12 Indispensable Resources for Every Writer

This post is a sequel to my post So You Want to Be a Writer? which gave insights on how to start writing and keep at it. This post is meant to give you a list of resources — from books to apps that will greatly improve your writing skill. Let’s dig in.

• Good old pen and a notebook: No matter the advancement in technology, I believe the pen and paper will continue to be the most reliable and ubiquitous tool in the art of writing. Whether it’s your journal or a moleskin in which you take notes and jot down ideas as you are on the move, having a notebook and a pen readily available is so important. You don’t want to miss out on that genius idea or thought, which could be turned into a blog post, a book, a project or even a business.

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• A library: Getting a bookshelf to keep your paperbacks and hardcovers has not gone out of style. Every book lover will confess that the mere sight of books brings some inexplicable joy to them. So buy the books you want to read and keep them. Continually add up to your library and make time to read as many as you can. Aside a physical library, you can also keep an e-library of books on your PC, Mac or phone or collect books onto your Kindle device or app. Then you can listen to audiobooks on your phone or ipod. Beyond books, you can also subscribe to channels or curate a list of videos on YouTube or Vimeo to watch, keep a playlist of educational content on your SoundCloud and listen to podcasts. Scribd allows you to read books you’d otherwise have bought when you become a monthly subscriber. You will find hundreds of magazines to read on Issuu. And then there are hundreds of awesome videos to watch on TED.

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• A curated news feed: Stories and ideas feed the muse of writers. Where do you get the inspiration or the jolt to start writing on a particular topic? To keep up to date with what’s happening around the world and to pick up ideas that can inform or inspire what you write, you need to read news articles and read blog posts. I curate my news and blog post feed on Twitter. You could do yours on Facebook, LinkedIn, Flipboard, Feedly, your RSS Reader, Medium, WordPress, etc. I have come to love Medium, for the first person, experiential writing you find on here. Medium has claimed the title “The perfect place to read and write.”

• A read-it-later app: As you’re on Twitter or scouring the web, you don’t have the time to read everything you come across, and that’s the reason why you need a read-later app to save your stuff till you’ve gotten the time to read them. I’ve used Pocket for more than two years and it remains one of my favourite apps. Another read-later app is Instapaper. Inbox by Google has the functionality of saving articles, but you don’t want to mix your mails with the stuff you want to devote time to reading. And for what I know, your browser bookmark is dead.

• A ready-to-publish writing app: There are numerous ready-to-publish writing platforms most of which have apps that will help you write down your thoughts as they come to you. Medium has become the de-facto writing app for me. Aside saving your stuff as you write, it gives you the ability to invite your friends to proofread and offer suggestions before you publish. And the interface is clean and intuitive. I still publish on WordPress, because of the supportive community there, though Medium has pushed WordPress to second place. There is also Blogger and Tumblr. LinkedIn Posts and Facebook Notes are also good places to write and share content if you’ve built an impressive and engaged following there.

• A word reference app: As a writer, words come to you as you write. But you are not very sure whether you’re using it right. That’s why you need to have a dictionary to ensure that every word you use has been used appropriately. I love the Dictionary.com app because it also contains a thesaurus and a learner’s dictionary, in addition to giving you the origin and the grammatical nuances of the word. The app also have in-app blogs and slideshows to help you learn more about the English language — its history, usage and common wrong usage of words and phrases. It also enables you to save the dictionary for offline usage. The possibilities with the Dictionary.com app is endless. Just download it and make the best use of it. Other alternatives are the Oxford Dictionary and the Merriam Webster Dictionary apps.

• A collaborative writing app: For works I have no plans of publishing anytime soon and works I’m collaborating with someone on, I use Google Docs, which is a very powerful writing app. Linked to your Gmail account and your Google Drive, it saves your work as you write. You can easily share with someone you want to collaborate with by sending them a link to the document via mail. You can give them the option to view, comment or edit. If you are using Google Docs on the web, you get to see real-time editing as the other person adds up to the document. And you can download your document onto your pc or phone and open it with most Word applications. Another powerful feature on the Web version is the voice typing functionality which allows you to dictate your thoughts or read from a book as the app types it out for you. Though it’s not perfect at recognising words, it does a good job; and you can always go back to edit it when you’re done dictating. Good for the days you feel tired. For those in the Outlook league, Microsoft Word online is there for you.

• A note-taking app: Your Microsoft office suite comes with the OneNote app that allows you to take notes, add pictures, web clippings, audio files, and a whole lot more. You can also access OneNote online and get the app from Play Store. There is also Evernote, which I’ve used since 2014, though I’m not a heavy user of it. Even as a non-paying user, you get a lot of the important features that only Evernote can give you.

• Desktop writing apps: When there is no internet and you want to work on your PC, your Microsoft Word is always sitting waiting for you. It’s been said that Microsoft Word is so loaded with functionalities for which most people only get to use just about 30%. So don’t ditch your Microsoft Word yet. It’s still the most used writing application and the guys at Microsoft continually improves it with each new version.

• A good camera: The importance of images in your blog post cannot be overemphasised. Images used correctly can boost the traffic to your post and determine whether your reader will read your post to the end. Your best bet at getting high-quality images is the DSLR camera, though a point-and-shoot camera can also do a great job. If you’re out of these options, you can optimise your phone’s camera to take good pictures with it.

• Stock images: It’s not okay to do a Google search and download any image that comes up for your blog posts. Some of these images may be copyrighted and a lot of times they are of low quality. Your best bet is to go for stock images, and you don’t even have to spend a pesewa to get high-quality stock photos and vectors. Popular sites for free stock images include DeathtoStockPhoto.com, Unsplash.com, Freepik.com, Freelyphotos.com and Photocrops.com. I regularly use images from Lightstock which is a faith-focused stock photography site that gives free high-quality images and vectors on a weekly basis and a free short video every month.

• Photo editing software: There are days that you want to give a particular effect to your image or add a text on top of the image. There are many photo-editing apps, but the king of them all is Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a bit technical so you may want to go in for easier alternatives like Google’s Picasa which is a must-have on your PC or Google Snapseed on your phone. You can also do much with the popular Photo Grid app on your phone. To add words onto images, Canva and Pablo by Buffer are good options.

What writing resource have you found indispensable that I don’t know about yet? Kindly let me know in the comment section.

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