Home Portability
One of the things that really helps me write is home portability.
I have guitars all over the house. An amazing classical in the living room, my favorite Stratocaster in the living room, and then guitars down in my office, where I end up recording.
With these sometimes I use a steno notebook, sometimes I use a yellow legal pad, and I keep a more formal journal-looking thing too. But really, I want to have something that is always at hand — and unfortunately that is my phone.
I have figured out a way to notate in the Notes app, and that is the thing. I can tap it out on my computer, on my phone, on my iPad, or on my work computer — it is always there. When you are in line checking out at the grocery store, you can mess with the words. Etc.
You can read them before bed, doing the Jeff Tweedy “go to sleep and wake up with your problem solved” kind of thing.
At the end of the day there are apps, notation software, all kinds of everything. They are elephant guns for a mosquito flyswatter situation. If you just use your Notes app, you are good. Figure out a way to use it, figure out a folder system, and go from there. These are the tools at hand.
And instead of carrying around a microcassette recorder for the ultimate lo-fi sound, you can just use Voice Memos to record these demos (obviously). My only advice — for myself and anybody else — is to delete the stuff you do not use. There are thousands, and it hangs on you a little bit having all that stuff.
As much as we resent them, God bless Apple.