My favorite writing tools

NaNoWriMo is less than a month away, and every year I take a new writing tool for a test drive, so to speak. Sometimes, my use of it lasts less than a week before I put it away and move on to what I know works – other times, I find something new and adopt it into my little writing toolbox.

I haven’t yet decided on what I’ll try out this year, but I thought I’d put together a list of things I’ve tried or discovered in the past.  As a working writer, I look for things that I can depend on to help, and not complicate, my writing process.  These are the information sources I’ve found to be reliable, the software that works best for me, and the communities that give good and well-thought criticism and encouragement without either sugar-coating or trolling.

The Blogs:

Among the “experts”, “gurus”, and “guaranteed methods” out there, these are the real thing.  They’re the ones that are in the trenches, doing the day-to-day hard work of Getting Things Published.

• Query Shark and Janet Reid: Ms. Reid is a literary agent. Her job is to get books published, and she can’t get a book published that won’t sell.  This is your inside look at what’s working on the publishing market right now and what’s not.  Her secondary blog, Query Shark, is a look at the how-tos (and how-nots) of writing query letters that will get your book read and get you an agent.  As someone who had no idea what a query letter should look like, this blog was like an epiphany.

• The Rejectionist: Before your book (or query letter) gets to the agent,  it must pass first through the assistant!  This blog is about the travails of an agency assistant as she sorts through the piles of manuscripts, good and bad.

• Editorial Anonymous: As someone who’s worked as an editorial assistant, yes…this is what an editor’s job looks like these days. Eeek!

The Software:

I’ve tried “novel writing” software in the past, things like Liquid Story Binder SE – I spent more time playing with the little toys on it (story-board, character sheets, etc.) than doing actual writing, and abandoned it pretty quick.  The following are the tools that have actually helped my productivity and organization rather than hindering it.

• • Firefox with the Zotero addon: This is more for non-fiction and academic writing and bibliography purposes, but the Zotero addon is one of the best tools I’ve found for collecting research materials.  I prefer it even to Evernote.

• • Q10:  I am easily distracted. Q10 is the closest thing you can get to a typewriter on the computer, and therefore an excellent distraction muffler: Just you and your words.  It’s a portable (runnable from a thumb-drive) full-screen text editor which defaults to black screen with orange letters – which is much easier on the eyes – and the display colors are customizable to your liking.  (WriteRoom is the Mac equivalent)

• • GoogleDocs (and the GDocs Sync addon for OpenOffice.org): I have a tendency to write-on-the-go.  Having a way to access my documents no matter where I am, and from whatever computer I might be working on, is essential.  The Google Docs word processor provides both an online backup for my writing and a way to edit documents no matter where I am, even on borrowed computers.  My word-processor of choice is Open Office, and there’s a handy-dandy syncing addon for it that will make sure that the document saved on GDocs and the document saved on my hard-drive are the same.

• • Sonar 3 Submission Tracking Software: I don’t have the patience or the time to set up a database to track my stories, where I submit them, where they’re rejected, etc.   Sonar 3 is totally free and easy to use to keep track of those submissions.  It may not have the dramatic effect of Stephen King’s Rejection-Spike-on-the-Wall , but you’ll know exactly where that story went, when you sent it, and when you should send it out somewhere else, and when you’ve got multiple stories out in the fray at once, it’s a great help.

Communities:

In a writing community, you want people who will offer useful critiques for your work, encouraging you to keep trying while not being afraid to tell you when something doesn’t work.  You also don’t want to be praised where no praise is due, as some “overly-nice, but not useful” reviewers can occasionally be.

• • MediaBistro Forums: MediaBistro is primarily a place to post free-lance ads and jobs, the MediaBistro forums can be really helpful regarding advice on the publishing industry, and are browsed by working agents and publishers (including Janet Reid and Nathan Bransford).

• • LibraryThing: LibraryThing is a bibliophile and book cataloging community, and one of the best book/writing/publishing communities existing on the web.  I’ve found that if you post a link to something you’ve written on the forums there, you will get people going to read it, and you will get useful reviews and critiques.  I cannot express how wonderful these people are.  They’re really that great, and they might not be professional publishers, writers, agents, or editors, but they are something even more important. They’re Readers, the audience you’re actually doing all that writing for, and they know what works just as well as the pros.

• • NaNoWriMo:  The NaNoWriMo forum is above-board the best writing community I’ve found on the web. You have there a collection of working writers, successful writers, publishers, editors, complete writing novices, and folks who just do nanowrimo for a lark, and never intend to publish anything.  But, they are all writers, and they all care enough about what they do to commit to the novel-in-a-month format, and they all want to help other people do it too.