Saturday Matinee: What Are Your Favorite Tools?
I’ve written about a lot of tools for writers, some that I love and use regularly and some that I just find interesting and want to share with others who might get some use out of them. I’ll keep doing that, of course, but I’m always looking out for tools I either haven’t heard of before or new ways to look at and use tools I have heard of before.
I’m going to start getting in the habit of posting questions on weekends — maybe not every weeken, but now and again. So what better place to start than with tools? What tools do you love? What makes writing a joy — and how? What is indispensable for you? Let me — and the rest of the site’s readers — know in the comments.
I find Phrase Express invaluable. I use it in several ways: to remember URLs, for example, and to correct spelling—I can’t stand spelling (for example) Guantánamo as “Guantanamo” or jalapeño as “jalapeno.” Word does those corrections, but only in Word—Phrase Express does them everywhere.
Another great tool for collecting notes is Evernote, and the new Evernote 3 is especially powerful.
A great tool from yesteryear is Symantec’s GrandView, a highly capable (DOS) outliner. I’m now checking out several Windows outliners to see which works best for me.
Both of the above tools are free, BTW.
I love Evernote, although I’m still working out how best to integrate it with my overall system.
Phrase Express looks interesting — I might have to give it a try. I’ve been using something similar called Texter, which allows phrases and snippets of text to be called up with a keystroke. I’m finding that a lot of the time, I type faster than it does it’s work, so I trigger the command and type on and the text pops into the middle of whatever I was typing several words later. Maybe Phrase Express is a better way to solve the same problem.
I use vim – a revision of the UNIX vi editor. I have written half a dozen books with it. Simple, efficient, and keeps me concentrating on the content instead of everything else.
Recently, I am using Google Docs more and more to keep my writing synchronized among various computers.