tool. I use it to draft manuscripts, organize chapters, and generate professionally formatted book interiors for both ebook and print.

What I like most is that it eliminates the need for separate formatting software. Once the manuscript is finished, I can export a clean, publication-ready layout in minutes. It’s one of the fastest ways I’ve found to go from draft to publishable book.

For cover development and graphics work, I use GIMP. It’s a powerful open-source image editor that provides most of the functionality of premium design software without the subscription cost.

It gives me full control over typography, composition, and cover elements when experimenting with different visual directions.

Some of my best ideas appear when I’m nowhere near my keyboard. I keep a voice recorder app on my phone so I can capture ideas, dialogue, and story concepts the moment they hit.

Later, I transcribe those recordings and integrate them into my manuscript or research notes.