Thanks, and a good question, really. I over-thought tooling. A lot. I ended up trying a lot of them. I won't even mention all of them here.
Writing Tools - Word Processors:
Obsidian was my go-to for a while. Writing in Markdown felt good and distraction-free, but it has issues producing a single docx file - which, unfortunately, is the industry standard.
ONLYOFFICE is excellent. I still use it on my Linux laptop. It's 99% compatible with docx and honestly I prefer it to Word.
Word though - industry standard. I swapped over for editing and polish because the desktop version on Mac has advanced find-and-replace features where you can use a RegEx-style expression to hunt down grammar fixes. At the late stages, it can save tens of hours. It just stings that it's subscription-only - but it's what publishers and professional editors will be using.
Dedicated Writing Tools:
Scrivener - worth a mention as I can see its value. Purpose-built for long-form writing, good for planning and structure. I used it for outlining. Fair warning though: it has a learning curve, and it can easily become its own rabbit hole. I'd actually like to revisit this tool again on a new project, but it's too much of a change of workflow from my current Word processor.
Backup and Version Control:
A shout-out to Dropbox here - it's solid (even free version)
Word works best with OneDrive of course, but I don't like to use it. SOme of the autosave features are deeply connected with OneDrive, so you just have to get used to hitting save manually (the old fashioned way). Which is fine.
Dropbox's free 5GB tier is plenty for docx files. The built-in version history is a lifesaver when you hit a file corruption or need to roll back after moving chapters around and making a mess of it.
The paid version also lets you open any docx in Word for Web - handy in a pinch when you're on a machine that isn't your main setup.
The paid version also lets you open any docx in Word for Web - handy in a pinch when you're on a machine that isn't your main setup.
Other Tools
World Anvil for worldbuilding - until I realised it was actually more of a procrastination tool. I spent more time organising World Anvil than writing. Dropped it.
Inkarnate for maps - great tool, easy time sink. I ended up sketching a map by hand and tracking locations in a docx.
ProWritingAid - they had a lifetime sale and I grabbed it. Honest take: not worth it. The grammar and echo reports are decent, but nothing you can't do with a basic word processor. It now leans heavily into generative AI, which is a problem. The reports will tell you to smooth your writing, replace sentences with better ones. All it does is erase your voice in the name of perfect prose.
ElevenReader - underrated for the editing pass and the free version has 10 hours per month included. Having your manuscript read aloud catches things your eyes skip straight over. You stop hearing what you meant to write and start hearing what's actually there. Worth doing before any late-stage editing pass. Better than an alpha-reader (maybe not!).
AI - just don't. It has its uses, but do not let it touch your prose. It will smooth and tighten everything, which is just another way of saying it will erase your voice and what made your writing yours.
Summary:
In the end: Word on Mac and ONLYOFFICE on Linux was the sweet-spot combination for me. Dropbox for version control, manual backups to ProtonDrive.
Looking back, every tool I tried taught me something - but most of them were displacement activity. The word processor won. Keeping it simple let me focus on the actual writing. Which is the point.