Why I am making Skywrite

My name is Jacob and I am a lifelong hobbyist writer.

I am building Skywrite so that I (and my fellow writers) can have a safe, privacy-first writing space that feels like home and pulls me into the mindset for daily writing whenever I use it.

Knowing that I no longer have to worry about some faceless corporation training language models with my stories lets me focus on what matters most: the stories themselves. This is why Skywrite uses end-to-end encryption.

I also want to be able to make changes without fear of data-loss. I built a robust, git-inspired version control system into Skywrite, so I can write without concern, which really opens up a lot of doors creatively.

My writing journey

While I have not pursued writing as a means to survive, I take my hobbies far more seriously than I should and place a high value on creative pursuits. I write a lot of fiction. Some fantasy and some hard sci-fi. The occasional short story.

But mostly I tend to have grand ideas for epic, sprawling universes that almost universally require a much higher level of writing skill than I possess to do them justice.

But that doesn't stop me.

Like most of us, I have struggled organizing the many details of the literary world I am crafting. I am an architect style writer, not a gardener, and so I plan more than I write especially at the outset.

So my outlines and sketches end up spread over hundreds of Notion pages and Google docs pages, .txt files on one computer and .md files on another. I've tried Obsidian, Ellipsus, Notion alternatives and storing notes in Github.

Google Docs in the age of AI

Eventually I settled on Google Docs and Google Drive as a way to organize things. Google docs is fairly convenient since I like to write on my phone before bed and my partner hates the sound of my clacking laptop keyboard.

I wrote this way for a couple years, then I became paranoid (and, I think, not unreasonably so).

In the age of AI, what is stopping Google (or any of these other companies, you know the ones) from harvesting my creative work for the consumption of the Great Starving Machine?

Nothing.

They are all perfectly poised to do so, terms of service be damned. The rules are not the rules anymore. It's truly the wild west.

So even writing in Google Docs became stressful for me and detracted from my writing. Not to say I think my ideas are that life changing but because I am principled and care deeply about the sancitity of my world. I feel my writing is among my most valuable assets. Why should I be flippant with it?

That was the spark that got me started, though like any good story, it really started many years before.

Software roots

I have been a software developer for over a decade and like all good developers learned early on the incredible value of version control. In software, version control is all that stands between you and unemployment the colossal abyss.

While my passion was for writing and publishing, my work in software took me other places for a long time. Over the years I always had this microscopic thought swimming around in the ole wetware: what if we let authors write using version control like we write software?

It would unlock creative freedom without the sprawling mess of documents spread across machines, local and in the cloud.

Version control has all this too, but it hides it so you don't have to think about it.

So finally those ideas converged and the spark turned into a fire and night after night I spend all my spare hours procrastinating on my latest trilogy idea and worked on Skywrite.

I started with end-to-end encryption (e2ee) since that is the bedrock. I added version control and made the writing experience I would want to have with just enough cozy character and ability to make the writing space my own.

Oh, and a dash of design inspiration from the golden era of web design and custom art made by real human artists.

Writing is scary

Writing is a scary thing to do all on it's own. I want to remove the modern sources of fear like IP theft and losing versions of my story so that I can write freely and unburdened by these fears. That's why Skywrite was born and that's why I want to share it with other writers.

I hope you enjoy and that it is a valuable resource on your own writing journey! Stay tuned for more updates on Skywrite!