They say Edgar Allan Poe wrote on parchment paper, and then pasted the sheets together to make a scroll. That seems messy, and tedious, to me.
But pen and paper was all that was available, I suppose, and those rather uncomplicated tools produced an end-product (like Poe’s scrolls) that was, at best, fussy and hard to manage.
Today, the tables are turned. Today, we use advanced and complex technologies that let writers create an uncomplicated electronic document that can be shared, copied, printed and safeguarded.
But what exactly are the tools we writers should use? Well, I’m glad you asked, because here’s my take on things.
My computer is a MacBook Pro. Yeah, the model with the much-maligned Touch Bar. For the life of me, I still don’t understand why computer users prefer a dull and static row of function keys over a dynamic and visually appealing Touch Bar. So listen, if you need a new MacBook, get one with a Touch Bar. Because Touch Bars are cool. Touch Bars rule.
I need silence when I’m writing. And that’s why I plug in my AirPods. I’ve got the ones with that noise cancellation feature. I just pop in those suckers, turn on Apple’s Background Sounds feature, and I’ve got the ideal writing environment whether I’m home or in a noisy café.
I once called Scrivener The best pencil ever. And yeah, as far as writing tools go, you can use Scrivener as an unfussy pencil, or you can unleash a myriad of features that includes a name generator, an outliner and corkboard, cloud sharing, and a whole pile more of these crazily useful technologies.
QueryTracker is another one of those ridiculously effective solutions that you never knew you needed, until you tried it. QueryTracker lets you find agents, explore agent data, prepare and submit your query letters, and organize and track your queries.
There you have it. My top-four writing tools. What about you? What tools are you using?