===== About ===== This all starts with a half-finished novel that I had sitting on my Google Drive for the past eight or so years. Every once in a while I'd open it in some flash of inspiration or plain curiosity and go through the same two emotions each time: 1. **Excitement** at seeing some passages that struck me as particularly good at which point I'd start to think that it was worth finishing 2. **Dread** at the though of working through and reorganizing this monolithic document of 50,000+ words There was clearly something of value there, but the thought of trying to make sense of it was overwhelming. I knew I needed a software solution to help me break this up and do some radical surgery. I wanted something that fit all of the following criteria: - **Modularity:** I should be able to break my project up into smaller pieces and *move them around* easily - **Organization:** I should be able to organize my smaller pieces into a structure of sections, chapters, etc. - **Internet connection not required:** I shouldn't need an internet connection to start writing. An online-first platform is distracting at best (checking your Twitter account is only a few clicks away) and disruptive at worst (anyone who's tried editing a Google doc on a spotty airplane wifi can attest to this) - **Git/Github-friendly:** To make this into a coherent novel, I didn't just need version control, I needed *branches* and a way to store it in the Cloud There are a lot of potential solutions out there, most notably `Scrivener `_, which fits requirements 1-3 but not 4, and a bunch that fit 1 and 2 but not 3 or 4. So I decided to roll my own which brings us to Draft.