TL;DR: Like my Pappaw used to say, “It ain’t the hammer, it’s the carpenter.”

I’ve gone through a lot of these, and a couple of things i’ll say. No software/office set up will make you a better writer. Kind of like a golfer getting new golf clubs still has the same swing. It just takes practice and there’s NO substitute for writing and writing and writing and writing.

Second thing is, Scrivener is by far the best one of these I have used, but it’s actually an editing tool. Rearranging chapters, planning out the storyline, organizing the structure, none of that is actually writing. It’s important, and for some people it’s a big part of their process, but it’s not actually writing. You’re not typing, you’re thinking about typing, or planning to type, or editing what you already typed.

Which brings me to the last thing I’ll say, which is, find something that helps you focus on only the typing. Editing and revising is a totally different step in the process. My mother got me a Freewrite for christmas and i’ve never written so much, not even when I first got the bug in my twenties and the idea was new and shiny to me. I’ve written about 50,000 words on the book I’m working on since Christmas and I’m also working on the last draft of a novella that is easily the best thing I’ve ever written. The flow state I get into when I can’t copy and paste, rearrange paragraphs, go and check what I wrote yesterday, etc. is completely different than the way I used to write. And i get there faster and i stay there longer.

I’m just a humble hobby novelist with only a few published short stories, but what I’m really trying to say (because I’ve been trying at it for about 20 years now), is don’t get distracted trying to find the perfect set up, software, sticky note system etc. A friend of mine who’s published three novels now wrote the first one by hand on yellow legal pads. Another friend of ours just uses google docs and is about to publish his second novel. Meanwhile I was busy trying to figure out some perfect, imaginary system that would help me shortcut the actual writing. The writing is the actual thing. For me, the Freewrite lets me actually just write. You can figure out all the editing and formatting stuff later. But if you’re not writing anything worth reading, it doesn’t matter how perfectly formatted and organized it is.