>>24634194 (OP)
I do most of my prose writing in Emacs (specifically in org-mode). It's nice but I don't know that it's nice enough to be worth learning. I learned it in order to program after falling for a succession of /g/ memes but nowadays I do most of my programming in VS Code (though I still use Emacs for magit, magit is fantastic).
What I like about this way of writing:
- It's all plain text. I do not and cannot worry about layout or fonts. I do have access to the barest formatting that belongs in a manuscript (italics, headings, etc) but even that is marked using plain text symbols so there's no magic between me and the text.
- I can put inline comments telling myself to reword this later, maybe shuffle that around, comment out a whole paragraph that I don't think works here but that I might still want to look at later, leave reminders to myself. The comments are also pure plain text marked by plain text symbols (but get highlighted in a different color and aren't included when exporting.)
- I can navigate through the document quickly. If I want to refer back to something I wrote earlier I press Ctrl+R to do a reverse search, type my query until it comes into view, read it, press Ctrl+G or Ctrl+U
to jump back to where I was and carry on, without using my mouse. Mice are nice but sometimes the keyboard breaks my flow less.
org-mode is a little nicer than markdown but markdown is fine too. I bet there exists software for writing markdown that's easier to learn than Emacs on account of not being designed in the 1980s.
I don't think you're missing out on a lot by using a word processor.
You can also get a respectable fraction of the vim/Emacs keybinding efficiency in any program by being smart about using ctrl/shift/arrow keys/home/end. Especially for prose, which doesn't have as much software-legible structure as code.
