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Tool Time Tuesday

Tool Time Tuesday: ProWritingAid

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: ProWritingAid

Platform: Browser, Windows, Mac, pretty much everything

Cost: Free web version; Premium version available ($50/yr, price breaks available for multiple years; $175/lifetime; discounts for edu folks & bulk purchasing)

What it does: Wow. When I found this a couple years ago, I was astounded and fell in love all at the same time! While it can’t tell you whether your story is a good story, it can tell you how to improve your actual craft.

This is what Word’s Grammar check aspires to be! I use this on all my work before it goes to a professional editor (or acquisitions editor/agent if I’m submitting). I cannot accurately convey the depth of my love for this little program!

Okay, Venessa, enough praise. Show me!

So you can choose to use the free web version and do a section of your work at a time. If you can’t afford the premium version, this is a perfectly good way to do it. It will take longer, because you’ll be doing a lot of copying and pasting, but you’ll get the full functionality of the program, just a piece at a time.

If you upgrade, you can download the software to your computer (there’s even a 2-week free trial!). But here’s the brilliant part: you can use the software with the program you write in, whether it’s Word, Google Docs, Open Office. I use Scrivener for Windows. Here’s what ProWritingAid looks like when I open my novel, Soul Cavern, in it:

ProWritingAid

Sorry, you don’t get to see the text! Check out FreeFictionFriday later this week, if you want to read it 🙂

As you can see, it shows me all of my writing, in the Scrivener structure, and lets me work on it piece by piece. I use this for every story I write.

Check out all the features across the top. Style, Grammar, Overused words (it’s worth the price for just these three things alone!), Readability, Cliches, Sticky sentences (these are unnecessary words/sentences that slow your reader down), Diction, Repeats, Echoes, and Sentence lengths. The More tab has a dozen other tools like Thesaurus, Pacing, Pronouns, and, of course, more.

This month's #ToolTimeTuesday, featuring @ProWritingAid: It shows me all of my writing, in the Scrivener structure, and lets me work on it piece by piece. I use this for every story I write. Click To Tweet

 

You can also choose, on the Tools option at the menu on the top, what sort of writing you’re doing: academic, creative, business, etc, so that the suggestions are geared toward your particular work.

Photo courtesy of ProWritingAid.

I wouldn’t recommend solely relying on any digital tool for final editing, but I 100% recommend using ProWritingAid before sending any work to an editor. If you’re working with a professional freelance editor (like me!), running your manuscript through ProWritingAid will likely cut down on the cost of your edits, as it can help you make your manuscript much cleaner for your human editor. This will allow her or him more time and effort to focus on the story itself and less on the mechanics of the writing.

Also, a program like this is a great learning tool as well. ProWritingAid not only suggests corrections, but will often explain why the thing needs to be corrected. This is a fantastic way for newer writers to learn.

Where to get it:

Writing Improvement Software

I really do strongly recommend this software. I probably put it as #2 right after Scrivener out of all the Tool Time Tuesdays I’ve done.

Have you tried ProWritingAid? How has it helped with your writing?

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

Unless attributed otherwise, all images are CC0 licensed.

Also, links in this blog post may be affiliate links. This means that if you purchase something, I will get a small percentage of it, though it does not increase your cost in any way. I appreciate you using my links 🙂

Tool Time Tuesday: NaturalReader

Tool Time Tuesday
NaturalReader

About once a month, on Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: NaturalReader

 

Platform: Online, Windows, Mac

Cost: Free both online and downloadable with some limits; paid downloadable tiers: $99, $129, $199 (one-time payments); paid online tiers: $59.88, $95.88 (annual payments)

What it does: NaturalReader is text-to-speech software that you can use for free, or pay for if you need additional features.

One suggestion that I always give writers is to read their work aloud. Your ear will hear what your eye doesn’t see. But one of the issues with an author reading their own work is that sometimes we see on the page what we have in our heads — what we meant to put on the page but actually didn’t. NaturalReader is a good alternative, because your work is read to you by “someone” else. The chances of hearing mistakes or just noticing inconsistencies is higher.

So how does NaturalReader work?

If you just want a passage read to you, you can use the free online version, which allows you to paste text in to have read to you. I had a lot of fun playing with this one, because they have many voices to choose from, including American and British English, as well as a number of non-English voices, all in both male or female. I admit to having a lot of fun listening to my stories read to me by a British dude. 😉

 

The voices aren’t bad, either. Some of them sound a lot like Stephen Hawking’s speech, simply because there is natural inflection in words and sometimes the inflections used when the words were recorded don’t match the cadence of a sentence. But it’s not terrible and is less pronounced with some of the voices than others.

One issue I did notice is that contractions are a problem. Apostrophes don’t seem to be recognized. The voice would pronounce we’re as were and would spell out contracted words that don’t make real words, like wasn’t. This could be more of a technical issue, because I can’t imagine they didn’t record the word we’re when creating the vocabulary database. My bet is that the typographical database either recognizes curly or straight apostrophes and whatever I pasted in was the opposite. (I’m too lazy to check and see if that’s true.) Other than this little glitch, I didn’t find much in the way of issues while I was testing it out.

Obviously, if you’re writing something that has a lot of uncommon names, foreign words, or fantasy type names, the program isn’t going to be pronouncing them. But it’s not terribly distracting to have things spelled out rather than spoken.

Where to get NaturalReader: There are two different pages for this program: the Online version and the Desktop version. The Desktop version is available in both Windows and Mac. You can toggle between them via a button on that page.

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

Looking for more helpful writerly stuff? Check out all the other Tool Time Tuesdays!

 

Keep writing!

 

 

 

All NaturalReader media on this page is courtesy of NaturalReader.

Tool Time Tuesday: Calibre e-Book Management Software

Tool Time Tuesday

Once per month, on Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: Calibre e-Book Management

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux (+portable version)

Cost: Free!

What calibre does:

Calibre is open source software to manage your e-book collection, in ALL the ways.

As a reader, calibre is a perfect tool for keeping track of all your e-books. It’s not just a bookshelf, though. You can organize your collection in whatever way is most intuitive for you. You can create tags for all your books, download metadata (or create your own metadata), and sort and search by just about anything.

One of my favorite features (and what I originally downloaded it for years ago) is calibre’s ability to convert files from one type to another. Have an e-book in .pdf and want to read it properly on your Kindle? Convert from .pdf -> .mobi. Have a book in Kindle format and want to read it on your non-Kindle device? Convert to ePub. This is also a nifty feature for authors, if you want to see how your manuscript will look as an e-book (and when you’re ready to publish it too!).

Read on your phone? I use calibre Companion on my Android and it’s also available on iTunes for $3.99 in both places. Worth the money 🙂

Where to get calibre: Website

Have you used calibre? What do you think? Leave me a comment!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

Keep writing!

 

 

 

All calibre images are courtesy ofcalibre ebook management.

Tool Time Tuesday: 2018 Revision & Writing Tracker

Tool Time Tuesday

Once a month, we talk about different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: 2018 Writing & Revision Tracker

Platform: Any spreadsheet program

Cost: $10

What it does:

It’s a writing tracker! 🙂 If you’re a reader of this blog, and especially of TTT, you might recognize that I did a post very similar to this one about a year ago. There’s a new version of the writing tracker spreadsheet, so I felt that warranted a new Tool Time Tuesday!

As you might know from the post last year, I am a huge fan of this writing tracker. Not only does it allow you to track words of your first draft, but you can also track revision pages. And since revision is the biggest part of writing, being able to keep see how much you’ve done is critical to realizing your productivity. I’m not going to break down all the individual features, since I’ve done that already. But I will share a bit of how I use it.

Click to enlarge

New Stuff

Jamie has added the ability to track ten different projects within the spreadsheet over the course of the year, each with a column for writing and for revision.

I currently have seven of the projects labeled. I am tracking my blog posts, my pre-writing (for any and all stories), a pair of short stories (which I’m counting as one project, since they’re related), and four novels (one of which I’m only going to track revision pages of). I made my pre-writing a separate project, because I want to track how many words I create when I’m prepping to write my stories. I don’t necessarily need to track the pre-writing by story.

And that’s what makes this writing tracker so great. You can use it in whatever way works best for you.

Jamie even created a video to show how the tracker works. Check it out:

Motivation is created by action. When you look at what you’ve accomplished, it can help light a fire under your butt to get going. I’m writing this post on Jan 8, and (not counting this one), I’ve already written over 7000 words of blog posts and pre-writing. I haven’t even starting actually writing on the short stories yet (which are my first active project this year). I already feel incredibly accomplished and it makes me want to keep going.

The Writing & Revision Tracker is a big part of my writing process. You should check it out!

Where to get it: Jamie Raintree’s website

Have you tried the 2018 Writing & Revision tracker? Did you use the old writing tracker? Let me know what you think!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Keep writing!

 

 

 

Unless attributed otherwise, all images are courtesy of Jamie Raintree.

Tool Time Tuesday: Merriam Webster

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: Merriam Webster

Platform: browser, Android, iOS

Cost: FREE

What it does:

You likely know Merriam Webster as a dictionary. As a writer, you should know Merriam Webster as a dictionary!

Words have meanings and MW can give you those meanings. It’s important for writers of all kinds to have a good working vocabulary and an extended writing vocabulary. Now, this doesn’t mean you should use a $50 word every time you could use a ten cent word. But we, as writers, should use the most correct word that will be understood in order to convey the idea we want the reader to have.

So having access to a dictionary is a no-brainer. And Merriam Webster is one of the longest-lived dictionaries in the US, having been around for almost 200 years.

Now, if you haven’t been to Merriam Webster’s website yet, you might be surprised. It’s for more than just looking up words!

You can see trending words that are being looked up, as well as the Word of the Day (as I write this, it’s “hebetude;” if you want to know what that means, I encourage you to look it up 😉 ). You can watch videos about different word-related topics. These are short, interesting little snippets of knowledge about English as a language, as well as grammar and correct word usage. Again, as I write this, the video for today is Words of the Year: 1066, which I also encourage you to watch!

Not only does MW offer lots of knowledge and word education, but there are word games available, such as the Time Traveler Quiz: Which Came First? and Typeshift, a mashup of anagrams and word searches. These and other games can help you burn a couple minutes of your day when you need a break and have the added benefit of making you smarter 🙂

As a writer, all of these tools can be beneficial to me. It’s not just about looking things up!

Where to get it: You can go to their website, or go to your mobile store and download the Android app or the iPhone app!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Keep writing!

 

 

 

Unless attributed otherwise, all images are CC0 licensed.

Tool Time Tuesday: Writing Inspiration: Old Pics Archive

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ). Today’s a special Writing Inspiration version!

Today’s Tool: Old Pics Archive

Platform: browser

Cost: Free!

What it does: Old Pics Archive is a website with collections of historical photos divided by topic or subject matter. For instance, you can find a gallery of photos from Woodstock, the musical event, or famous people, such as Brigitte Bardot or Sofia Loren. There are photos from everyday life in Nazi Germany, behind the scenes photos from movies, and cool aerial photos of cities and people.

You can also find vintage art and vintage commercial art, as well as photos of life in cities, such as Moscow, London, Damascus, and NYC.

I’ll sometimes go to this site and look through the “life in…” photos and find interesting looking people. Sometimes I’ll think up a story about the people or the situation in the photo. Sometimes I’ll use photos of these people to help in my character creation process. There are all sorts of ways for a writer to get inspiration from this site!

Here’s a freebie: Can you imagine what amazing things might happen in this library?

The Klementinum Library, Prague ~~ Courtesy: Old Pics Archive

Where to get it: The Internet! Just head to their website!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Stay awesome!

 

 

 

Unless attributed otherwise, all images are CC0 licensed.

Tool Time Tuesday: Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS)

Platform: browser (and paper!)

Cost: Online: $39/yr ; Book: $60-70

What it does: CMOS is the style bible for fiction (though it’s not all about fiction). Most publishing houses use CMOS rules as part of their house style.

As a writer, knowing the rules and guidelines of writing lets you write stronger prose. It also allows you to decide when it’s appropriate to break those rules and guidelines to their most effective use.

The online version is really simple to use too. It allows you to search within the entire CMOS for whatever it is you’re trying to find. It covers everything from basic grammar and punctuation to citing online sources. In it, you’ll learn that Dumpster should be capitalized, since it’s a trade name (like Kleenex), not a generic name. Didn’t know that, did ya? 😉

But if you’d rather have an in-your-hands version, they also put out a hardcover edition. The 17th edition of CMOS will be published on September 5, 2017, and can currently be pre-ordered either on the publisher’s site or Amazon (links below). If you’re not married to being completely current in your style, you can find the 16th edition for cheaper. The 17th ed comes in at a whopping 1184 pages, so make sure wherever you order it from, you’re getting free shipping!

The online version is currently the 16th and 15th editions (you can choose when you search), but I suspect they’ll update to 17th not long after the hard cover comes out.

Also, here’s something kinda cool. Interested in seeing what the very first edition of CMOS looked like? They’ve got a pdf available for you to check out!

Where to get it: Online Subscription or Paper – 17th edition (Amazon)

Do you use CMOS?

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

Keep writing!

 

 

 

All images courtesy of Chicago Manual of Style.

Tool Time Tuesday: CoSchedule

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: CoSchedule

Platform: web

Cost: variable; for most: $30/month (annual plan), $39/month (month-to-month)

What it does:

Allows you to send and/or schedule social media across multiple platforms easily and helps you with scheduling blog posts on WordPress.

That’s the short description of what it does. I’ve used other social media platforms like TweetDeck and HootSuite; and they’re great, but I like CoSchedule better. There’s no option for bulk upload, meaning that you can’t just dump all your social media posts into a spreadsheet and upload. But the inconvenience of that lack is inconsequential when put up against all the great features, many of which are not available in those other services.

Calendar view — this is one of my favorite aspects. I can see, at a glance, how many social media posts I have scheduled on any given day, what type they are (one-off posts, social media campaigns, pimping out my blog posts), and which platforms each are on. And if I need to change the date? Simple — drag and drop the scheduled post to a different day. That is so much easier than having to go in manually to each post I want to change and revise the date accordingly.

Social media campaigns — Got a new book coming out? You can create an entire campaign, scheduling social media posts exactly when you want them to go out based on your publication date (or any date you decide). And what’s more, even when what you’ve scheduled has run out, you can go back into that social media campaign and simply add more posts. Another fantastic thing about social media campaigns is that if you move the opening post, all the posts after will move relationally. So if you had set a later post to go up 5 days after the initial post and you move the initial post, the later post will still go up 5 days after, not on the original date it was set for. I can’t tell you how much time this has saved!

WordPress integration — When I create and schedule a blog post on my site, CoSchedule automatically picks it up on the next sync. Or I can schedule the post on CoSchedule directly. It will create the WP post and then give me a link to click to take me to WP to write the post. There’s also a WordPress plug-in that will let you create your social media for CoSchedule right in your Edit Post page of WordPress. Or you can come back to CoSchedule and do it there. However you decide to do your workflow, CoSchedule will handle it.

Analytics — The analytics for the basic plan aren’t particularly robust, unfortunately, but one thing that is very handy is that CoSchedule will show you which of your blog posts has gotten the most traffic and it makes an easy task of creating more social media posts for those blogs.

There are a lot of things I really love about CoSchedule that I haven’t mentioned, like the Headline Analyzer and all media kits and other educational materials. But I especially love the time it saves me. It’s absolutely worth the price.

Where to get it: Check it out at the Coschedule website!

Have you tried CoSchedule? What do you think?

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Stay awesome!

 

 

 

Photos courtesy of CoSchedule.

Tool Time Tuesday: Mid-Year Review

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

We’re going to do things a little different this week. We’re going to have a recap of the TTTs we’ve had this year. So if you missed one, here they all are:

January

We only had one TTT post in January, because it was a new feature, so Scrivener has this section all to itself! Scrivener is — hands-down — the best writing environment for me, and a lot of other authors. If you’ve found it intimidating, don’t worry. You don’t have to learn everything about it. Learn what you need to do your work, and don’t worry about the rest.

Tool Time Tuesday: Scrivener

February

The spotlight for February was on two of my absolute favorite tools ever: The Writing and Revisions Tracker Spreadsheet by Jamie Raintree and Write or Die 2 by DrWicked. The spreadsheet, if you missed that TTT, lets you track both word count of your draft and/or number of pages revised, not just for one project, but eight! If you geek out on spreadsheets like I do, you don’t want to miss this one!

Write or Die 2 is a fabulous tool that will show you exactly how many words you can write in a given time frame. This can be really important for planning your writing time, particularly if that time is limited. Plus. you can proudly boast of how many words you can get down in an hour when you’re actually writing and not cruising around Facebook 😉

Tool Time Tuesday: The Writing and Revisions Tracker Spreadsheet

Tool Time Tuesday: Write or Die 2

March

March saw a couple organizational tools: OneTab and Aeon Timeline 2. OneTab is great for organizing and keeping tabs on websites you want to read or have handy. Instead of keeping dozens of tabs open in your browser (I’m not the only one who does that, right? … Right?), you can send them all to OneTab and still have access to them later.

Photo courtesy of OneTab

Aeon Timeline 2 is amazing for keeping track of your story’s timeline, scenes, your characters, and the relationships between your characters. You’ll find it really helpful especially if you’re very visually oriented.

Tool Time Tuesday: OneTab

Tool Time Tuesday: Aeon Timeline 2 

April

Duotrope had April all to itself, due to my travel schedule. Duotrope is a subscription site which houses a database of markets, particularly (but not exclusively) for short stories. You can get information on the submission call, deadlines, guidelines, and if enough people have entered their information, how long it generally takes to get a response, how acceptance-friendly they are (or how exclusive, depending on your viewpoint), as well a lot of other information.

Tool Time Tuesday: Duotrope

May

We had another single-TTT month in May. And it was Writing Inspiration Month here. I posted about Ancient Origins, a website that tends to fire my imagination, even if its headlines are a little click-baity. There are a lot of interesting bits about archaeology, history, sociology. And it can fire your imagination to ask, “What if…?”

Tool Time Tuesday: Ancient Origins

Did you utilize any of the TTT tools this year? Got any writing-related tools or websites that you just can’t do without? Drop a comment below and let me know!

 

Stay awesome!

 

 

 

Photos courtesy of Jamie Raintree.

Tool Time Tuesday – Writing Inspiration Version: Ancient Origins

Tool Time Tuesday

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: Ancient Origins

Platform: browser

Cost: $0

What it does:

I love websites that kick start my creativity, that inspire my muse, and spawn ideas. Writing inspiration is a big thing for me!

I ran across this website because someone retweeted an interesting article. And then I got lost down the rabbit hole!

Now, I don’t take everything on this site as gospel. The titles are a bit click-baity and the writing is definitely sensationalist in nature. However, the stories are interesting. I use it as a jumping-off point. I find cool history to delve into, fascinating stories of people and events, fun posts about weird tools and implements.
This isn’t just for historical writing though. If you’re writing fantasy, you can definitely get ideas for how to create your governing system, or events that you can model for your own civilizations. There are some nice articles about unexplained phenomena — these can be the basis of horror stories, fantasies, or mysteries. You can take an old mystery and either modernize it or set a detective story in that era. You could even have that mystery come to haunt us in modern times.

You can definitely find some great writing inspiration here 🙂

Check out some sample headlines from Ancient Origins:

She Met the Devil, Escaped a Dragon, and Survived Several Attempts on Her Life: The Remarkable Story of St. Margaret of Antioch
Tibet’s Valley of the Kings: What Hidden Treasures Lie Within This Imperial Tibetan Graveyard?
The Ancient Kingdom of Colchis: A Legendary Land of Plenty, Conflict, and the Golden Fleece
The Brutality and Delicacy of Samurai Armor: Superior Protection with a God-like Aesthetic

Can you find writing inspiration in those? I can see it without even having read the articles! (But I do want to read the articles 😉 )

Where to get it: Click the linky

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Stay awesome!

 

 

 

Photos courtesy of Ancient Origins.