What tools will help you produce your best work?

John Steinbeck reportedly used 300 Eberhard Faber Blackwing pencils to complete East of Eden. He used another 60 to produce The Grapes of Wrath.

The Blackwing 602's performance (expressed in its famous slogan, “Half the pressure, twice the speed”) gave the pencil a cult following that continued even after it was discontinued in 1998.

Who wouldn't want to use the same tool that Steinbeck and Vladimir Nabokov and Joseph Finder and Stephen Sondheim used?

Other writers have been equally finicky about their writing tools. Here are Hemingway's requirements: “The blue-backed notebooks, the two pencils and the pencil sharpener (a pocket knife was too wasteful), the marble-topped tables, the smell of café crèmes, the smell of early morning sweeping out and mopping and luck were all you needed.” (From his Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast.)

Neil Gaiman and Stephen King reportedly use fountain pens because they both like to write more slowly and with more intention.

“I also discovered I enjoy the tactile buzz of the ritual involved in filling the pens with ink,” Neil told the BBC.¹ (I like that he says he changes the ink color each day so he can see how many pages he produced the previous day.)

Jane Austin wrote on sheepskin with a quill pen, using a special kind of ink made with stale beer. The Palimpsest blog has her recipe:²

Take 4 ozs of blue gauls [gallic acid, made from oak apples], 2 ozs of green copperas [iron sulphate], 1 1/2 ozs of gum arabic. Break the gauls. The gum and copperas must be beaten in a mortar and put into a pint of strong stale beer; with a pint of small beer. Put in a little refin'd sugar. It must stand in the chimney corner 14 days.

When I built my Tiny Writing Studio in my backyard, I thought of Jane Austin beating her ink ingredients in a mortar. And for a hot minute I thought maybe I'd ditch the laptop and Wi-Fi connection. Maybe I'd try to write longhand with a fountain pen, using ink I might learn to mix myself.

“Oh that?” I'd say to my visitors, following their gaze to my mortar and pestle resting in the corner. “That's just where I pound my inks.”

But … Who would I be kidding? I'd last a long four or five minutes before I'd break down and attempt to hack into the neighbor's Wi-Fi. (I'd already tested its signal strength anyway.)

I suppose there's nothing magical about Blackwing pencils and fountain pens and pounding your own inks.

Unless maybe there is.

* * *

Throughout this book, I've listed a few writing and content tools related to specific tasks.

What follows in this section are some other writing and creativity tools, including those that help us organize and plan our writing or creative projects.

These are not the tools and processes of the celebrated literary greats (no mortars, no Blackwing pencils). But they are the tools of ordinary people like you and me who nonetheless have greatness within us.

These recommendations came from my own preferences, along with friends, marketers, book authors, and businesspeople I polled with one question: What's a content tool you can't live without?

Because, you know, everybody writes!

Research and Knowledge Management Tools

These tools allow you to research, capture, and organize notes and other things (photos, audio notes, handwritten notes, screenshots, web pages, etc.) and sync them between devices.

There are some nuances relating to the performance and capabilities of each. But generally these tools provide you with a more workable approach to research than, say, Post-it notes and highlighters or scraps of paper that you dig through the trash to retrieve later because you accidentally purged them from your desk. (Just me?)

Knowledge management sounds a little high-minded. But I couldn't think of a better term with the same precision. Brain organizer? Concept planner? Welp. Knowledge management it is.

• Evernote (evernote.com) gets top billing because almost everyone seems to love it. I've never gotten the hang of Evernote, but clearly I'm missing something. Several people I trust tell me I need to keep trying. My mother told me the same thing about Swiss chard when I was eight. I now eat Swiss chard. So maybe they're right.

  Also:

• Diigo (diigo.com)
• Microsoft OneNote (onenote.com)
• Notion (notion.so)
• Workflowy (workflowy.com)
• Pocket (getpocket.com)
• Zoho Notebook (zoho.com/notebook)
• Google Keep (keep.google.com)

Writing Tools

It's interesting how many of the writing tools we modern writers like aren't very modern at all. Many of us rely on basic things such as notebooks, sketchpads, pens, and pencils—especially for The Ugly First Draft.

And many of us use things like oversized sticky pads, whiteboards, and rolls of butcher paper to tackle and organize massive writing projects like books.

Why is that?

Maybe because using offline tools eliminates friction between the writer and the writing. Or maybe because it delivers the “tactile buzz” Neil Gaiman describes. Or maybe because writing by hand improves our thinking because it slows us down and gives our brains a chance to think.

Sometimes I'll use an old-school typewriter to write a first draft. A typewriter forces me to keep moving forward. Plus, I like the clacking sound of the typewriter key striking the page—it's like a small cheer that goes up with every letter … You! Did! It! Keep! Going!

A typewriter doesn't offer me endless opportunities to go back and rearrange the words and paragraphs before I've got it all down. I don't interrupt myself with second-guessing and self-editing.

Slower can be faster.

Eventually I move to a laptop. Here are some favorite online writing tools from me and others.

• Scrivener (literatureandlatte.com) is writing software that is especially great for composing, structuring, and manipulating long and difficult documents—like books, ebooks, manuals, or lengthy white papers. It's overkill for smaller writing tasks.
• yWriter (spacejock.com/yWriter5.html) is similar to Scrivener.
• Ulysses (ulyssesapp.com).
• Mellel (mellel.com).
• Pages (apple.com/mac/pages).
• Text editors, of which there are many—TextEdit (iOS), MS Notepad, and Byword among them. All are stripped-down, simple platforms preferred because of their Zen qualities and because they don't throw lots of extra code and characters into text the way (for example) MS Word does when you import a document into a content management system like WordPress.

  I like how marketer Michael Brenner writes his blog posts as draft emails and pops them into WordPress, effectively hacking a text editor by using something that's more familiar to most of us.

• Draft (draftin.com) was started by engineer Nathan Kontny to help people become better writers. I like the on-demand copyediting feature (which is kind of like an Uber for editing). I also like the Hemingway mode, which doesn't allow you to delete anything you've written.
• Microsoft Word (office.com) and Google Docs. I feel a little silly listing these two here—it's a little like listing water and bread basket on a restaurant menu. But I'm doing it so that I don't get emails.

Productivity Tools

Writing seems to trigger a latent ADHD condition in almost everyone. Procrastination and distraction are permanent handicaps. You start writing and pause to look up the definition of a word and the next thing you know you're watching the top 20 Betty White TV moments on YouTube.

The struggle is more than real: It's actual. Which is why this section reads a little like the self-help shelf at your local bookstore.

The goal of all of these productivity tools is to make you a more efficient, productive, and less frustrated writer.

• Write or Die (writeordie.com) bills itself as putting the prod in productivity. It allows you to set a time limit and attaches random consequences if you quit typing (sirens, pop-up boxes, heart attack-inducing unwriting). It's either motivating or anxiety producing, depending on your temperament.
• 750Words (750words.com) delivers points and badges based on output. It's based on the idea from The Artist's Way of writing three pages (or 750 words) daily.
• Ommwriter (ommwriter.com) offers a clean, minimalist writing experience for focused, distraction-free writing. Similar are: Zen Writer (beenokle.com/zenwriter.html) and ZenPen (https://zenpen.io/).
• Cold Turkey (getcoldturkey.com) allows you to blacklist or block certain sites or servers for a set period of time if you are powerless against the compulsion to check ALL THE THINGS.
• SelfControl (selfcontrolapp.com) is similar to Cold Turkey, but only for Mac. Its logo is a skull, which tells you everything you need to know.
• Google Docs offers a distraction-free writing feature. Toggle it to make the writing page go full-screen minimalist.
• StayFocusd (chrome.google.com) is a Chrome extension that allows you to limit the time you spend on websites you consider irresistible time sinks.
• LeechBlock (addons.mozilla.org) is the same as StayFocusd, but it's for Firefox.
• Pomodoro Technique (pomodorotechnique.com) is more of a time management and productivity technique than an actual tool—unless you count the cute 25-minute, tomato-shaped timer as a tool.

Two Tools to Limber Up Atrophied Writing Muscles

Here are two little-known but uber-practical tools that help me when my creative wheels get stuck in the mud.

Both of these tools are also quirky-fun. Writing words shouldn't feel like entering numbers into QuickBooks.

ilys (ilys.com) is a distraction-free writing tool that could go in the section above. But calling it that is too clinical.

ilys is Disney's Space Mountain of writing: It's pitch-black and you have no idea where you're going and it feels like maybe you shouldn't have agreed to this ride because GET. ME. OFF. NOW!!!

But you can't. All you can do is buckle up. Hang on. Keep going.

How it works: At ilys.com, input a number of words you want to write. (Be brave. Don't say like 10 because you are Not. A. Softy!)

Start typing. All you see on the screen is the letter you just typed flash in front of your face. Then—poof—GONE. If you know you made a mistake and reflexively hit the back button, you get a punitive buzzer sound that wishes it could deliver an actual shock to you.

You can't see the text in its entirety until you reach your word goal. Only then does ilys deliver your document. It's a frakkin mess.

But your first draft is THERE.

And that feels pretty great.

Fun fact: ilys stands for “I Love Your Stories.” And if that isn't the positivity our writing needs, I don't know what is.

Splasho's Up-Goer Text Editor (splasho.com/upgoer5/) challenges you to explain an idea using only the dictionary's 1,000 most-used English words.

The Up-Goer Editor is a kind of writing mullet: mostly for fun, but with a business utility to simplify your writing.

How it works: Type your text in the box. The editor boots out uncommon words, kicking to the curb anything that whiffs of jargon, buzzword, or complexity.

It's a great exercise to reframe your thinking in the simplest, most straightforward terms. It also helps you combat the curse of knowledge. The tool is especially useful if you work in tech, science, or any other complex industry. It helps you frame your writing in common language for readability and SEO.

Finally, try it for short descriptions or teasers. I sometimes use this tool to get out of my own head when I write descriptions of my talks and speeches.

For my international friends, it's also available in Norwegian (splasho.com/upgoer5no/) and Spanish (https://splasho.com/upgoer5es/).

Editing Tools

Word choice. Readability. AI writers. They're all here. (Some of these are mentioned elsewhere in this book.)

None of these tools should be substitutes for human editors (we talked about this already, but I'm compelled to repeat it here). But they can provide excellent first passes before your text journeys to your editor.

• Grammarly (grammarly.com) is a cloud-based typing assistant and personal writing coach. It's been around for a while, but rapid advances in AI-based technology have catapulted Grammarly beyond its grammar-fixing roots. It now judges your tone and word choice, and it checks for plagiarism.

  Grammarly Business can help organizations establish style guides for use in different contexts. Grammarly for Developers enables programmers to embed the service in their products.

  I expect that eventually Grammarly Home* will walk my dog and put a tuna casserole in to bake. (*Grammarly Home is not a thing … yet.)

  I use Grammarly daily because it's a great writing partner. But as I said elsewhere, it's occasionally satisfying for me as a writer to reject its suggestions. Know your own voice! Believe in it!

• Hemingway (hemingwayapp.com) is an app that flags limp sentences in favor of writing that's stand-up sharp.

  It's fun to play with. But keep in mind that when I ran part of Hemingway's own Farewell to Arms through the tool, it flagged instances of overly complex prose, passive voice, and too many adverbs. That doesn't mean it's a bad tool; it means that Papa knew his voice, too.

• Analyze My Writing (analyzemywriting.com) is a fun one. Paste your text into the field and feel judged.

  The tool assesses many things—from readability to passive voice to something called “lexical density,” which sounds like it's measured by submerging your paragraphs into water to see if they can swim …? IDK.

  One odd thing: The “Analyze Text!” CTA button is weirdly small. Took me a minute. You've been warned.

• ProWritingAid (prowritingaid.com) is an online writing coach and mentor. It flags spelling and grammar errors, clichés, and redundancies; it also checks for plagiarism and readability.
• Autocrit (autocrit.com) and SmartEdit (smart-edit.com) are similar to the two previous tools.
• Wordcounter (wordcounter.com) checks for redundancies in your text by ranking the most frequently used words (helpful if everything is a solution or service).
• Cliché Finder (cliche.theinfo.org) and ClicheFinder.net (clichefinder.net) both … well, find clichés.
• Plagium (plagium.com) lets you check where else your text might appear online. Plagiarism Detector (plagiarismdetector.net) does the same.

Word Finders

• Related Words (relatedwords) is open on my browser every time I'm writing. I like it because it delivers … well, related words instead of just synonyms, the way a thesaurus does. For me, it sparks livelier, less-obvious metaphors by suggesting nonobvious connections between words and their meanings.
• Word Hippo (wordhippo.com) is like a lot of sites related to writing in that it has an old-school look and feel that makes it seem it hasn't been updated since Amazon sold only books.

  Still it's a rich, useful site because it allows you to search word categories (such as “rhyme with”) in addition to antonyms, translations, or even a 10-letter word that starts with a B.

• Visual Thesaurus (visualthesaurus.com) is one of many word finders on the Web. The interface is also a lotta old-school. But I like Visual Thesaurus because it's what would happen if a really attractive thesaurus and a beautiful dictionary got together and gave birth to gorgeous word maps.
• RhymeZone. (rhymezone.com) is like Google for rhyming words, if Google went to the Rhyming Gym and jacked itself up on things like searching via number of syllables, meter, beginning letter, and more. I just rhymed guacamole and ravioli. I don't have a use for it now. But you never know.

Readability Tools

Relying on a formula to spit out how “readable” our text is feels like we're selling ourselves short.

Readability formulas are also famously flawed: They measure how readable something is … but they don't measure comprehension. They don't measure how fun or entertaining your writing is.

And most can't keep up with how language is evolving for specific audiences: “LOL BRT” might be understood by many of us. But most readability tools don't know that BRT means Be right there.

On the other hand, readability scores can be useful if you're facing a steep learning curve in getting to know a new audience. And sometimes we might need a little extra data to convince a boss or client that something is on target. Plus readability tests can be kind of fun to use. (Kind of.)

There are several readability scoring methods. The best known is Flesch-Kincaid.

Rudolf Flesch fled to the United States to avoid the Nazi invasion of Austria. Rudolf and J. Peter Kincaid co-created the readability scoring methodology in 1975, under contract to the U.S. Navy.

Today, it's embedded in Microsoft Word. It's also embedded in some WordPress plug-ins.

There are more. I'm including a few here that might be helpful in addition to the Flesch-Kincaid embedded tool. And I'll quit being judgmental about their use.

• Edit Central (editcentral.com/gwt1/EditCentral.html#style_diction) is a readability scoring tool. It's limited to 50,000 characters at a time.
• Readability Formulas (readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php) is limited to 600 words at a time, but it runs your content through seven formulas.
• Readable (readable.com/features/readability-formulas) has curated a bunch of readability tools if you want to really go down a readability rabbit hole.

Non–Text Writing Tools

I was surprised at the number of friends who record first drafts of blog posts while driving or walking or (in one case) working out … and then shape them into a readable format later. Who knew?

• Otter (otter.ai) uses AI and machine learning to transcribe voice to text in real-time.
• Descript (descript.com) is used by many marketers/writers as a way to create transcriptions of podcasts or webinars that can be edited, then published in other formats like blog posts.

  It also magically works the other way: Tweak text to edit audio/video files. Not sure how this last part actually works. Maybe alchemy.

• Google Doc voice typing uses AI to let you dictate your text.
• Nuance (Nuance.com) (formerly Dragon Naturally Speaking) is speech recognition software that's a handy way to capture a first draft.
• Rev (rev.com) relies on not AI but actual people. It's my go-to for transcription and translation.
• Speechpad (speechpad.com), Speakwrite (speakwrite.com), and CastingWords (castingwords.com) are all solid transcription services with various capabilities and features.

Content Idea Generators

These aren't writing tools. But they can help spark some writing ideas based on keywords you want to focus on. The first three are also mentioned in the chapter on headlines.

• SumoMe’s Kickass Headline Generator (sumome.com/kickass-headline-generator).
• CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer (coschedule.com/headline-analyzer).
• Answer the Public (answerthepublic.com) is a self-described “search listening tool,” but it also suggests approaches/titles.
• Blog About (impactbnd.com/blog-title-generator/blogabout) is an idea generator that's ideal when you know your topic so well that you're having a hard time coming up with a fresh or unique angle.
• UberSuggest (ubersuggest.org) is technically a keyword suggestion tool, but it has a side hustle as a solid idea generator for new blog posts. Enter a word or phrase and the tool delivers a list of results containing the word or phrase, followed by related phrases that can help ignite new ideas.
• BuzzSumo (Buzzsumo.com) tells you what content in your subject is most shared (among other things). It helps you find underserved content gaps or suggests hot topics you might want to get in on. The Questions tab is especially useful.

Keyword Research Tools

What do people really call our products?

What questions do people have?

How can we be the best answer to those questions?

Keyword research is like using telepathy to read the Internet’s mind, because it gives you answers to those questions and more.

Like how many people are searching for answers to specific questions. And how difficult it will be to rank in Google for those words or phrases.

Keyword research is where to start your ranking journey.

Interestingly, keyword tools inspire as much passion as writing tools. You wouldn't think a search technology would ignite squabbles and debate or cause someone I asked about their favorite tool to email me with the SHOUTY subject line AHREFS OR GO HOME.

Whoa, cowboy.

Anyway, a few favorites mentioned by content marketers, including my email friend MR. SHOUTY PANTS:

• Moz Keyword Explorer (moz.com/explorer). Stupid-easy to use.
• SEMrush Keyword Overview (semrush.com/features/keyword-research/). Not quite as easy to use, but a hair more robust.
• Ahrefs (ahrefs.com) is a tiny business compared with the two above. But it punches above its weight class because it's super powerful. Mr. Shouty Pants and others say it's suited to more serious SEO efforts.

One more thing: Google Search is itself a good keyword research tool. This from marketer Andy Crestodina, who is my go-to resource for all things Search.

Type the phrase you're considering, then hold off hitting the return key, Andy said, adding: “See the keyword suggestions? If it's suggested by Google, people are searching for it.”

AI Writing Tools

Should we all be depositing poop emojis in our pants at the idea that artificially intelligent robots are coming to take over all of our writing jobs?

No.

Instead of freaking out, let's freshen the guest room and give the robots a place to lay their molded plastic heads and close their soulless eyes. Let's welcome them with open arms.

The smartest writers will learn about these tools and how they can help us.

Some perspective: AI is already here. All of us interact with AI dozens—if not hundreds—of times every day in our personal lives. Products and services like Gmail, Netflix, Alexa, Facebook, LinkedIn, Spotify, Uber, and your phone are all fueled in part by AI, says Paul Roetzer, founder of the Marketing AI Institute.

“You don't care that AI powers those experiences,” Paul says. “But you do subconsciously appreciate that they make your life incrementally better through the conveniences of voice, prediction, and personalization.”

These same technologies are accelerating writing. What's that means for us?

It means that AI will take over a lot of the mundane, data-driven repetitive tasks most of us creative people don't enjoy anyway. Like researching audiences and content; analyzing data for content strategy; optimizing email (subject lines, send times, personalizing newsletters); and helping to generate social content, templated writing (basic boilerplates, for example), and some initial drafts.

AI increasingly helps us be more creative and strategic, letting us focus on the parts we love while outsourcing the stuff we don't.

It's not that the robots are coming for us; it's that we will use them.

Of course, they might also just decide to kill us all.

(Just kidding.)

(I think.)

I've already mentioned a couple of AI-powered writing tools above:

1. Grammarly
2. ProWriterAid

Others:

• Hyperwrite (hyperwriteai.com) is remarkable in its ability to sound nonrobotic. It uses natural language processing technology to generate original content suggestions for us, and it might help you write faster and more clearly.
• Jasper (jasper.ai) uses AI to create short-form content: short posts, email copy, landing pages, social media.
• Lately (lately.ai) is similar to Jasper, helping us produce social media messages at scale. I sometimes have used it to suggest the rough drafts of social posts from my email newsletter, for example.
• Copy.ai (copy.ai) is a copywriting tool for short-form content, also useful for generating social posts and link descriptions.
• WriteSonic (writesonic.com) seeks to create articles, blog posts, landing pages, Google ads, Facebook ads, emails, product descriptions, and more. It's also available in 20+ languages.
• MarketMuse (marketmuse.com) is helpful for writing briefs that save time on research. It also helps with first drafts.
• Writer (writer.com) is geared toward enterprise teams.

Massive thanks to Paul Roetzer for his insights in assembling that list of AI tools.

* * *

The marketing around every one of these technologies always mentions their speed and ease. It also usually talks about non-robot-sounding writing voice. It's mostly true. (Or soon will be as the tech advances.)

But remember also that speed isn't everything. My goal in life is not to create more … but to create lasting things that matter.

What's more, these tools work best not as plug-and-play content generators but as tools that work best in the hands of creators: people like you and me.

They give us power. (Can you write the bones of a boilerplate in 30 seconds? I can't.) (Can you write in Dutch? I can't.)

But only in our own adept and capable hands does that power become a superpower.