Saturday Matinée: 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 “jalapeño.” 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.