Computers are all around us. It’s very hard to be a working adult in the world without a smartphone in your pocket, a laptop at home, and maybe even a tablet and work laptop on top of all that. 

At this point in history, even the determinedly analog among us have to concede that electronic devices can make life easier. When out at the dentist, you can put your next appointment in a digital calendar that syncs to everything rather than writing it on a scrap of paper you may lose. Tracking your finances has never been easier. And all of your important documents are at your fingertips whenever you need them, even going back years into the past. 

Lots of writers tend to lean more analog. Is there anything more satisfying than writing by hand on creamy paper with a nice pen? And your creative work might serve as a nice break from being glued to a screen for your day job.

But there are some digital tools, when chosen wisely, that can make your writing life easier while still maintaining your old-school habits. 

Tablet and Stylus

If you’re in love with writing by hand—especially when drafting so that your ideas flow more smoothly—but you’re drowning in notebooks and want a little more security, try writing on a tablet with a stylus. There are lots of different brands, and you can usually mix and match pretty easily between those brands. Then, when it comes to your device of choice, there are lots of different apps that work with your stylus. 

You can get a journaling app that keeps your handwritten pages, possibly with the option to save them to the cloud so you can access them online should something ever happen to your device. There are also some programs, some that might even come with your tablet or stylus, that analyze your handwriting and turn it into electronic text. This is a great option to keep the mental flow of writing by hand but then have the ease of reading back something digital. 

Try to go to physical electronics stores and try out different options. Technology is improving every day—just because you tried one option a few years ago and didn’t like it doesn’t mean there isn’t a better option for you now. You might also just look for an app or device that allows you to customize the stylus stroke; some of them even have fun options like replicating a fountain pen or a lead pencil. 

External Hard Drives and the Cloud

Another lifesaver for the modern writer is the option to have your work saved in multiple places. In the past, your entire draft might be lost if your office roof leaks and destroys your notes, you leave your bag on a bus, or you just misplace the box where you kept that heavy stack of pages. 

Writing on a computer means that you can save all of your work instantly, in several locations at once. Most word processors, even the ones that come standard on your device, have the option to save your drafts online as well as to your hard drive. Many online-based word processors even automatically save your work every few seconds. There are free services that will let you keep a certain amount of data saved in an online database that you can sign in to from anywhere. 

The best thing to do is make sure you have at least two different places where you can access your work. If you like turning off your internet to help you focus while writing, it’s a good idea to invest in an external hard drive. Your device has a hard drive on the inside, where it saves all of your data, and an external hard drive is exactly what it sounds like—a separate hard drive outside your computer that will preserve all of your data. 

Make sure you back up your work on a regular basis, and then keep that external drive somewhere safe. That way if your laptop crashes, you won’t have to start from scratch. 

Advanced Word Processors

Most modern word processors are built to replicate a typewriter. There is some digital representation of a piece of paper on the screen, probably with a little ruler at the top or sides for you to align your margins. The cursor starts on the left and moves toward the right as you type, and as your words fill the page, the paper scrolls up automatically. 

But writing before the internet was about more than the satisfying clack of typewriter keys. Pen and paper can get you a big beautiful map of plot points that you have on a bulletin board on your office wall. You can write out ideas and easily erase them with a big whiteboard and marker. Using note cards that you can move around and see as a group can be a better way to map out your ideas than the organized page of a word processor. 

If your analog tools are giving you problems—maybe you don’t have enough wall space for all the bulletin boards you’d need to map out your high-fantasy world—there are better, more complex word processors that will help you map out your thoughts. 

While Scrivener is popular among a lot of writers and academics for its seemingly endless customizable settings, there are still lots of options to choose from. Ask online in writer forums, read product reviews, and use free trials.

Get to the Good Part

The whole point of using tools is to make it easier to get to the real work: your writing. If you’re stressed about administrative work, keeping things organized, and keeping drafts safe, there’s likely an array of digital tools that will make it easy for you to do what you actually love. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.