One of the biggest hassles of traditional journalistic writing is quoting sources. I don’t even knowhow they did it in “the old days”, when reporters just had notebooks – shorthand, I suppose) but these  days we’re lucky enough to be able to make digital recordings of our sources. Since I do most of my interviews by phone, I use Skype and record all my calls using a free plugin called Callgraph.

So I know I always have a complete record of every source interview, but I still have to dig around in them to find just the right quote, and I still have to transcribe the quote from the recording. For formal interviews, like my Q&A with The Big Burn author Timothy Egan, I need to transcribe the whole interview (even though most of it ends up getting cut to fit the assigned space).

Using a traditional mp3 player or audio software to do this is an exercise in either futility or saintly patience. Since most people talk faster than I can type, I would have to manually drag the slider back and forth, or use fast forward and rewind buttons repeatedly, to get all of a long quote down, let alone an entire interview.

So I was pleased to find Express Scribe, a transcription assistance program that runs in the background and allows you to use your function buttons to control audio playback (e.g. F4 is stop/pause, F7 is rewind, etc.). Since it doesn’t need to be an active window to be controlled, I don’t need to go back and forth between it and my word processor – I just hit F4 when I need a minute to catch up, and hit F9 (play) when I’m ready to start again.

Another nice feature is that I can set playback speed to rates much higher than typical speech (which I never use) or much slower. It normalizes the pitch so that you don’t get Chipmunk-esque screeching or ultra-baritone drawling. For longer transcriptions, I set it at about 45% playback speed, which matches the speed I type at. Of course, everyone sounds like a drunken idiot at that speed – everything’s slllluuuurrrrrrrrreedddd – but it’s a small price to pay. Basically, if I don’t have to take a break, I can transcribe anything at just over twice real-time, so a half-hour interview takes a few minutes more than an hour – not too shabby.

Here’s the kicker: Express Scribe is free! In grad school, my department spend thousands of dollars for a tape transcription machine – Express Scribe does the same thing, better, for nothing. They do try to up-sell you to other products in their lineup, but frankly, I don’t need any of the company’s other products (mostly more advanced dictation and transcription software for corporate use).

If interviews are at all a part of your workflow, download Express Scribe right now. It may not be the flashiest piece of software out there, but it does exactly what it needs to do to get the job done. Highly recommended.

Hope the new year is treating everyone well!

As you may have noticed, I’ve been posting very sporadically over the last year. It’s entirely possible, though I haven’t counted, that I had more guest posts in 2009 than posts by me!

The good news is, nothing bad happened to me. 2009 was perhaps the busiest year I have ever experienced, and I put in motion several major projects that are just starting to take off now. Among other things, I accepted a position as a regular contributor at Outright Entrepreneur, writing about issues related to freelancing. Outright Entrepreneur is a project of Outright.com, the online bookkeeping system I’ve written about on this blog (Take Charge of Quarterly Estimated Tax Payments with Outright). The marketing director there saw my post here (and another at FreelanceSwitch) and after a short correspondence asked me to write for them. There’s a lesson there for anyone who’s wondering why freelancers should blog…

In addition to starting my new gig with Outright Entrepreneur, I also pitched, built, and launched an ebook publishing platform at Stepcase Lifehack. I wrote the first ebook, Back to Basics Productivity, based on a popular series of posts I’d written the year before on personal productivity. I also edited the second ebook (forthcoming this month), and solicited contributions for the third. I’m wearing just about all the hats – managing editor, marketing director, acquisitions editor, copy editor, layout and production – so you know it’s keeping me busy.

And so on – life happens.

The better news is, I haven’t abandoned this site. I love The Writer’s Technology Companion – the other stuff is my work, but this is my baby. I can’t keep up the pace I set in the first year of the site’s existence, when I was posting 3 posts a week most weeks, and sometimes 5 or 6. But I’ll try to post on an at least semi-regular basis over the coming months.

Another interesting lesson: Posting here was never all that hard, but a weird thing happens when you get pulled away for a while. The bar raises – not “out there” in the audience, but in your head. The longer I didn’t post, the harder it got to post. I felt… I felt like I owed my audience something special for their patience. And I didn’t have the time for that. Coming back to the site now means I’ve had to really come to terms with the imperfection that a busy schedule imposes. It means posting shorter pieces (and that really goes against my nature…) and posting sporadically and not always making a Grand Statement.

And yet another lesson: Though it’s been over a year since this site was regularly updated, I’ve lost almost no subscribers and, even more surprisingly, very little traffic. I attribute this to a conscious decision made early on to write posts that would come up in Google and other search engines, following the strategy I outlined here. A lot of the content on WTC is “evergreen” – that is, people are constantly searching for help on the topics I cover. And when they do, my content comes up.

And that’s the bottom line: to write what you can and have an audience for what you write. What more could I ask?

See ya soon!

Image by ClawzCTR via Flickr

One of the things I’ve had the hardest time figuring out since my freelance writing began producing a significant income was how to manage my estimated quarterly tax payments. For the time being, I’ve been over-paying my taxes at my day job and hoping that it was enough to cover the taxes I wasn’t paying on my freelance income. Last year my overpaid taxes just barely covered my freelance taxes – assuming my income keeps climbing at the rate it is (and especially once I start scaling back my day job) this jury-rigged system isn’t going to work for much longer.

Enter Outright, a free online service to help freelancers manage their taxes. Using Outright is fairly simple – you just enter in your income as it comes in, and your expenses as they go out. Around the end of each quarter, Outright sends you a reminder saying your upcoming taxes are about due, and figures them out for you (including Social Security – both employee’s and employer’s contributions) and Medicare). Where several methods exist to figure out your taxes, Outright uses the one that requires the highest payment, on the principle that  its better to overpay a little now and get it back at the end of the text year than to underpay and get hit with fees.

[NOTE: Outright is designed for the US tax system and, as of right now, does not support non-US taxpayers.]

What makes Outright really shine, though, is its integration with other services. On the “income” side, Outright integrates with online bookkeeping system FreshBooks, importing paid invoices every night and updating your tax estimate. On the “expenses” side, you can track receipts using Shoeboxed, an online system that allows you to scan receipts into the system so you can dispose of hard copy (paid versions even allow you to mail your receipts in and have them scanned for you).

Altogether, Outright, FreshBooks, and Shoeboxed create a full accounting system freelancers – particularly at low– and mid-range incomes. Outright scales pretty well, though – as your tax needs get more complex and demand the attention of a bookkeeper or accountant, you can easily give them access – a couple clicks and the system sends an email with a link to set up third-party access to your books.

With a system like this, there’s no longer any excuse to avoid paying your quarterly estimated tax payments. Entry-level versions of FreshBooks and Shoeboxed are free, as is Outright – why not set them all up and give it a try?

Image via Wikipedia

For most people, “becoming a writer” means first and foremost getting published. And really, getting published for pay. That first sale is a watershed moment for the fledgling writer, a moment of validation that you have something to say that other people want to hear.

These days, getting published is less and less of a challenge – but getting that first paycheck can be harder than ever. The Internet has opened up a huge range of opportunities for people to publish their work free or for insultingly low rates – blogging, article sites, search engine optimization, and so on. While these can be great ways to start building a reputation for yourself and even earn a couple of dollars here and there, they simply are not the basis of a strong writing career, and the low barrier to entry makes it hard to feel like you’ve made much of an accomplishment.

National markets – whether websites, magazines, or book publishers – with editors, production staff, and marketing departments are what we’re usually looking for in terms of publication, and they tend to pay something at least within the ballpark of a decent amount – something we can feel positive about. Unfortunately, these markets are highly competitive at the best of times, and getting more so as an increasing number of publishers fail or scale back in response to tough economic times – not just the recession, but increasing postage costs and paper costs have hurt publishers at  the same time that audiences have increasingly turned to free entertainments on the Internet.

All that said, there is still a large market for professional writing. Every magazine on the newsstand, every book in the bookstore, and almost every A– and B-list website on the Internet needs high-quality professional content and is produced by someone willing to pay good authors to produce it. And the good news is, once you get past the first couple of sales, you can start to relax – first of all, you’ll feel more comfortable about your own marketability, and second, you’ll have a growing body of “clips” (samples) to impress future editors with.

Start at the top

The process of getting into print has several purposes for the budding writer. One is to give that sense of validation, and the hunger for this often drives writers to make un-smart decisions early on, like publishing for free or low pay for too long under the guise of “paying dues”.

A more important function of early publication is to see where you stand in the writing field – how good are you really? This is a lot more important than validation, at least as far as your career is concerned, as the less time you waste publishing beneath your level, the sooner you can earn the freedom to follow your muse wherever it leads you.

So my advice is this: send your first pitches or submissions to the highest-level outlets you can find. That is, if you’re writing about politics, pitch Harper’s or Atlantic Monthly or The Nation; if you’re writing about sports, pitch Sports Illustrated; if you write short stories, pitch The Paris Review. You will probably get rejected – which isn’t such a bad thing in and of itself, as failure usually teaches us pretty important lessons. If/When you are turned down, turn to the next highest-status outlet in your niche, then the next-highest, and so on down the “totem pole” until you get a piece accepted.

The idea is to start at the highest possible level. If you don’t have any clips yet, refer editors to your blog, or ask some respected bloggers in your niche if they could use a guest post by you (most will accept, since most don’t pay anything and have little to lose) and use those posts as clips. If you’re submitting finished manuscripts, don’t worry about the lack of clips – have a great cover letter and a great opening, so your material can speak for itself.

This takes time, and may well engender a bit of disappointment (though if you keep telling yourself you’re querying top markets you aren’t likely to get into, the sting of rejection might be more manageable). But far too often people who start with the no-pay, easy markets stay there for way too long, uncertain of themselves and unwilling to move out of their safe zone – even when their writing merits much wider attention (and more pay).

Next Time: Building on the first sale to create a platform for yourself.

Image via Wikipedia

So, you want to be a writer.

It can be daunting to know how to get started as a writer. A lot of us feel we can write, know we can write – or better yet, know we can’t not write. We love the unfolding of stories beneath our pens, the spray of words across a computer screen, the sound of imagery narrated in our heads. We are story-tellers, truth-seekers, teachers, and sharers of life’s joys and sorrows, beauties and uglinesses.

But there’s a huge gap between scribbling our thoughts in a journal or writing a couple of essays in a college class and actually being a writer. I know I’ll be contradicted by… well, by everyone on the Internet trying to make a buck selling you their Super-Amazing Get-Rich-Quick-Writing-from-Home System for only $97 or $297 or $497, but while writing may come easily to you (and it doesn’t especially matter if it doesn’t), actually being a writer is hard, hard work. Not the hardest ever, but hard enough.

I don’t say this to discourage you, or to test your mettle, or anything like that. I want you to be a writer. Or I want you to at least have given it a shot, to have at least tried it on – better that you try and fail than to not become a writer out of fear, laziness, or simple lack of knowledge. But if you’re going to become a writer, I’d like you to be prepared for the long haul, and all those scammy “anyone can write” programs and products do a piss-poor job of preparing would-be writers for the job of actually writing.

So this series, which I intend to be 4 posts long (but that’s subject to change if I feel like it), will look at what it takes to get into writing as a professional pursuit. The goal is to take you from getting started to the point where you’re just getting your feet under you and “standing up” in the writing world. I hope you won’t quit your job and hole up with this blog and a stack of legal pads – writing is a dangerous career and all writers have to make sure they have a steady, reliable income, whether at a “day job”, through an established network of publishers and editors, or via a constant stream of freelance commercial work.

Building Up Your Chops

The first step you need to take if you’re going to become a writer is to build up the basic skills you’ll need to write well. If you dream of becoming a writer, you might already feel you write pretty well – get over yourself. While you may have a way with words, there is no writer who can’t do with a little improvement (read in most cases: “a lot of improvement”) .

Learning to write well is more than just learning command of grammar, structure, and narration – though those are all important. On top of that, you need to learn the jargon of your new industry – what a “dek”, “lede”, and “nut graf” are; the difference between a novella and a novelette; the ins and outs of direct submissions vs. using an agent; how to write a query letter or proposal; how to identify an appropriate market for your work; and so on.

That’s not to say you  shouldn’t be writing while you’re learning. By all means, write! But make sure you’re working on the other stuff too. Taking writing classes and workshops, reading books about writing, and blogging are all ways to build up your basic writing chops – get into them!

Take classes

If you have the time and money, you might consider pursuing a college degree in creative writing or journalism. While the jury’s out on whether these programs are a fast-track to fame and riches – or even to publication – the skills you learn will certainly help you in whatever path you decide to pursue as a writer.

However, a college degree is by no means essential – plenty of writers, even most writers, don’t have a degree in writing, and many don’t have any degrees at all.

But the classroom experience can be quite useful – you’ll get some feedback (at least from your instructor; students are supposed to give feedback but somewhat notoriously most do not, or give useless feedback) and you’ll have ample opportunity to push your skills into unknown territory.

Your local community college probably has dozens of writing classes you can take for usually rock-bottom process. Semester-long for-credit courses at the community college I teach at run about $130.

Community colleges, and many universities as well, also offer shorter not-for-credit courses through their adult extension programs. These courses might meet only once or twice a week for 6 weeks or every other Wednesday for two months or whatever. Because they are intended for adults they often offer courses in the evenings and on weekends to accommodate working schedules.

Other options include the Learning Annex if they have it in your city, local writing conferences (which often offer workshops as part of the program), or short programs offered nationally with 2–4 weeks residency.

Books

These are some of my favorite books on writing, the ones I’ve found most useful over the years.

• William Zinsser, On Writing Well: This book is my go-to book for writerly style. With clear, likeable language, Zinsser spells out how to craft solid, readable, and stylish prose. This book is a joy to read, and I find myself “dipping in” quite regularly when I need a dose of inspiration.
• Stephen King: On Writing: Easily one of the best books ever about the process of writing. You don’t have to be a fan of King (I’m not) to recognize that the man knows how to write in ways that reach deep into the hearts and souls of readers. Here he gives advice both on how to reach your audience and how to structure your life as a writer – all wrapped up in an inspiring and at times heartbreaking auto-biography of King’s own writing journey.
• Robert Bly: Secrets of a Freelance Writer: Although intended for aspiring freelance writers – and particularly for commercial writers – Bly offers plenty of advice about managing your career as a writer, as well as very strong tips on crafting persuasive language.
• Michelle Ruberg: Handbook of Magazine Article Writing: This is on my list because this is closest to the kind of writing I do, and the direction my own career is heading in. Covers the nuts and bolts of coming up with ideas, pitching stories, and working with editors, as well as the steps to research and write a compelling article (most of which would apply to any non-fiction writing).
• Philip Martin: The New Writer’s Handbook (2007): A collection of articles all offering practical advice on everything from tracking your writing goals to brainstorming ideas to building your author’s website. There are articles about every possible kind of writing in here, which means plenty for everyone.

You’ll notice the absence of Elements of Style. I own it, of course, but I find that I almost never open it – and have never just sat down with it and soaked it all in. Your mileage may vary, of course – Stephen King swears by it, and will lay a curse on any writer so full of pride as to not own a copy (I just squeak in under the wire on that one!), so it’s probably worth your while to at least have a copy. I just can’t promise you’ll learn much from it.

Blogging

I’ve been pretty vocal about why writers should blog, but in this context, the important thing is that blogging a) gives you a regular outlet to practice writing, b) puts work (potentially) in front of an audience and therefore invites feedback, and c) helps build your “platform”, that collection of marketable qualities that make up your salability as a writer. (I’ll talk more about platform later in this series.)

The Passion Test

One of the side-benefits of investing time and energy into improving your writing is that it functions as a kind of self-test of your passion for writing. This is important because, contrary to our idealistic desires, a lot of writing is a deadly slog through idea-less wastelands. If you’re going to do commercial or journalistic writing, you’ll find yourself writing about topics you could not care less about – and it had better be scintillating prose. If you’re going to write novels or non-fiction books, there will come a day when you absolutely do not care one whit about what happens next.

What’s more, while you might have plenty of ideas right now, you’ll use them up – and without passion, it can be damned hard to come up with new ones. Even worse, you’ll find that the ideas you do have simply don’t interest you any more.

Then there’s all the dull-work. Oh, yeah, it’s not all martinis and nymphomaniac fans in the writing world. There’s a lot of bookkeeping, doing taxes, filing, networking, filling out obscure paperwork (non-disclosure agreements, publication contacts, image licenses, etc.), legal mumbo-jumbo, and so on – all the stuff that you probably thought you were escaping by becoming a “creative person”. Oh, no no no – in fact, given a writer’s income and lack of institutional support, you are probably going  o be doing more business stuff than any business person you know. And if you don’t have a real passion for the writing, for the whole kit-and-kaboodle of the writing life beyond the simple act of putting word to paper, you won’t make it.

Next time: Breaking into the writing world.

As it happens, it’s not a very lengthy quest, since as far as I can tell, there’s only one candidate: the aptly named Deadline. Deadline is a simple, free application that only does deadlines; you enter the task and the date it’s due, and Deadline sends you a reminder on that day and another as many minutes, hours, or days before as you select in your settings.

Entering tasks is simple: Deadline uses a natural text parsing system so you can enter things like “Interview with Dustin Wax due Jan. 18th at 5pm” and it will figure it out. Once entered, Deadline adds the entry to the list and adds email notifications to the queue. When it’s done, you just click the “Done” button and the task is removed from the list.

I have Deadline set to send me reminders three days before anything is due, which is an ok compromise time for me but not perfect – I’d rather have the ability to set different notification times for each item individually, and in some cases, to set more than one. For example, for a 650-word piece with minimal research, three days is fine; in fact, two or even one day would be fine.

On the other hand, for a major academic presentation I’m giving in April, I’d rather have weekly notifications so I can make sure I’m on track to finish in time and plan the various steps as I go. Getting a notification three days before the conference won’t be of any use – if it’s not done by then, it’s not going to get done! (Sure, I could use project planning software to set milestones and schedule each step, and I will – but I also want the security of something putting the deadline in my face on a somewhat regular basis.)

Still, it’s a handy little app, and I hope the developers will add a few features to it as time goes by. I appreciate the simplicity, so I hope they don’t go overboard, but given that they’ve incorporated the ability to customize the look and feel of the site (with built-in themes or custom colors and backgrounds) I would think they could manage to allow some customization of the actual functioning of the app without overloading it with complexity.

Deadline — Free

SkypeOut: You can but time as you go, or pay a monthly fee for unlimited calling within your country. I pay $3 a month, or $24 US a year.

SkypeIn: For $60 US a year, I get unlimited incoming calls via Skype. I can take calls at my computer, using a Skype-enabled phone, or even on my Blackberry using a free application called iSkoot (which supports several different phones, not just Blackberries).

So basically I have a fully-functioning phone number with unlimited calling anywhere within the US for $84 US a year. Not too bad! I even have a cheap little handset attached to my computer, so I don’t have to wear a headset all the time in case anyone calls. The handset looks and acts just like a real phone, except it’s plugged into the computer instead of into the wall.

Skype lets me do business in my home office without relying on my mobilephone and without having to put in a second land line. With SkypeIn, I even have a phone number I can put on my business card.

That’s a pretty good deal, I think – but there are a wide range of plugins for Skype that allow it to do much, much more.

The one I use at least once or twice a week is CallGraph. CallGraph is a free plugin that records every call I make or receive via Skype. Normally it runs in the background, but a control panel pops up as soon as Skype becomes active. I use this for recording interviews with sources, as well as the occasional podcast interview. (Note: Be sure to ask your otehr party as soon as possible if they mind if you record the call – in many cases it won’t matter, but in some states – and I assume countries – it’s against the law to record a call without permission even if the person recording it is not in that state.)

Another valuable plugin is called PamFax and, as you can probably guess, it allows you to send faxes via Skype. PamFax is free, but it charges a small amount per page to actually send faxes – fortunately, it iwll use your existing SkypeOut credit if you have any, or you can deposit a small amount directly to PamFax. An online dashboard allows you to review your sent faxes from anywhere. PamFax allows me to send faxes even though there’s no landline in my office – ideal for returning signed contracts to editors and clients.

SKype is an incredibly powerful platform. There are a whole range of plugins for collaboration, for example, that effectively turn Skype into a teleconferencing system. I don’t use any of them, since I rarely collaborate online, but for people making presentations to clients, there are at least a dozen choices. And the Skype developer community seems to be growing – who knows what we’ll see next. If you haven’t gotten set up with Skype yet, make sure to download the application today – even if you don’t use it to replace your landline phone, you can still communicate via voice chat with other Skype users for free.

And it sounds really good.

• 25+ Pieces of Writing Software You Should Know About
  Ali at Daily Writing Tips offers up no less (and possibly more) than 25 applications that writers might get some use out of. There are apps for collaboration, word processing, writing novels and screenplays, organizing your research materials, and more. Some are free, some are somewhat expensive. Not all of them are apps I would recommend, but you might have a different opinion.
• The Benefits of Writing a Pillar Post
  Tay at Super Blogging pays a visit to the territory I covered in my Build Your Blog’s Traffic and Impact with Resource Posts, with 4 very good reasons to think about writing your own pillar posts, and a few examples to get you started.
• Junk for Writers
  Paperback Writer lists 10 office supplies every writer will want to clutter their writing space with. Pure office supply porn!
• 24 Rebellious Resources for Freelancing
  Quiet Rebel Writer is tearing it up lately with more rebellious resources than you can shake a stick at! (Not that you’d want to – what would that accomplish?) Here, Amy Lillard sends you off with the message that we writers, we can write ANYTHING – and gives you 24 places on the web to make that platitude a reality.
• 6 Productivity Tools for MS Word
  Ah, MS Word, the savage witch-queen of the writing profession. WE hate you, yet are compelled to bow down before your greatness. Samuel Dean at Web Worker Daily gives you a handful (if you’re polydactylic) of tips to help you tame the beast.
• The Hidden Freelance Writing Job Market
  Jodee Redmond at Freelance Writing Jobs suggests ways freelancers can find work by taking a step or two out of the ordinary.
• Could The Freelance Writer’s Most Important Tool Be The Lowly Spreadsheet?
  Tom Chandler at The Copywriter Underground tells you how to use a spreadsheet to help keep you on top of your freelance work. Spreadsheets are all mathy and stuff, and writers tend to want to forget they even exist, but as Tom reminds us, there’s some real value for writers who remember that they’re running a business, too.

And a couple of self-promoting links, if you don’t mind:

• Smithereens is holding a contest to find the wittiest twitterer on Twitter. To enter, tweet something witty and copy the tweet and the link to the comments of that post. I’m judging entries, along with James Chartrand of Men with Pens.
• James and I are judging another contest, this time at my fellow Lifehack writer Joel Falconer’s site, Joel is looking for someone to write a great post on how bloggers can use FriendFeed. Check out the post for more information. (For the record, I have no idea why James and I are suddenly the go-to pair for judging contests – we actually don’t know each other. Coincidence, I guess.)

What have you come across this week that might interest your fellow WTC readers? Or, better yet, what have you written that you want to share with the rest of us? Leave a link or three in the comments!

PayPal offers three different kinds of accounts: Personal, Premier, and Business. A personal account lets you send money and receive small amounts from other members — it’s essentially a “starter” account and useless for any real business. Most writers are going to want a Premier account, which allows you to accept credit cards, accept unlimited payments, and get a debit card you can use to shift funds out of your PayPal account (though you can also link your account to a bank account and wire transfer funds from PayPal for free). If you run a business and need several people to access the same account, get a Business account, which is otherwise the same as a Premier account.

Of course, PayPal takes a cut — but it’s the same as or less than other merchant accounts. If you receive less than $3000 US a month, you’ll pay 2.9% plus a 30-cent transaction fee; the percentage drops the more you make. Keep track of your PayPal fees, since they’re deductible business expenses.

PayPal offers a bunch of business services to make selling products from your website (e.g. books, e-books, artwork, etc.) easy. Once you’re logged in, click the “merchant services” tab and check it out. One handy thing is the “Buy now” button, which you can customize completely and insert on any page where you’re selling something. When visitors click the button, they’re taken to a PayPal sales page where they can either pay with their own PayPal account or enter a credit card number. PayPal will figure the sales tax and shipping, based on the information you provide. If you have several products and want to get really fancy, you can integrate PayPal into many shopping carts, though that’s a little too complex for the beginner — you’d be better off hiring a developer or getting your teenage nephew to do it. (Maybe I’ll come back to that in a future post.)

PayPal also offers invoicing, though I prefer to use BlinkSale for invoicing, which allows a greater degree of control over the appearance of my invoices — and which allows me to embed a “Pay with PayPal” link to automate payment. If you’re going to use PayPal to receive payments from clients, regardless of whether you use their invoices or BlinkSales or your own, make sure you add your professional email address to your PayPal account. Don’t tell your clients to send their payment to crazydrunk81583959302435@collegechicks.com or anything else that offers too close a look into your personal life — make sure your yourname@yourname.com email address is linked to your PayPal account.

If you haven’t already, open a Paypal account right now!

photo credit: *L*u*z*a*

In honor of the launch of The Writer’s Technology Companion, I put together a huge collection of resources for writers at Lifehack.org today. Topics covered include:

• 10 Free Apps Every Writer Should Consider
• 10 Online Apps and Services Every Writer Should Check Out
• 10 Sites Every Writer Should Bookmark (Besides Lifehack)
• 30 Lifehack Posts Every Writer Should Read
• 5 Online Communities Every Writer Should Join

Here’s a little bonus, an online community I didn’t include in the Lifehack piece:

Nothing Binding: An online community for writers, with a forum and a special emphasis on audio and video content by writers and about writing. They also run a kind of “review exchange”, where writers can send a copy of their book to a reviewer and get a review they can use in press kits, on their website, or wherever they want. Nothing Binding is still pretty new — they have about 500 members so far — so there’s not a lot of content yet (and, less forgivably, the blog is still empty), but it seems like a fun and knowledgeable community.

Check out The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource, and leave your own suggestions in the comments.