I don’t think I’m a bestselling author or anyone famous in a position to suggest anything to anybody. But sometimes people ask me about how to write and how to do it so here’s a list of things I use when I’m writing.

This is just what I use and I think sharing always helps. That’s the main reason I’m writing this. You can try these if you want to make your writing life more manageable. These apps won’t write for you, but they’ll make writing fun for sure.

MS Word – it’s my main app for writing everything from my blogs to WIPs, I still believe in this appGoogle Docs – I use it to backup my main documents saved in MS WordGoogle Keep – I use it to keep track of my to-do lists and write random notes or thoughts, poems, and anything that comes to meGoogle Sheets – I use it to keep track of my word count and plan my post schedule since it’s available on my phone as well as laptop  MS Excel – it’s my go-to place when I want to organize my WIPs, plan and plot my WIPs – keep track of scenes/ tropes that must be in my stories, record the timeline of events happening in the stories, chapter titles, edit notes, everything is in my excel sheetsPinterest – the one app that saves me every time from aesthetic to character inspiration to quotes to writing tips to book recs, everything is hereSpotify – the only music app I trust so all of my playlists are made on it and it gets me in the mood to write or accompanies me when I daydream about my characters and storiesForest – when I can’t write for days, I come back to this app, set a timer for an hour, and write without using my phone or any other distractionOnelook Thesaurus – when it gets tiring to say “said”, this will come in handy and give you synonyms to use just as it’ll tell you the meaning of the word “painstakingly”Grammarly – although the free version doesn’t get the job done, I still use it to check the grammar in anything I writeHemingway Editor – it’s a cool site that lets you see the readability of your textNaNoWriMo – I’ve participated in it for the past three years in November and I’ve always managed to get some writing done [the goal is to write more, not reach the word count goal] it’s a good motivating space if you want to watch your progress as well as your friend’sCanva – I make all of my posts for Instagram, YouTube, and WordPress on this app and it’s a savior [they have cool templates that make things easier if you don’t know how to design or don’t have much time for it]Corel Draw – I design the cover for my books using this app because I learned how to use it in college but it’s hardly available for free [Procreate and Canva are other options that you can try if you have access to it]WordPress – this is for my blog and author’s website so anyone can read my blogs or see all of my books in one place

Other things that I can’t live without are my phone and laptop, my journals, and pens [I also like to use brush pens as highlighters and I love using sticky notes for my ideas]

Additional Tips –

If you don’t know where to look, Pinterest is a great spot to learn anything – from writing tips to writing a full book, everything is available on that appThere’s a complete guide on NaNoWriMo that helps you plot a book so you can download it and edit it on your ownThere are several Instagram accounts that share tips and advice on how to write, how to get a publishing deal etcFor editing, Chicago Style Manual can help you [I don’t know how to edit my own work but it got the job done for my debut novel]The Emotion Thesaurus is THE writing guide if you don’t know how to write emotions and body language wellProust Questionnaire consists of questions that will help you understand your character better and how to make their voice stand out so none of your characters sound the sameSpotify Podcasts – Fiction Writing Made Easy by Savannah Gilbo is a podcast that I heard one episode of where she talks about the importance of subplots [it’s hard for me to listen to podcasts but if you are someone who learns easily from it then you should check her podcast channel]

That’s everything I’ve used or use on a regular basis. People do suggest using Scrivener but for some reason I can’t figure out that site/app. Plus, it charges a fee [as far as I know] so I don’t want to do any more research on that when I know I’ll never use it.

If you’re new to writing, you don’t necessarily need these things. When I started writing, all I had was my journal and pen, then MS Word, and then Google Docs. Remaining things just became a part of my life as I went on.

So, I’d say don’t let these things intimidate you. Writing is fun. This is just for those who crave a system in their life and need every single thing organized in order to work. If you don’t want these things, pick a pen and start writing. That’s all that’s really important to get writing done, anyway.

happy writing<3