USEFUL WRITING RESOURCES
There are soooooo many resources out there. I see people talking about them all the time in club threads, asking about Scriviner, Final Draft, that kind of stuff. I personally am going to focus on three main internet resources that I personally use that are free. I couldn't tell you about Scriviner or Final Draft anyway since I don't have them, but even if I did, maybe you're not in a position to spend a bunch of money on a writing program. The three resources I will talk about in this chapter are Pinterest, Susanna's Pacemaker, and Write or Die.
In opposite order, I present Write or Die.
I think this is one of the sites a lot of people do know about, but a lot of people are scared of it. There are honestly ups and downs of this site/program. There's the if you don't keep writing constantly, we'll start to delete your work mode, which Write or Die is most famous for, and that terrifies people. You can change the setting. You can set it so instead of eating your last sentences, the screen turns red and a baby cries at you. Less scary. There are a lot of other settings, most importantly the time frame and the word count goal.
In my experience, the rapid writing that comes from madly typing 1,000 words in 20 minutes isn't always the best quality. The thing is, though, it's easier to edit 1,000 mediocre words than it is to edit no words at all. I personally use Write or Die if I have a small timeframe to work in and I really need to keep on task OR if I'm trying to get through a section of writing that might not be the most interesting, but is interesting for one reason or another. It gets me through the mundane stuff to get back into the action.
Find it at writeordie.com
Moving onto Susanna's Pacemaker.
So, I've attempted Nanowrimo a few times (never won. 11 hour work days are not conducive to writing 50,000 words in 30 days...) My absolute favorite feature of Nano is the graph of your progress. I find that so motivating. But what do you do when it's not November or during any of the Camp Nano months?
Pacemaker! I found this on Tumblr, I believe, and it seems to be a thing that not as many people know about compared to Write or Die.
That awesome graph from Nanowrimo? Susanna's Pacemaker is better. Check this out! The points on it are far more interactive. Hover over and see how many words you logged per day and how many you aimed to. A green line indicates your work, a blue line indicates your goals.
You can input more personalized details, for any length of time. You can set it so it tells you exactly how many words a day you need to complete your goal, even after you missed five days or writing. You can set it so your goals are higher over the weekend and lower during the week. The possibilities are so personal. This is such a wonderful tool. I highly recommend it. Best of all, it's free. Freeeeee!
Find it at pacemaker.press/about
Last but not least, Pinterest. My love, my dearest distraction.
Pinterest is all about how you use it. It's a little tricky to get started. If you join, the first thing you do is follow writing.
Next step, create a writing board or a story board to save related pins to. Try a few searches relevant to your particular book. If that doesn't work, try novel inspiration. If you find a pin you like, try seeing who pinned it and follow one of their boards. The more people you follow, the more you'll get cool stuff in your home feed.
I have a pin board for all of my books. I also have a board from Writing Inspiration for images that I don't have a place for, but want to save for later. I also have a Writing Tips board for links to blogs that have helpful posts or guides about blood spatter or horseback riding terms, 1920's names, how to write villains, et cetera, et cetera. I love it. I love pinning illustrations that remind me of characters, or pinning landscapes that suit the setting, pinning quotes of things characters might say.
If you need a jumping off point, I invite you to follow me at pinterest.com/christytwist and go through the plethora of inspiration, character, and mood boards I follow personally.
PS: As a sidenote, I'm considering running a draw for each chapter in this book if people are interested. I'll draw names from commenters and I'll ask the winner to send me an excerpt of their work and I'll critique it in an upcoming chapter of this advice book. Tell me if this sounds like a cool idea or not?!