One of the things I’ve noticed during conversations with other writers is that they always want to know what tools they should be using to make their writing lives easier.
So here I am blogging my tech stack so it’s searchable all in one place.
And also, hey, we’re writers, so “tech” and “tools” are being used in their most elemental sense here.
For instance:
You can’t go wrong with a cheap spiral notebook and decent pen.
I buy 1-subject wide-ruled spiral notebooks in bulk from Staples.
I write EVERYTHING in these notebooks: morning pages, business planning, the rough drafts of the daily work I do on my fiction projects or the blog.
I use Pilot G-2 .07s and I buy those in bulk too.
And then I keep it all organized with Post-Its. I love me some Post-Its.
I write my fiction projects in Scrivener.
I have been using Scrivener for years, and I know it’s got a learning curve, but folks, that’s what YouTube is for.
Scrivener is hands down the easiest place to work on long projects, because you have a folder system that lets you re-organize sections and put your darlings in cold storage for later with extraordinary ease.
Plus it exports your files formatted for submission.
AND YOU OWN THE SOFTWARE. It’s not a fucking subscription, it’s a one-time license fee with free updates when it updates.
WIN. WIN.
I track and plan my writing projects in Notion.
I have built an insane database that links my life, my business, and all my writing projects together and feeds them into a daily task list. I’m a woman of a certain age, I need all the help remembering things and getting things done that I can get.
So if you’re not yet using Notion, and you’re curious about what it can do, there you go.
But whether you use Notion or not, I made a few cool Notion templates that are simple enough to manage even for our newbies:
- Project Tracker: Imagination Station
- Plotting Database and Bulletin Board: Manuscript Mapper (coming soon!)
- Revisions Planning: Revisions Wrangler (coming soon!)
Here are my all-time favorite craft books:
My online bookseller of choice:
Bookshop.org because a) it’s not Amazon and b) you can set it to send commissions for your purchases to your local bookstore.
Fight the man and help your favorite small business AND surround yourself with books. WIN WIN WIN.
My website runs on Showit with the WordPress upgrade.
It was designed by Rebecca Bratz at Creative Geek Studio and it’s easy enough to use and change that I am slowly degrading all the beautiful work she did on my own, so don’t blame her if it’s not as perfect as it was when she handed me the keys.
Showit is so simple mostly because their help bot is really well programmed and actual humans check in with you on the rare occasions that you’re going in circles.
In fact Showit may be too simple.
Like I said, don’t blame Rebecca.
I run my email list through Email Octopus.
The interface at Email Octopus is clean, the pricing is competive, and the reporting is good enough for me.
Plus they have great customer service, too, and they are in the UK which has better privacy laws then we do. I like that.
Trying to figure out how to run a paid newsletter or grow your subscriber base?
I don’t run a paid newsletter myself, but I did steal a lot of how my newsletter actually functions on the backend from the amazing work Lex Roman does reporting on small businesses and providing support for solo operators. Their Legends Network is especially great — I found my web designer through that network. Check Lex out at Revenue Rulebreaker.
Let me know if there are any other tech or tools you want to know about! And if you find content like this helpful, you really should join the Unruly Writer newsletter. I offer weekly doses of encouragement, updates about what’s happening in the literary world, updates about what’s happening in my world, and great opportunities for writers in every stage of their career, too. Get on the list today!
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