Part One

Tools

I use a variety of tools whenever I write. The goal is to spew out all the ideas in my mindbrain and just get them all collected, turning it into a fuctioning sentence comes next. So I use whatever is at hand:

• Google Notes on my cell phone
• Any one of my sweet fountain pens that I have inked up. The most dangerous of which is my Noodler's Boston Safety Pen, filled with ink that would destroy a lesser pen. As the ink gets used I fill it with varying amounts of different colored ink. This makes each stroke and each idea unique, never to be recreated the same way ever again. It is currently a dark purple that shades black where it pools. I am trying to get it to be closer to a blood red.
• Loose leaf HP Premium 24 paper, the workhorse of fountain pen friendly ink.
• B5 Kokuyo Campus 26 hole paper, a good Japanese paper which helps your grades but not as much as Maruman Mnemosyne.
• Rhodia R Premium Notepad - This one keeps the paper together! Until I rip them out by their perforation and make that sweet sweet vrrrrrt sound! It's a fantastic ivory color.
• I have discontinued the use of regular Rhodia and Black and Red notebooks/pads. 
• Loose leaf Tomor River Paper - the thinnest of all papers but its excellent ink properties bring out every shining and sheening color imaginable. There is no finer paper than this.
• Exacompta Index Cards, the only fountain pen friendly index cards. They're French so slightly different than US sizes. 4 different colors and are a very smooth writing experience.
• WorldAnvil! Oh, Hello there. General Kenobi

Right, so now that I've written things down on varying types of technology and on types of paper that have no right in being used together, making up different colors, shapes, sizes, and such... Now I can finally sit down and write. How the heck do I do this? I normally just run my D&D campaigns like this as it allows me to pull information from whatever piece of paper I need with them all sprawled across the desk. This works great for the 5 campaigns I am running but how good is it for writing a novel? I'm afraid if I use the same process I'll put out books as quickly as modern era GRR Martin. So what to do? Well let's try out WorldAnvil Manuscripts! Let's gooooooooo!

I use the Headspace app which has 5 minute meditation exercise to focus things other than the day. When the mind is racing and distracted by other things it makes it difficult to truly be creative. It helps set my mind at ease by focusing on something else rather than the stresses of everyday life. 

No idea about formatting... I hear Affinity Publisher is good and is a one-time purchase. So may play around with that some day, especially when I want to publish my own Tabletop RPG books. 

Where, When, and Ambiance

My desktop is in my room so that's where most the magic happens. It's be interesting to see how working in a coffee shop is. Perhaps having moments of being able to watch the world would create energizing breaks because looking at walls isn't very dynamic. I listen to background sounds and ambiances on Youtube, just random meditation sounds. Nothing too distracting and especially no lyrics. Although sometimes starting out listening to Frank Sinatra's My Way can be good for a boost in energy for living a life with no regrets and doing things in my own unique way.

Part Two

I believe all writing processes are unique. It's good to copy someone else's workflow just to test and see if it works for you, but everything can be changed and tweaked for the individual. I have always used the scattered ideas and bring the chaos to order technique. It lets me see things in any order and any direction, which leaves me less beholden to how things currently are. Everything starts out fluid and from the chaos concrete ideas can form.