I use Scrivener. It's basically a "pretty good writer's IDE". Yes I could make something more sophisticated and tuned for my workflow hacking up emacs or vim, a

I use Scrivener. It's basically a "pretty good writer's IDE". Yes I could make something more sophisticated and tuned for my workflow hacking up emacs or vim, and it's not Jet-Brains level of polish, but after trying both routes I realized for writing, Good Enough is just fine. And the advantages of Scrivener outweigh the lack of vim bindings... :-) Put it in full screen, and everything you need to write is there, with all of the other distractions from your general OS hidden out of the way. Decent outlining and note taking tools, plays well with git, multiple ways of looking at the same data, and Composer Mode, where your page becomes a typewriter. It's pretty slick and fairly priced. I will also outline on paper and index cards. Index cards are great for outlining and can be spread around the desk easily.