App Studio
Walt Whitman famously wrote about our ability to contain conflicting truths and identities. It’s not the sort of thing algorithms like. Machines prefer we’re one thing, on brand, consistently following an easily summarized message.
To be honest, I prefer to misquote Whitman. While he wrote “I am large” in Leaves of Grass it sounds like a physical description rather than an existential one. This is my version:
I am vast. I contain multitudes.
It seems like an appropriate place to start for a writer that also builds apps given that the two disciplines seem so far apart.
I am a writer who loves organization. My creativity unfurls when my brain isn’t trying to keep track of to-do lists, details, next steps or ideas I had once upon a time.
I’m also a writer who has worked a day job for software companies for the better part of a decade. Structuring information and designing efficient paths for it to flow is the nature of the game.
It makes some sense then that I’m a writer who eventually learned to write enough code to build the apps1 that make my life easier. By keeping information and ideas organized I create freedom for my creativity not to be structured or organized or easily contained.
Day.ly was my first app because I needed a day planer that was more than a task list but not a calendar. The health phase I was in focused on mixing up workouts and intentional meals. Trying to keep track of it all in my head was low level stress I didn’t need.
I couldn’t find a task app that also planned workouts and meals, so I built one.
Then I added the ability to import events from the calendar to provide a comprehensive view of the day on one screen.
I developed Nova because I needed a travel planner. At the time I was going on several work trips out of different airports and while there were a ton of apps that offered to manage the chaos, not one of them included a task list. Which is crazy to me because there are several tasks in planning any trip.
So, again, I built what I needed—a travel planner with a task list and eventually a packing list. My favorite thing about Nova is that it works offline so while flight and hotel information can be easily pulled up in their respective apps, it’s nice to have quick offline access to all the details for a trip in a central location.
I built Monarch when my brain started filling up with app ideas and book ideas and trying to keep track of this update I needed and that thing I needed to fix.
Monarch is an undated planner better suited for projects or goals that you work during the weekend or turn to when the tasks for a day are complete. It has expansive space for notes and the ability to group ideas together under larger goals or break them down into sub-tasks.
The secret story behind Agile First Draft is that I designed it during an all day onsite meeting where I needed to attend but barely needed to contribute. At the time, I wanted to be more consistent in writing Substack articles and also promoting them.
While you might think that the app leads a writer through the process of an Agile First Draft writing process, I’m not that sophisticated of an app builder, yet. For now it serves as a container for drafts, whether articles, short stories or books. It allows writers to track the status of drafts, track social media promotion and of course each draft can have a task list (seriously, I love task lists).
Revel is a habit tracker and I got the idea New Year’s week 2025. Of course it took me a couple of months to build it (this was one of the more difficult apps for some reason). Like Day.ly, Revel keeps you focused on what’s happening today.
Revel supports daily habits, weekly and even monthly. The main screen shows what needs to be completed today. Tomorrow will take care of itself. It also has streak tracking and, if I may say, is the prettiest of my apps.
Avid Expense Tracker was built almost on a whim. It’s not sophisticated enough for work trips (and most companies have their own app to submit expenses). But my sister is a stay-at-home mom with travel athletes and wanted a simple app to track trip expenses.
My favorite aspect of Avid is the ability to color code trips, both to visually differentiate trips but also because it’s pretty. I reused the color code feature on the latest version of Monarch. I also played a bit in naming the color options from Billiard and Berry to Nebula and Rain.
There is a nominal monthly fee for each app simply to cover Apple’s annual developer license.