Must-have Apps and Resources for Writers

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Introduction

As a writer, you are probably someone full of ideas on your mind and a lot of desire to put them on paper. I know writing is always a difficult and complex skill. Don’t even get me started on writing a whole book. As I said in another blog post, I know it is A LOT, so we are here to try to help you out and assist you in the process.

So, here are some tools and resources to help you in the arduous (but totally worth it) journey of writing your book!

For Proofreading

For proofreading, I recommend Grammarly or Hemingway Editor. Both have chrome extensions that you can install and they run extremely smoothly. They are my favorite resources and the ones I use for everything related to proofreading.

Some other tools that I have not tried personally, but that seem to be extremely useful and friendly, are Wordrake, Grammark, Paper Rater (they check for plagiarism too!), Pro Writing Aid, Slick Writer, and Ginger.

All of these are free and automated, but if you are looking for a real person to proofread your work, check out Boom Essays, Essay Roo, Scribendi, and Thriving Writer.

For Writing

For creative writing, the most popular resources are Hive Word and The Write Practice.

For writing in general, try Pocket, Google Keep, or just your notes. They are all available as applications for your phone or websites that you open on your computer. You never know when a new idea will spark so just make sure you have one of these tools to write everything down.

Something I have tried in the past was saying my ideas out loud and have an app or software transcribe them/type the words. Some people work better this way because they can express a lot of different thoughts at once without having to worry about typing them up at the same pace.

I normally use my phone and computer for that, but there are other online software that can help out, such as Descript and Nuance.

For Inspiration

For inspiration, try Literary Hub, Tor, Writer’s Digest, Poets.org, Literary Marketplace, and Medium. I have used some of these and can say for a fact that they help a lot with brainstorming! They are good places for inspiration, but you can also find opinion pieces and more. With that much content, something will spark an idea in your mind.

You can always check our Pinterest page for Inspiration and Writing Prompts. I have selected a lot of fun pins that (hopefully) will help.

For Marketing and Design

Marketing is a crucial part of any author’s career, whether they like it or not. In fact, marketing is so important that I already have specific blog posts to share with all of you in the future.

But just for the sake of getting started, if you want to learn the basics of marketing, check out Hubspot and its numerous resources.

For design (social media posts, freebies, etc.), try using Canva. It is extremely user-friendly and you don’t need ANY design-related background in order to create great pieces of content. This is because Canva has endless templates for pretty much any type of design you are looking for.

Many people know Wattpad as a great platform for readers who are looking for new and uncovered stories, which is true. However, as an author, you can take advantage of Wattpad to build your fan base. You can share short stories, single chapters, a series of drafts, and any type of work you want! Besides that, you can interact with readers, get a lot of feedback, reply to them, and start building a community around your stories. I simply love Wattpad as a reader and as a marketer because I know it has potential for many things!

A tool I have recently discovered is Amazon Author Central. To make a long story short, it will let you edit your author profile and reach more readers, among other benefits. Definitely something worthy of taking a look at!

BookBub works in a way that is similar to Wattpad in the sense that it is a great platform for readers, but it can also be used as a marketing tool for writers. I joined BookBub a while ago and signed up to receive their emails, and they are great! It is a good platform for community building and I have a lot of interesting articles coming my way, so even if you do not use it for marketing, you can use it for inspiration.

Next Steps

You don’t need to use, or even test, all of these tools. As always in publishing, something that works for you does not necessarily work for the next person. It is just a matter of testing the tools you believe are useful to you, and then find the one that matches your work and style the best.

This post is a great way to get started, but there are endless tools out there, so it may be beneficial to you to do some research on your own.

Are there any other tools you want to know about? Are there other resources you have used and liked? Leave a comment below with suggestions if you have any!