8 Must-Have Tools For Less-Than-60-Days Beginner Writers
Dear Newbie writer, accelerate your Medium journey with these 8 Tools
I began writing months ago, publishing on Medium and Twitter.
Amidst the whole writing chaos,
I tested, kept, and dumped hundreds of writing tools.
To save you the same stress,
I curated a list of my non-negotiable tools for writing and publishing on Medium on my mobile or PC.
1. Grammarly
Grammarly rules the grammar tool kingdom.
I came across Grammarly two years ago — far before I started writing online — and I’ve stuck with it since.
Grammarly helps you detect spelling mistakes, verb-noun imbalances, and punctuation and grammar issues.
The premium version helps you rewrite sentences, monitor your writing tone, and more.
I’m okay with the free version, but I use its premium suggestion hints to detect where to second-check my writing.
Download its Chrome extension or the Grammarly keyboard to use it on mobile.
2. Word tune:
Word tune is like a shark in the ocean of sentence rewrites.
I started using it in August across all my writing platforms (Medium, Twitter & Quora)
Wordtune helps you rewrite sentences.
Maybe you’ve got a sentence that seems complex, could use an AI touch, needs a little shrink, or just doesn’t feel right to you.
It also allows you to choose one of four tones that best aligns with you and your context.
The free version lets you rewrite ten sentences each day.
Install the Chrome extension, or use the word tune editor website on mobile.
3. Google Docs
I use G-Docs for almost everything I write.
It’s like Microsoft Word but more straightforward.
It saves and syncs your writing automatically across devices, allowing you to write simultaneously on your mobile or PC.
It’s also linked with Grammarly and allows you to add images straight from the web,
The best part is that you can copy and paste your writing from G-Docs to the Medium new post page with all your text edits still intact.
Use docs.google.com on PC and the Google Docs app on mobile.
4. Coschedule
Coschedule shows you the effectiveness of your headline.
It checks its tone, word count, readability, etc, gives your headline an overall score, and tells you where to improve.
You can also compare various headlines and choose the best.
Download the chrome extension or use the Coschedule headline analyzer page on mobile or PC.
5. Pocket:
Pocket is my link bank.
I’ve saved hundreds of medium posts, tweets, and web articles into my Pocket account, organizing and categorizing them with tags.
The saved pages are made accessible offline
Use Pocket to save any links that you feel might be useful later. Use tags to categorize these links so you can find them easily later.
Notion is an excellent alternative for this, but not everyone knows how to use it well (like me).
So, if you’re like me,
Download the Pocket chrome extension and/or the pocket app for mobile.
6. Power Thesaurus
It’s like having a world-class thesaurus at your fingertips.
This tool allows you to check definitions and synonyms of words by double-clicking the word on your typing page.
Use it to vary and confirm the meaning of words before sending your writing out to the world.
Download its Chrome Extension to use it on PC.
7. Pexels
Pexels is a stock image website.
Like Unsplash, images are HD and free to download, with only attribution required.
While Unsplash is common amongst Medium writers (in fact, integrated into Medium itself), Pexels, on the other hand, is less used with equally captivating images.
8. Wikimedia Commons
WikimediaCommons is associated with Wikipedia.
It’s also image-based, but unlike Pexels and Unsplash, it houses millions of images that aren’t free anywhere else — yet, attribution is hundred-percent optional.
Wikimedia Commons includes images of local & international places, delicacies, events, personalities, etc.
Sighting an example,
In this article, I needed a picture of Einstein and Micheal Jordan,
While both images weren’t on Unsplash or Pexels (unsurprisingly), they were on Wikimedia Commons.
The downside: Its images are not always high resolution.
Okay, that’s all!
These 8 tools bolster your writing efforts and results, especially since you’re still in the early days of your journey.
Remember your personal effort is the most crucial, don’t rely 100% on these tools to create your best piece.
