Did you read that title and go, what is she talking about…writer’s don’t have toolboxes. Okay, true – I don’t have a giant red Craftsman toolbox where I keep my writerly things, but I do use tools to write and that’s what I want to talk about today.
First, my laptop – I use a MacBook Air that I bought 2 years ago. It’s lightweight, fast, has all the programs I need on it (more about that in a minute) and I can carry it around the house, or around town, if I need to. I’ve been an Apple girl pretty much my whole life – my sister started me young, she bought either the 2nd or 3rd Apple computer that came out back in the late 1980’s. I adore Apple products and although I’ve used PCs at my corporate day jobs, I wouldn’t want to write on one for long.
Next up, the programs I use to write. Evernote for research and Scrivener for the actual writing. I love Scrivener!!! (Oh man, do I sound like Oprah in those annoying Weight Watcher commercials where she tells us she loves bread?!?!) I even wrote a whole blog post about how I use Scrivener to organize and write my blog posts – you can find that gem HERE. I do love this program though and I do use it to write pretty much everything from my blog to my short stories, to my longer novels – it keeps me organized, gives me freedom to write the way I want to write, and has a fantastic snapshot feature so I can keep track of edits and different versions to make the whole revision process a snap!
I use Evernote to keep links, documents, websites, articles, and everything else I use for research all neat and organized and in one place. I usually create a notebook with the working title of my books and keep everything inside. With The Art of Lying, I kept articles about art galleries, famous artists, information about New York parks and subways, maps, and other handy tidbits I needed during the actual writing sessions. For novel #2, which is about St. Louis Cardinal’s Baseball, The Hill (a great Italian neighborhood), and the joys of being a teenager I’ve already started saving articles and research links for everything above. I grew up in St. Louis, but I don’t currently live there so I will need maps and pictures to accurately describe things.
Third in my lovely toolbox is all the non-tech stuff. I use plain old spiral bound notebooks, gel pens, and index cards to help me plan, plot, outline, and revise. Right now I have two notebooks being used – one for my short stories and one for Novel #2 – they have notes, ideas, character interviews, plot points, research to-do’s, and more! Once I have notes and ideas out of the way, I grab a giant stack of white index cards and start writing down plot points, scene ideas, and anything else I want in my books or stories then those go into Scrivener and off I go. But I still keep my notebooks around. I use them while writing to make notes of character names, character descriptions that I don’t want to forget, and any other notes to myself. I also use the notebook (or grab a new one if it gets full during pre-writing and first draft) for revisions. I create reverse outlines, timelines, revision notes, and anything else that needs to happen during that process.
Now it’s your turn…what do you use for your creative endeavors? Are you an artist? If so, what kinds of materials do you work in? If you’re a musician, what apps or computer software do you find most helpful? Let me know in the comments and if you’re a writer too, what things do you just have to have in order to write?