A writer doesn’t just write. The business of writing means a writer must edit, attract clients, produce great content and create a final product while handling their finances and marketing. Here are a few specialised tools to help:
1. Draft. This editing tool tracks versions of your document to find earlier material from any point in your process. This comes with other features like collaborative editing and a productivity setting.
2. Pro Writing Aid. The program searches your text for weak words, overused words or clichés and generates various reports to let you know the quality of your writing.
3. Squarespace. This website builder provides a set of quality templates to make building your website simple. It serves as a paid alternative to WordPress, but boasts less maintenance and great customer service.
4. Hootsuite. Handling multiple social media platforms can be time consuming. Hootsuite can distribute a quality post to all of your platforms which ultimately saves time.
5. MailChimp. Direct marketing is important for a writer. MailChimp makes it incredibly simple to land your content and name in a client's inbox.
6. Celtx. Geared toward screenwriters, Celtx enables you to write, edit and format a script. But it also takes you through to production with scheduling and blocking features. Final Draft serves as a top alternative.
8. Kippt. This tool prevents an overloaded Favorites Bar. You can bookmark sites and quality content then organise the content into lists.
9. Plagium. If you're worried about other sites duplicating your work, this tool allows you to determine if your words are appearing elsewhere on the web.
10. Storify. This content curating tool was created by a media veteran. It's geared toward turning content, information and social media into a comprehensive story.
11. SmartEdit. This tool is a ‘first pass’ editor for grammar and structure issues. It won’t replace another pair of human eyes, but it can help you ready pieces for an editor.
12. Bidsketch. This tool turns your proposals into professional, well-formatted documents which will save you time on technical writing projects or freelance bids. As a bonus, it can be integrated with Freshbooks invoicing.
13. Highrise. For writers, following up with clients is essential to acquiring future projects. A product from 37 Signals, Highrise helps writers manage their client relationships.
14. Marked. We talked about its counterpart, Ulysses, in the list of essential online tools for writers, but there are a lot of options for writers working with Markdown. Marked boasts a live preview as you type so you know how your final product will appear.
15. Pancake. Considered a management tool specifically for the freelancer, this application can handle all the business and management aspects of a freelancer’s job.
For writers working in specific fields, basic writing and productivity tools may help with the words, but for writers looking to produce a finished product, specialized tools can aid your business and get your work where you want it to be.
(Hat tip to Jim Pennucci for the photo)