Anyway never mind that. I thought it might be nice to share what I use when I'm writing and discuss why some things Work for me and why some things Work Not At All. Is this a subtle excuse to interrogate my own writing process and figure out why I'm jammed up? Yes. Yes it is.
Now sit down and read! There will be a test.*
Notepad and Pen
This is the most-most-most important equipment I have in my writing arsenal, and while it's certainly possible to do without these I don't know of many people who do. In my case I use Uniball Jetstream pens, as recommended by this absurdly in-depth article on Wirecutter. I freely admit this is a weird affectation but after years of getting annoyed with the Pilot G2's odd flash-y bits, I think I deserve a quality writing implement! Especially when it's cheap.
I also use a small Moleskine notebook, hardback with a place marker. I carry this thing around in my pocket all day so it has to be durable. I could probably find something cheaper that does the same job (possibly better), but this works for me. You are of course not bound to follow my brand recommendations.
A Keyboard
It is possible in this day and age to write everything you ever write on your phone, and even format it and publish or submit it! Buy a keyboard anyway. Possibly I'm old, but I can't abide writing on an iOS or Android touch keyboard for any length of time. And autocorrect, dear God autocorrect, you tax me so. I've actually turned that off entirely on my phone, and while I still make plenty of typos they are at least mine.
I'm not going to recommend a particular keyboard because I don't have a particular favorite. I do prefer big chonky mechanical keys over the newer flatter key style. (People sell mechanical keyboards for stupid amounts of money - I'm not talking about those, I'm talking about the older larger keyboards with proper keys. I may have the wrong term.) I also prefer plastic Windows keyboards over Apple's metallic mess - hard on the nails. But Bluetooth keyboards are cheap and pretty much just work with most phones.
Obviously if you're submitting manuscripts you need some kind of email client, but I'm listing it here because it's an easy way to put your work somewhere where you can get to it from most places. I don't have a single stable computer I can spend a lot of consistent time on, so I need to be able to get to my work from wherever, and copy-pasting it into an email works quick and easy.
There are a feeew security concerns if you do this, but unless you're already a successful author you probably don't have to worry about people stealing your work. However, you do have to worry about lost passwords, email providers going out of business, and trolls or accidents deleting all your email, so don't use any email provider as the sole repository for your work.
Dropbox
Dropbox! Dropbox! Our Lord and Savior! Or maybe you prefer Google Drive. I'm not one to judge, but Dropbox is the thing that works for me. There are basically three steps to backing your work up: put it on your computer, put it on a spare drive, and put it in cloud storage. If you do that consistently your work will survive most of the catastrophes that could cause you to lose it.
Scrivener
I'll be honest, I don't actually like writing in Scrivener that much. There's a lot of fiddly bits I've never successfully fit into my process and I've even given up on breaking my manuscripts into different pieces, which is what Scrivener does best! And when you don't do that it's just kind of a pretty good text editor. That said, for self-publishing eBooks I find it indispensable. It's a snap to format a manuscript, slap a cover on it, and run it through Kindlegen to get a nice .mobi file to upload to KDP (or create a .epub file for anything else). It's also a cheap tool with a generous license. Go get.
(If you're submitting manuscripts you need Word, or OpenOffice or LibreOffice but probably Word. Not going to list it because fuck that document format and its black work.)
Google Tasks
My #1 tool for keeping track of what I need to do and when I need to do it. Why? Because it's integrated into Gmail and I use Gmail. That's it. It's a bare-bones task list, but the ability to throw in notes and links and set due dates, and have an app on my phone with a little notification tick that tells me how much I have to do in a day, is about all I need.
Then there's Trello. I've gone on about Trello before and I am probably going to dive back into it at some point, but it is a fairly powerful tool and I still haven't perfected the way I want to use it. I was using it to keep track of all the projects on my plate, and I still think it's super useful that way, but I tried using it for outlining and it... did... not... quite... work... out. I'll get there, or throw it under the bus with Asana.
KDP Rocket
If you don't know, KDP Rocket is a tool that pulls sales data from Amazon and search data from Google and claims to help authors pick strong keywords for their self-publishing projects. And it does do that! I think? Because I can't really prove it's doing that accurately without a fair bit of work. But I did use it to pick some keywords for my projects last year, and it... may have helped my sales? I think?
The problem with tools that help you optimize your search ranking or your keywords is that it's very hard to determine if you've purchased virtual snake oil, particularly if you know jack all about SEO. And there are a lot of other factors that go into success, like: is the book awesome or does it suck, how's the cover look, did it get good reviews, was it selling well last week, did Amazon throw it in the adult gutter because a woman's breasts dared to produce milk on page?
All I know right now is that I have a tax-deductible way to view Amazon rankings quickly and easily... assuming it works. If you've used KDP Rocket let me know in the comments? Or share any other tool you've had some success with, for that matter.**
I hope something in there was helpful. If you'd like more, I'm doing a series on project management for smut writers you can catch up on here, or feel free to check out one of my books.
-Lea
*There will not be a test.
**An honorable mention to Buffer, which is not a writing tool per se but has been damn useful for working with Twitter.
