The Writer's Technology Companion

Tools, Tips, and Technology for Productive Writers

5 Minutes Bookkeeping a Day Keeps the IRS Away

Entries Tagged ‘writing’

Coming Back

Thanks for bearing with me for a couple weeks while I worked my way through some things. The Writer’s Technology Companion will be back on a more regular posting schedule next week. While I’ll still cover the same collection of software, web applications, technology, and strategies for using all of them, I’ll also be adding […]

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Guest Post at Problogger: How to Write an Effective Post

Considering I’m supposed to be semi-retired this week, it’s been pretty busy around here, huh? I posted an epic piece about writing effective blog posts at Problogger yesterday, and I think a lot of my readers here would get a lot of value out of it. The basis of the article is a chapter in one […]

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Taking a Short Break

Life. It has a way of sneaking up on you, doesn’t it? I’m going to take a short break from The Writer’s Technology Companion. Not more than a week or so, just long enough to rethink some things. I have enough posts to keep this site on auto-pilot for a while, but I’m starting to […]

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Index a Book Using Word and Excel

I recently published an academic book (Anthropology at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Influence of Foundations, McCarthyism and the CIA, since you asked) and one of the tasks I was responsible for was creating an index for my book. Yes, I could have asked them to send it out to a professional indexer, […]

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Words Count: Online Readability Analysis

You know your word count. But how do you know if your words count? Words Count is an online readability analyzer, offering you more information about your prose than you could possibly imagine. Cut and paste in any sample of text (up to 20 pages) and Words Count will give you back the percentage of your […]

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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 […]

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WordPress Plugins for Writers: Part 5 — Just for Writers

So far in this series, I’ve talked about plugins that would be useful for just about any WordPress site. Today, I want to talk about a few plugins that are designed specifically for the needs of writers. The first three deal with formatting, allowing you to easily produce article series (like this one), a table […]

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Writing on a Palm Pilot

OK, they haven’t been called “Palm Pilots” for years, but I find it helpful to distinguish between the electronic device and the inside of the hand, so I say “Palm Pilot”. So sue me. Meanwhile, let’s talk about writing on your Palm brand personal digital assistant device thingy, ok? I’m a longtime Palm user. I […]

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Choose Your Own ADDventure with Protagonize

Protagonize is a collaborative fiction-writing community that allows writers to author stories separately or together, build new branches off of other writer’s stories, and rate each other’s work. The twist is, the stories are interactive, like the Choose Your Own Adventure Stories of yore. The folks at Protagonize call them “addventure” stories, with each author […]

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How About Some Links?

I surf the web a lot. Well, not “surf”  –  I have the web come to me in my trusty RSS reader, courtesy of Google. The point is, I see a lot of stuff out there on the Internet that might interest you. Here’s some of what I’ve come across lately: 25+ Pieces of Writing Software You […]

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