10 Online Tools for Creative Writers
Tools to keep your manuscript–and your workflow–in check.
Learn Literature Now
Tools to keep your manuscript–and your workflow–in check.
By Robert Morris
If you are a writer, all you’re supposed to do is sit down, open a plain word processor and write. Wrong! Other people think that a writer only needs to be creative and commit to a daily working schedule, but you know it’s never that easy. You need to get through writer’s blocks, find supporting facts from areas you don’t understand, edit the content to perfection, attract clients and readers, manage your finances and cover many other aspects associated to your job.
In fewer words, you need to find the right tools that will help you work more effectively. There is no need to test dozens of online apps to get to the best ones; the following list of top 10 tools for writers will save your time.
This is not a writing tool per se, but it’s effective for all bloggers and writers who base their work on online research. Instead of allowing yourself to be distracted by an overloaded bookmarks bar, you should start building an easily-accessible online library at Kippt.
Sometimes you need to write about areas you don’t understand. For example, one of the main characters in your short story is a psychiatrist and you need to include reliable facts about his profession. It doesn’t matter what kind of writing help you need; you can always get it at custom writing service NinjaEssays.com. This website hires professional writers from all areas of study, so you can easily receive content that will make your piece look believable. In addition, you can order affordable editing services at this website.
Thanks to this online tool, you can forecast the performance of your content before you even write it. It’s always important to target the right readers and see how the ideas you have would resonate with your audience. In addition, InboundWriter will recommend related topics that promise great success in the online world.
Email marketing is important for aspiring writers and bloggers. MailChimp will help you send the right email to the right recipients at the right time. You will schedule emails to be sent based on customer preferences and behavior, so you’ll be sure that the message will reach its recipient.
Microsoft Word is an effective writing tool, but it’s sometimes too complicated and distracting with all its features. If you want to try a writing platform that brings you closer to the experience you have when writing on paper, then Draft is the right tool for you. The features of collaborative editing and productivity setting will add effectiveness to your work.
This is time tracking, project management and online invoicing software that will help you handle all business aspects associated to your work. Pancake is especially useful for freelance writers who deal with several clients at a time.
This writing tool combines intelligent features, a great range of support for different markup formats, effective editing tools and publishing platforms. The platform launches you in a distraction-free writing environment with collapsible sections and an automated table of contents that helps you navigate through the document.
Writing proposals is more difficult than working on the actual piece. Bidsketch will help you with that aspect and save you loads of time. The tool helps you to mix and match content, designs and fees that help you create a persuasive proposal in minutes. The beautiful templates may look as a mere decoration, but they will help you make a nice impression to your clients.
You invest a lot of time and effort into the work you publish online, so the last thing you would want is to see it duplicated on another website. Thanks to Plagtracker, you can easily find out if that’s the case and protect your authorship rights.
Regular activity on social media website is part of every writer’s job. Balancing between multiple platforms can be distracting and time-consuming, so you should definitely turn to Hootsuite – a tool that helps you distribute posts to all chosen platforms at the same time.
a nice picture
Hi Robert,
I’d like to suggest Fanurio (http://www.fanuriotimetracking.com) which is a time tracking and billing software application, highly appreciated by freelancers for its intuitive interface, flexible timer and ability to produce detailed invoices.
Fanurio is not free but it has a free trial. It costs 59 USD (which means about $5/month for the first year) and you can use it for life.
I know that there are many freelancers who prefer to use a desktop application in order to keep their data on their own computers. Since Fanurio is a desktop application, it integrates very well with the platforms it runs on. On OS X, you can easily access timers from the the menu bar and from the dock icon menu. On Windows, you can start a new timer or control the active timer from the thumbnail toolbar or from the tray icon. You can also use global hotkeys to control the timers from within any running application.
Fanurio is used by many freelancers not just to track time but to bill their clients as well. Fanurio can export invoices to HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word 2007, OpenOffice OpenDocument and other formats so they can be printed or e-mailed. Invoice templates can be created manually, with a visual editor (Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Word or OpenOffice) or with the built-in template editor.
I hope this helps.
its really amazing .