Writing tools I can't live without

 

Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

As an independent author with a full time job and mother of two under four, efficiency is imperative. Things have changed so much since I first self-published back in 2003! Back then, it was vanity presses. And then again in 2010, we mostly just had Microsoft Word and InDesign to make files for Smashwords and CreateSpace. I’m so excited by the opportunities we have today, and want to share some of my key tools.

Bright Bird Press stationery

https://brightbirdpress.com 

The note pads, journals, and notebooks from Bright Bird Press are made specifically by a writer for writers. Everything is undated, so it doesn’t matter when you begin or when you have to stop, you can just open another page and keep going. I use the writing sprint sticky notes to help me keep track of my stats no matter which journal I picked up. There are tear off daily notepad sheets helping you focus on your writing goals for the day. There’s a popular year-long planner that allows you to track two fiction projects, break your goals down into monthly and weekly tasks, and provides quarterly self-care reminders specific to writers. I love this stationery set and just know you will too. 

Notion.so

https://notion.so 

I’ve been a pantser my entire life, but when I realized I wanted to make a series out of one of my books, I realized I needed a place to do some reverse engineering. Notion.so is a document repository with some light relational database features. There are kanban, calendar, gantt, meeting notes, etc. It’s a free service, so if you’re looking for a way to organize the business of writing, I’ve loved Notion.so.

I use Notion.so as my story wiki to hold all the metadata about my stories. Marketing blurbs, back cover copy, elevator pitches, character profiles, plot summary and story beats all live on template pages I created in my Notion. I have a promotions calendar, table to calculate estimated royalties from paid ads, etc.

ProWritingAid

https://prowritingaid.com 

Making sure I have a clean file is so important when it comes to saving editing fees. People seem to fall under two camps: Grammarly and ProWritingAid. I like the latter, because it has extensions for your browser and Microsoft Word. It allows you to create your own dictionary and you can pick your grammar style, whether it’s academic or creative. I love knowing that when I hand off my draft to my editor, I will have caught most of the obvious problems, saving my editor’s time to worry about the content instead. I went all-in and bought the premium lifetime license using a deal from AppSumo.

Atticus.io

https://atticus.io 

This tool changed my life. Promised to always be a one-time fee, this tool has a writing mode and formatting mode. When in writing mode, you can write in the browser or via the downloadable app. You can create reusable pages, so if you have a standard author bio, newsletter sign up, back cover blurbs, etc, you can create once and use them across all your books. Updating is super simple as well. Just update what you need, then push the changes to all your books. This was a huge time-saver! And in formatting mode, you can use their existing templates or create one from scratch. I’m planning to have a template for each series of books.

Otherwise, if you’re looking for a more traditional alternative for formatting your books, I like Affinity Publisher. It’s a one-time purchase that’s a great alternative to InDesign, if you’ve used that tool in the past. You won’t get the benefit of reusable pages, but at least you’ll save money.

Canva

https://canva.com 

I’ve been a Canva user since 2014, but only recently became a pro user to take advantage of their scheduling tools. I use Canva to make my book covers, character profiles, newsletter and marketing graphics, and also schedule content for my Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Tiktok accounts. Their template library has exploded, making it really easy to schedule content weeks in advance, freeing up your time to get back to writing. You can make reels, stories, and regular posts… I’ve also made book plates, stickers, posters, and t-shirt designs, too. It’s a great, easy-to-use tool that has made my graphics generation process so much easier.

So that’s my core writing toolkit! Journals and stationery from Bright Bird Press. Business and series planning with Notion. Pre-editing via ProWritingAid. Writing and formatting via Atticus. Graphics via Canva. It took a lot of trial and error for me to get to this core set, so I hope I’ve saved you some time in the process. Let me know what you think of these tools! You can find me on Instagram as @worderella.

Belinda Kroll writes sweet and cozy Victorian fantasy. You can find her on Instagram as @worderella or via her website at https://worderella.com. She was the 2017 winner of the Self-Publishing Review award for her Civil War fiction novel, THE LAST APRIL. 

Creative Outlets

 

Happy Sunday, all! Today's topic on the SFF Seven is The Hobby: What do you make when you aren't making words?

In all honesty, there hasn't been much time lately for my creativity to flourish anywhere but with writing. However, I have quite a few creative outlets, and I dip into them when I'm not writing. It's just that writing is all I've done this year *insert OMG face.* 

I've never met a house I couldn't decorate, or a used piece of furniture or artwork I couldn't refinish or repurpose. I've made a lot of things by hand, everything from clothes to fancy shower curtains to bedspreads to lampshades to headboards. I'm not too shabby with a power tool either. 

This winter, I'm determined to take a break and do some home decorating. I have a couple pieces of furniture I want to paint and try some gold leafing on, and I need to finish my office design and redecorate a hall bath. Maybe I'll share pictures here when I'm done.

I also love to cook, and I toy with photography. Cooking sprees seem to be most prominent when I have writer's block. Photography is more of a relaxing hobby than anything. I get very focused on the framing within the lens, and then I love the editing process too. Some of my photographs are hanging in my home, and I've taken headshots, engagement pictures, and graduation pics for several people. It's a lot of fun, and something I wish I had more time to work on.

How about you? What are some of your hobbies?

Top 5 Ways to Be a Happy Writer

I not at all comfortable pretending I know what it takes to be a success as an author. So instead, I think we'll chat a little about what makes me happy as a writer. A subtle shift, maybe, but an important one, I think.

In no particular order, I present Marcella's top 5 ways to be a happy writer.

1.  Writer know thyself.

Know what works for you. Know your process. Know your style, your voice, your genre. Know how your particular weird, creative brain works. If you don't know any of those things, find out. How? By trying all kinds of tools and methods and story types. You find out whether you're a plotter or a pantser by trying to plot a book or by through out your carefully laid out outline and seeing how it goes. You'll figure that one out pretty quickly. 

What's in it for you to know thyself: Trust. You learn to trust yourself and your process. You're harder to derail when a new workshop comes along and tries to tell you that you've been doing it wrong.

2. Create community.

Writing, by necessity, happens in solitude. Writers tend to be just normal enough that few people are willing to off you that 'oh, they're an *artist*' pass, yet writers are categorically odd enough to *need* that pass. Don't believe me? Go visit your browser search history and get back to me.  The best people suited to understand and commiserate with us are other writers. Not our families. Gods. Not our poor, beleaguered families. Your community need not be huge. A few other writers you can talk with about story arcs, business strategies, and writer drama will be enough to keep you from feeling like you've been chained up in an ivory tower.

3. Create accountability.

Use your community to help one another, if that works for you. If a little competition gets your writing blood going, set up a sprint room where other writers can join and you can compare word counts between sprints. Or set up a regular meeting time to write with another writer who wants the comfort of knowing someone else out there is writing, too, but without the pressure of comparing numbers. Meet at a coffee shop to sit together and mutually ignore one another while you write and drink your preferred beverages. While it helps to not always be alone, it really helps to know that someone else in the world is counting on you at the same time you're counting on them. It's common to find we'll do for someone else what we won't for ourselves.

4. Make space.

Make space in your day to day for writing. Make space inside you for deep work - which is a function of focus - which is attained with training. Make space inside your head for learning more, whether from classes or from other writers, or from reading other people's stories. Make physical space for writing, too. Whether it's a specific seat in the house, or a table, or a room, or a local dive bar. You need a place you can rely on where you can go and put the rest of the world on a shelf while you attend to creating your worlds. 

5. Be unapologetically you.

Write what sets your imagination alight. Never forget there's someone in the world making incredible bank writing about sexy, space-going dinosaurs. There's no reason you can't create something completely implausible and weird. In fact, I'll argue that you should. The moment you begin censoring yourself or pulling back out of fear over what you want to say, you begin to die as a writer and as a person. Listen. Just because you write something, it doesn't mean you have to share it with anybody. Allow. No limits. Not while you're writing. Those are second thoughts are for later. When you're editing and deciding what content will and will not be seen by other eyes.