As a husband, and a man, it's my self-assigned duty to fix problems. A few years ago, my wife, who has been writing stories since the day she was born, came to me with a problem. It came in in stages, something like:
- “Hold on, I need to email my book to myself before we can leave.” (times 100)
- “Ugh, my computer hates me. Now I have to re-write the last three chapters…”
- “Why is Word so weird? Why can’t it be more like Pages?”
- “HELP! I think my computer just ate my entire novel!?*%!”
- “Scrivener is so complicated and unappealing. Why isn’t there something better?”
The problems had been weighing on me for months, maybe years. But once my wife posed the most obvious question, “Why isn’t there something better?”, I knew what had to be done. I’m an experienced software engineer, an app maker. This is literally what I do for a living. So we brainstormed a little, asking ourselves things like, “What features do authors need?” and "How can we make writing easier? Safer?" And then I scurried away to my basement office.
A few months later, I emerged from my cave with a sign in link, the birth of thequill.app. And we’ve been working hard to turn it into the best online writing app ever since. A few years and millions of words later, The Quill is still the only app made for novelists that puts security first—everything is backed up twice over and every word is encrypted so no one else can read your story until you’re ready to show the world.
Because every writer should have the support they need to Write Fearlessly.
TL;DR: Boy meets girl. Girl writes books. Girl asks Boy why book writing apps are ugly and hard to use. Boy makes The Quill.