Being a successful writer has a lot to do with natural talents. But that doesn’t mean you should stop developing your skills of creative expression. Writers can always become better by becoming more productive and organized. No need to waste valuable time searching for the best tools to make writers more successful. Following is a list that will help you start increasing your productivity right away!
1. SquareSpace Note
There is hardly a writer who hasn’t started using Evernote, but not everyone knows about this great app that enables the user to sync all notes with Twitter, Dropbox, Evernote, and more. Enter your ideas in a note and send it to another program with a single swipe. Notes are important because ideas keep coming all the time, but you won’t always have access to your documents whenever your creative juices start flowing.
2. HT Recorder
This tool will enable you to record not only voice memos, but important conversations and conferences as well. The ability to capture just about anything in audio format will help you increase your productivity because no idea will be forgotten. Instead of wasting time taking notes, you can simply produce high-quality audio and use it later to elaborate your ideas.
3. Listly
This tool enables you to create lists of articles that are important for your work. You could use it to document your own online publications, but you can also collect inspiring articles that will form the foundation of your future work.
4. Streaks
The simplest things are often the most effective. That’s the case with Streaks, a tool that enables you to track your goals by putting an X on the calendar every time you complete a task. You will hate seeing blank spaces so much you’ll easily gain motivation to accomplish all daily goals.
5. MindNode
This tool is helpful when you need to gather your thoughts. Every writer understands how important it is to visually represent ideas to combine them into a strong concept. With MindNode, you can create cool mindmaps that will organize your thoughts in the most intuitive manner.
6. Writers Cafe
Publish and share your writing with readers of Writers Cafe and get reviews and advice from thousands of other writers. Search publishers, literary agents, and literary magazines.
7. Synonym-Finder
This tool helps you find the synonyms to make your writing more interesting and avoid repeating the same words.
The process of writing is based on creative thinking, but still involves a lot of discipline and organizational skills. When you start using the right tools to increase your effectiveness, your work will stand a much greater chance of reaching a wider audience.
Note From KMW: And be sure to check out these great lists of book writing software from Dave Chesson and Jerry Jenkins.
Dear Sandra and Katie,
may I suggest one tool that has made my life a lot easier? Please check out the Timeline Project . It’s turning outlining into something close to fun. (Who would have thought that was possible!) The software is free and is one of the few programs that works on Linux machines as well as on Windows/Mac.
Check out this example from their website: .
Janey
Thanks, Janey!
It’s a great tool!
Oops! The submission script automatically removed the links to the Timeline Project. How cheecky! Let me try to fool the system:
h … p colon slash slash thetimelineproj dot sourceforge dot net
WOW! These are great, Sandra. I’m trying out 2, 6, 7, and 9 today. Thanks for sharing them!
Elke, I would love to hear your experience with them! Please share 🙂
Thank you for this list! I didn’t know about any of these tools before now.
Tina, you’re welcome. Hope some of these tools will be useful for you!
The Timeline thing Janey mentioned could come in handy for me. I have one taped above my desk right now for a science fiction universe.
Doing one by hand for my historical projects though, would be way too time-consuming.
Add Hemingway App to the list — http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ I bought the one you can use on a pc offline.
Thanks, Anna!
I will check the tool.
Hi Sandra! Thank you so much for the article. You get a very good list! I add it to my bookmarks. I’m still a novice but so glad to found this useful information. What should I add? You wrote about synonyms, I think that antonyms nice complement any prose. Can be used for example – http://www.antonymsfor.com/. But I’ll be grateful,if you offer other resources.
Decent list Sandra.
The word-variety options struck a chord……and ironically so:
It was the intent when creating The Representative to repeat the use of certain words, in an effort to string the whole text together.
Again – considerate suggestions.
I enjoy using FreeMind for mind mapping.
sourceforge (dot) net/projects/freemind/
It’s a shame, but I have never used the mind maps. I should give it a try!
I enjoy using Scrivener when writing, I also use mind mapping software called Inspiration. Scrivener has some great facilities, you’re absolutely right when you say that that the right tools help you be more efficient and more productive.
Thanks, Lesley!
I’ve never heard of many of these so I am going to have to explore a little. I have also found the website authorsden.com very useful.
I am a writer (print), I developed a very popular free app called Story Turbo for story boarding, composition, arrangement, etc, with multiple notes and images, on a huge zooming canvas. It has all sorts of benefits. It even exports as web pages.
Get it at http://storyturbo.com
There is a pay what you want process on there, if you are skint, get it from other big download sites, it has been around a while. Thanks.
WOW! What a fantastic list although I haven’t heard of most of them. But I will check them out. Thanks for sharing
Wow, I hadn’t heard of most of these. But I’ll have to check them out. The MindNode in particular sounds great, and the Timeline Project sounds awesome, too. Thanks so much for sharing these.
I thought you should know that OhLife is shutting down as of today.
I’ve just downloaded SquareSpace Note. Can’t wait to check it out. I use Query Tracker (http://www.querytracker.net) and Writer’s Digest (http://www.writersdigest.com) to research agents.
Another site’s Literary Rejections: quite a definitive one in fact.
thanks for the list
Probably great if you are using Apple products…I stopped using Apple years ago. I will just have to keep looking.