My favorite writing tools, apps, blogs, and websites
I have a love/hate relationship with technology. It’s mostly all love until it craps out on me the moment when I need it, but even that being said, I’m a pretty patient person. I remember my dad logging into dial-up before heading upstairs to make a cup of tea, while AOL loaded. I live in the country, and for years high speed wasn’t an option. Still, I adopted the Go-Make-A-Cup-of-Tea-While-It-Loads approach and treated buffering during The Crown as a snack break. A new antenna has me up and running with the rest of the world, so here are my go-to apps for what I do.
Masterclass
It’s no small statement to say that buying a membership to this has changed my life. Watching James Patterson’s Masterclass, three or four years ago, inspired me to write my first novel. His words of wisdom still find ways into my head today years later. I have also enjoyed watching everyone else from Anna Wintour to Penn & Teller to Neil Gaiman. I try to watch at least a few lessons a week, and just like a friend of mine always says, I realize now that, “the more you know, the more you realize you know so little.” Learning from all walks of life helps inspire creativity. As Neil Gaiman said in his Masterclass, “Ideas come from a confluence of things in our lives.” The more we expose ourselves too, the more creative humans we become.
Google Docs
God, to think I made it through college without Google Docs. It’s a miracle. I know I had everything saved on the hard drive of my computer, in multiple versions, but that seems so archaic now. If you’re not familiar, Google Docs is life. More specifically, when I open up a new document (which looks remarkably like every other type of word processing software) everything, and I mean everything, I type is saved in the cloud in real-time. So if I write a novel, and my computer is stolen the next day, I can go to any library, computer or device with an internet connection including the International Space Station, and access my novel. Furthermore, let’s say I need you as an editor or partner. Well, I can share my document with you, and we can work on the same text in real-time, watching each other type on the same screen even if we are on different sides of the planet. Group projects in the library are a thing of the past! If my family is ever looking for everything I’ve ever written, they can find it all in my Google Drive.
Scrivener
Yes, I love Google Docs. Free, accessible, and easy to use, but when writing a novel, 85,000 words can become challenging to manage in one document or 50 different chapter documents, especially when it comes time to format to send to agents, editors, and proofreaders. Ask me how I know. Scrivener eliminates that problem because it was designed for novelists or anyone who is writing huge documents. The learning curve can be intimidating, but the benefits hugely outweigh the time to get to know each other. Think of it like an artist going from paints to Photoshop or a filmmaker going from Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to Final Cut Pro. Is it more complicated? Yes, but it’s worth it. Research, formatting, chapters, scenes, and character files all make accessing information so much faster, and who can put a price on time?
Grammarly
Yes, I know every word processor has a spell check. Yes, I know books go to editors anyway. However, Grammarly does a lot more than check spelling and grammar. It also checks wordiness, readability, flow, vibe, and tautologies which, to be 100% honest with you, I didn’t even know what that was or how to avoid it until I paid for Grammarly. It’s helping me write better and also sends me a score, which, if I say so myself, has improved dramatically. I run every blogpost and every chapter of every book, along with every email I send at work through Grammarly. I’m not perfect, but knowing that and accepting I have mistakes makes it a lot easier to learn how to better.
Vellum
Now, we’re at the varsity level people. For indie publishers like myself, having a quality, polished book is what can separate our stories from our traditional published counterparts. Vellum takes the place of a typesetter. What do I mean by that, you ask? Ever wonder who puts all the extra pages into a book? Not the author? Could be. The ISBN page, dedication, acknowledgments, recipe page, a sample of the new book? Vellum allows you to build the actual book, including the font of the text, chapter headings, and even the little squiggly or line under the chapter heading. In case I haven’t already told you, every single thing that was printed in my last book, I checked, so all of the glory and blame fall to me. Vellum made that possible.
Reedsy
I LOVE THIS WEBSITE. This one, folks, is why I’m published. I found my Amazing editor, Kate Studer, and my incredible cover designer, Caroline Teagle Johnson. Reedsy allowed me to achieve my dream of publishing my work. Until I found this website, I had no idea how to make that dream happen. I’m not a publisher! I’m a history major, introvert, who likes to stay home and garden. I know how to shop, though, and finding a place where I could shop portfolios, check reviews, and message someone I didn’t have to talk to was doable. So doable I gave it a go and sent my first request the very day I found this website. Reedsy took care of all of the icky contracts, and even acted as a third-party payment platform. I’m no stranger to online shopping and that took all of the mystery out of the process.
Fiverr
Similar to Reedsy, Fiverr is online shopping for business cards, logos, and services, including web designers. I run my website, but my logos and even the little signature at the top of my main page, all came from Fiverr, and the best part nothing from Fiverr cost more than $20, hence the name.
KDP Rocket
Now let’s talk marketing. Remember the old saying that you can be a small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? I’d love to be the #1 contemporary romance author on Amazon, but I’m a realist. That’s a big dream, but maybe I can make the top 250 in contemporary island romantic suspense. Didn’t even know that was a category? Me neither. KDP looks at what people are searching for and analyzes, where I have the best chance to improve my rank. Call it playing the odds if you will, but make no mistakes, while this is a life-long dream and I don’t do it for the money, I know this is a business and marketing data plays a critical role in my decision making.
Facebook Ads Manager
Blessing and curse, this puppy’s been in the news a lot lately, and I am by no means an expert. Since attending Syke Warren’s “Anatomy of a Best-Selling Book Launch” seminar at RWA Nationals in NYC, I got a crash course on how to make Facebook ads work for me. I’ll have you know I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself, which is no small feat. Again I’m not a business major and have never taken a single marketing class, but I know how to learn and ask for help. Did you know that there are numerous “how to” lessons on their platform - Blueprint? Did you know that if you have a question, someone from Facebook will chat with you (in my experiences) in no less than 10 minutes? Did you know that they’ll call you upon request and walk you through everything or that you get your own personalized teacher who you can conference with regularly all for free? Did you know you could set a daily budget of $1? To paraphrase Skye Warren, selling a product is like farming. You don’t just plant a crop and hope for the best, then keep repeating the same mistakes in other fields. You add fertilizer, amend the soil, water, and coach the plants along. Think of advertising like fertilizer or fishing bait. Sure, you might have a great product, but if you only tell your family and friends, no one else will ever know!
VEED
Thank you to VEED for reaching out to me personally to let me know about their great line of services. I wish I had known about them when I had to transcribe hours of video narration. While they have so many features, the one that stands out to me is audio-to-text transcription. Using their service you can record writing and have it transcribed for you into text, which is a wonderful use of time and a great accommodation if writing on the computer or using a screen poses a challenge. I’m looking forward to using this in the future!
Motionbox
Thank you to Motionbox for reaching to me personally to let me know about their great line of services. Motionbox is a video design platform that features an arsenal of tools that cuts down the effort of creating any visual content. It features a library of templates that can be used as-is or may serve as the foundation of your design. It also has a collection of fonts and multimedia files that include audio, images, and videos, most of which you may freely use for your project. Motionbox is quite easy to use, thanks to its drag-and-drop interface that brings creativity out of its users. With features such as music visualization, GIF resizer, video trimmer, and video calendar, it offers an unlimited possibility when it comes to design.
TED talks
I love this website. Because of technology, we have access to the wisdom of our world’s greatest minds. I listen to a TED talk every day. I have learned about beekeeping strategies by creating a genome of honey to the power of vulnerability to the common denominators of some of the greatest minds of the 20th century. You’re never going to know everything, and hearing experts speak and digest their most significant findings into a 20-minute lecture for us for free will leave you inspired. Here’s one of my more recent favorites.
I love this TED talk and found a lot of insights into my way of doing things. I hope you enjoy it too.
Did I miss a website? I’m always on the lookout for a new thing. Drop me a comment below about what website, app, or blog you couldn’t live without.
Onward with technology!
Kathryn
