Tools of the Writing Trade

Software to Make Writing, Editing, and Publishing Easier

The links in this post are to tools that I personally use. They are not affiliate links and I do not benefit if you click or sign up!

Have you seen images of The Watsons, an abandoned manuscript of Jane Austen’s, during the editing process? Fragile-looking pages with handwritten text, insertions and replacement paragraphs attached with straight pins. Can you even imagine? I certainly can’t.

Writing is hard enough: Putting your thoughts on paper. Trying to make it clear, accessible, interesting to your reader. Overcoming writer’s block, imposter syndrome, and any number of other mental hurdles.

close up of black computer keyboard

Luckily, the mechanics of writing in the digital age are only getting easier and easier. Here are some of my favorite tools for writing, editing, and publishing content.

Organization

There’s no shortage of project management systems out there, and the very best way to choose the right one for you is just to give them a try. If you already know what features you’re looking for, that can help you narrow your focus. But everyone works a little differently, and you can’t go wrong with giving your shortlist choices a quick trial to see how it goes.

I like Trello because I can easily use it for personal and household to-do lists, as well as for client work and business administration tasks. It’s also useful for collaborating, whether that’s building a grocery list with my spouse, planning a trip with my sister, or drawing up an outline for a client project.

Inspiration

Ideas for our writing can come from all manner of places, of course, and we don’t always have a choice in the matter. But even if you’re working on an assignment for an employer or for a client, it helps to be able to supplement those topics with additional inspiration.

A great place to start is to find out what people are already searching for online. If you’re writing about laundry best practices and you learn that lots of people are going to search engines to compare soaps vs. detergents or to get information about water temperatures, that’s added value you can include to meet that need. Answer the Public is a fantastic way to do just that and find out what people are asking about.

Focus

The ease of managing so many aspects of our lives online has its drawbacks. I frequently find myself losing things, opening videos or articles or pages to look at later—and inadvertently leaving them there for days (or even longer). My default browser of choice, Google Chrome, is already pretty good at keeping a history for me if I accidentally close a window with 29 tabs. (It’s happened. More than once.)

But Workona has changed my life because it allows you to create separate workspaces, meaning I can have 29 tabs open for one client—and then quickly switch to my own administrative workspace, where my email, calendar, and invoicing system is waiting for me. I don’t lose tabs, and I don’t have to have everything open at once.

Clarity

One of the surest ways to promote clarity is to pick a style guide and stick to it! This can help you both conform to standard language rules and ensure consistency in your writing. More “rules” than you probably realize are simply style preferences—whether that’s including a serial comma before “and” in lists, spelling out some numbers but not others, or capitalizing headings and subheadings.

There are plenty of style guides out there, and you can also create your own! AP (The Associated Press Stylebook) is most common in journalistic settings. MLA (Modern Language Association) is the standard for most academics. APA (American Psychological Association) is the go-to for many social sciences and business texts. I use The Chicago Manual of Style for most of my work, for instance. Even so, I will make exceptions for certain clients based on their audience needs.

Looking for additional help with your writing project? I offer editing, proofreading, and even ghostwriting services—and I’d love to talk to you about what you’re working on!

5 Tricks for Dealing with Writer’s Block

Strategies for Overcoming the Blank Page

No matter how prolific a writer you are, writer’s block is an inevitability we all face from time to time. If you’re like me, you find yourself sitting at your computer, fingers poised over the keyboard, and . . . nothing.

Vintage typewriter with blank page. Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash.

Maybe you don’t know how to start. Or you get stuck and can’t get going again. Or a few words trickle out, but it’s just not quite what you had in mind.

Whatever block you’re facing, I’ve found that these five tricks help me and my writing find our way again almost every single time.

1. Walking Away—or Just Walking

Taking a walk is my go-to solution for writer’s block because it’s the one that works the best the most often. Sometimes I’ve got too many different things floating around in my head—multiple client projects, maybe, or a long list of miscellaneous to-dos to tackle—and my thoughts can’t settle on the writing at hand.

Getting away from my desk helps because I can actually do the thing I’m thinking about (move the laundry, check the mailbox). And sometimes taking my mind off forcing the writing helps me return to the keyboard with fresh eyes and fresh ideas.

Still, I try not to give in to the temptation to walk away too quickly. If I notice that I’m struggling, I’ll make a note of the time. If 15 minutes or more pass and I haven’t managed to get anything down that I feel good about, that’s when I’ll call it quits for a bit.

For a bonus tip, take a page out of Ernest Hemingway’s book and stop in the middle of a sentence when you take a break. It often helps you pick up the momentum a little easier when you come back to your work.

2. Clearing Out the Cobwebs

On Mad Men, Don Draper goes to the movies because he says it “clears out the cobwebs.” He goes to the theater in the middle of the afternoon instead of staying stuck at his desk (was he ever stuck at his desk?).

Like taking a walk, allowing yourself to get lost in a book, movie, or piece of music does wonders for getting your conscious mind off your writing. It can also let your subconscious get to work instead. But, unlike going for a stroll, choosing an immersive creative experience has the added bonus of stoking your creative fires. Inspiration can come from the unlikeliest sources—and visiting other worlds through fiction or excellent filmmaking is often just the ticket.

If you’re not sold, take a lesson from Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, and think of it as an artist’s date. Julia says we all need, from time to time, to refill our creative wells—lest it dry up. So once a week, prioritize taking your inner artist on a date. She calls it “assigned play” and says it doesn’t need to be “artistic,” just something festive or whimsical or out of the ordinary.

Go outside, browse an interesting shop, make a vision board, build a playlist, take a drive. Come back inspired.

3. Starting at the End

A blank page can feel straight-up threatening, and the pressure of needing to start off with a solid beginning can quickly overwhelm. That’s why I often like to start at the end. Whether it’s writing the end-of-page call-to-action for marketing copy or the witty close to an essay—even the final line in an email I’ve been putting off—sometimes it’s just easier to work backward.

If I’m writing digitally (and I almost always am) I’ll often insert several returns or even a whole page break to visually remind myself that I’m merely skipping ahead a little bit and will come back later to fill it in. You’d be surprised how much of a difference this little mental trick can make!

Working this way can also be a nice reminder that writing is almost never a linear process. It’s okay to skip around and put it together like a puzzle as all the pieces come together. There’s no need to force yourself to write anything in the order it will be read, a common hang-up when fighting writer’s block.

4. Streaming Your Consciousness

Let’s take another cue from Julia Cameron with her beloved morning pages process, the practice of writing three pages (long-hand) first thing in the morning. The idea is, like going to the movies or taking a drive, to clear out the cobwebs of your mind. With stream-of-consciousness writing, you build up the habit of writing without editing or censoring along the way.

That’s the same trick you use if you’ve ever found yourself writing your way in to a piece. Often what we really want to say is buried under all the everyday stuff that clutters up our minds, those to-do lists and reminders and conversations with friends or colleagues. It’s once we get through all that junk that we can arrive at the good stuff.

Try it! Just start writing as though you’re narrating your thoughts. “Narrating your thoughts? Or should it be ‘narrating your mind’? Is that something I can Google? I CANNOT forget to buy dishwasher detergent. Maybe this is the year I actually write a book. I should go ahead and sign up for that painting workshop.” See?

You may have to scrap the first 10% (or even the first 90%) of your efforts before you find the words worth saving. But they’ll be there.

5. Changing Your Environment

Sometimes it’s simply a matter of where you’re sitting (or standing or laying down). Changing my environment is most helpful when I’m dealing with one of two situations. First, I might have been sitting in the same spot for way too long and I feel restless about the setting. Or the scenery around me may be much too distracting (whether because I’ve chosen to sit in the living room and Law & Order reruns are playing on a loop or because I’m somewhere new and I feel overly stimulated by the novelty around me.)

Simply turning the position of my chair and laptop 90 degrees can feel refreshing. So can adjusting ambient sounds—whether that’s turning off something distracting or putting on some white noise to fill the silence.

There have been times when I feel like I need to completely overhaul my surroundings or state of mind to feel like I can get into the flow, but most of the time it’s making a small tweak that reignites the process.


Were any of these strategies familiar to you? Do you have another helpful hint for getting through your writer’s block? I’d love to hear from you!

Back-to-School Vibes

Even when you’re no longer a student

It’s been over a decade since the last time I was a full-time student, but this time of year still gives me the warm fuzzy feelings of back-to-school excitement. New school (or office) supplies, fresh notebooks, a renewed sense of routine . . . okay, maybe that last one is a long shot this year.

Still, even in the midst of a global pandemic and ongoing anxiety about time, September feels like a great time to hit the reset button on the year. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be taking stock of 2020 so far, preparing to make the most of the last quarter, and starting to look ahead to 2021.

Gathering the Supplies

I may not need any #2 pencils or a new set of watercolors, but I did do some online supplies shopping to restock my go-to pens, the 2-by-1 sticky notes I use to mark my favorite lines in books, and even a disco ball (because why the fuck not).

I’ve also been following a recommendation from my favorite feng shui consultant and cleaning my desk each week: When I shut down for the weekend, I pull everything off, wipe it down with lavender-scented cleaning spray, and then put everything (or rather, everything I want to keep) back with intention.

stack of new packages on desk: a disco ball, post-it notes, and sharpie markers

Setting a Curriculum

Like day planners and cookie recipes, when it comes to goal-setting programs I have no brand loyalty and I’m keen on trying them all. I’ve written SMART goals and intuition-led intentions, and I’ve focused on quarterly objectives and on “the one thing” each day.

But this year, I’m really digging the Chalkboard Method. My summer “chalkboard”—it’s actually poster board because chalk gives me the creeps—is part to-do list, part goal tracking, and part manifestation tool. And it’s been working out marvelously, helping me stay on track with everything from networking to paying off a credit card and to seek out dreamy new clients.

Getting Good Grades

Two years ago, my business bestie and I started a new tradition of getting together around this time of year for a couple Get-Shit-Done Days. We hang out in Denver, where we drink coffee and eat cupcakes and admire the mountains and set our laptops up to tackle the big picture things we’ve putting off.

Like everything else this year, our 2020 business retreat is going to look a little different—but we’ll still make the time to dig in and care for ourselves and our businesses and each other. And it’ll make all the difference in preparing for Q4 and beyond!

Are you a grownup who still gets excited for back-to-school season?

What are you doing to take advantage of the rest of this year?

Tell me about it!

What on Earth, 2020?

Living during a pandemic

To say that this year has been tough is not new or unique, but it sure is true.

I know I’m not alone in struggling with the fear of the pandemic, with the heartbreak of racism, with the weight of work, with the deterioration of mental health. The last time I posted something here, it was tips on maintaining productivity and a little sanity while working from home. It felt like an upbeat cheer for finding success in the midst of a strange time.

But, Reader, that already seems like a very long time ago. Today, I’m just trying to take it day by day without losing my ever-loving mind.

One day at a time

During a recent Zoom call with a business mastermind group, I confessed that I’m still learning—two years after leaving corporate life—to let routines go when they’re no longer serving me. There are days when a checklist from “make coffee” all the way through to “evening gratitude journal” is what I need to feel grounded and productive. But there are also days that seem to require both a long morning hike and an afternoon nap to keep me feeling like a competent human being.

I’m realizing they can both be right. Today can be whatever I need it to be.

With unending uncertainty about the future and so many of my pre-pandemic self-care tricks (impromptu lunch with my sister, book club in a friend’s living room, dinner and drinks with my parents, a weeknight movie) off the table . . . It’s okay to take each day as it comes, doing what I need to feel like the best possible version of myself before I see another headline that makes me want to punch a wall or find another canceled vacation that’s still showing up on my calendar.

Protecting what’s most valuable

That means some days I log nine or ten hours at my desk, and some days I only check my email to make sure I haven’t missed anything urgent and then take myself for a long walk.

And—maybe most importantly—I’m learning to count both those days as wins. I’m trying not to worry about the things I’ve left undone while I’m on a trail or enjoying a novel. My mental health is just as valuable as any item on my to-do list, and not just because it’s a means to staying productive the rest of the time.

What good is it to make it through 2020 if I end the year feeling completely burned out or hollowed out?

I’d love to hear from you! How are you holding up? What is helping you survive (or thrive!) during this strange and difficult year?

Tools for Getting by While Working from Home

Life During a Pandemic

I’ve been working from home full-time for very nearly two years, but this past month has been the most difficult by far. Introvert or not, I’ve gotten pretty stir-crazy without the ability to work for an hour at my favorite coffee shop, attend a lunch-and-learn at Central Exchange, or meet up for an end-of-day drink with my sister.

Fortunately, I’ve collected a few tools that had made it easier me to find success as a solopreneur—and that are frankly saving my sanity during this pandemic.

To-dos

I read several years ago that the average person uses something like 17 different methods to keep track of their time. Notebooks, calendars, sticky notes, countless apps? I can relate. I still use each of these for various purposes, but Trello has become my hub for tracking client projects, administrative tasks, personal reminders, and more. With the ability to create template checklists, set due dates, and to separate tasks by card, list, or board, it has been tremendously helpful.

Tracking time

Because I don’t keep very consistent hours and work on a wide variety of projects, keeping track of where I’m spending my time can become very hairy very quickly. I’ve been using Timely for about a year and it has made life so much easier! It tracks what files and applications I’m spending time in so that I can see exactly how long I was working on any given project (and, inevitably, how much I’m squandered on The New York Times spelling bee).

Email

With even fewer events on my calendar and all the days blurring together in quarantine, my schedule has slowly skewed later and later. I often find myself working late at night, and appreciate Boomerang’s help in keeping me looking a little less like a night owl (until I rat myself out on my own blog). With this extension’s help, I can set my Gmail account to only fetch new messages at certain times of the day (rather than seeing a constant influx of new mail) and to schedule sent mail for a more reasonable hour. Lifesaver.

Sounds

Have I mentioned that I miss being able to leave the house? A Soft Murmur offers enough ambient background noise to break up long stretches of silence (not conducive to my own sense of peak productivity), but not so much distraction as my current Spotify playlist (also not great for productivity). “Coffee shop” sounds are not as good as the real thing, but I’ll take it.

What tools are helping you maintain some sense of productivity (or some sense of sanity) during this period of isolation? I’d love to hear about them!

22 Hours and Counting: An Outside Project Update

When I started working toward being outside a total of 150 hours this year, it was all about the walking. Mostly because it was the middle of winter, which is not really lounge-on-the-patio weather. If you’re going to be outside in January in Kansas City, you’ll want to keep moving.

Getting out of the house

I found that I really didn’t mind bundling up that much if it meant getting out of the house for a little bit.

But then February and all its snow, ice, and thunderstorms happened. The only time I left the house was to dig out my car so I could refuel on caffeine and Trader Joe’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups. Any extra progress I’d made in January to the goal of 150 years was lost in the cold, black hole of February.

After many days of not spending any time outdoors, these last few weeks have literally been a breath of fresh air. It’s been lots of walks to the library, to the grocery store, to the coffee shop, around the small lake down the street. Each outing has been diligently added to my tracker, building up my time.

Being vs. doing

But it didn’t occur to me until today that being outside doesn’t mean that I have to be active. Walking is great and I need more of that, not less. Still, I’m learning this year that there is much to be said for just being instead of always doing.

I’m looking forward to a lovely spring season of adding meditating, reading, and eating al fresco to my routine. Bonus points if there are also happy hours on the patio.

What are your favorite out-of-doors activities? Do you like to stay active out there or are you more likely to just hang out under the sky?

Turn Off Notifications, Take Back Your Time

A QUICK DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY USE AFFILIATE LINKS.

I’m a sucker for productivity hacks. I love the idea that one little tweak to my daily habits or routines can save time, boost efficiency, or make me feel like more of a pro.

No more badge icons

Admittedly, few of these helpful hints get so ingrained that they’re actually useful in the long run. But one of the biggest game-changers for me recently has been turning off notifications on my phone. Several weeks ago, I read this guide from Coach Tony that advocates, in part, for never seeing another badge icon again. While it’s a year and a half old, the recommendations have never felt more relevant for my phone/life balance.

In an ideal world, I’d remove social media apps altogether and keep my phone on airplane mode for regular intervals and never check my email while watching TV with my husband. But an ideal world this is not. And so what I’m striving for is “better” instead of “perfect.”

iphone with screen turned off sitting on a table in a ray of sunlight

Turning off notifications has been like a weight lifted off my shoulders. I still check my phone too much and spend too much time doing the scroll, but I no longer react to every new email, social, or file-upload alert. None of my apps display badges anymore, so I don’t feel that constant nagging to open something back up or guilt over not having addressed something yet, especially in the evenings or over the weekend when I’m trying to be off the clock. I know that I’m still spending plenty of time in my inbox—it’s not going to go ignored for too long.

Someone told me recently that as a workforce, we’ve quickly adapted to checking our email on a Saturday—but that we wouldn’t dare going to see a movie on a Monday afternoon. Part of the joy and reward in being my own boss is that I get to make those decisions about when I’m working and when I’m not (and choosing, sometimes, to go to a weekday matinee).

On the clock, off the clock

But with one phone to manage all things, those lines are just too hard to define sometimes. Engaging on Facebook as Mallory Herrmann is off-the-clock time but engaging as Mallory Herrmann Editorial Services LLC is not. How do I split those hairs when I’m glancing through social media while in line at the grocery store?

Changing how reactive I am to my phone doesn’t solve those problems, but it has made it easier to be more intentional about how I spend that time. When I open up the email app, it’s because I’m ready to read some email or to follow-up on something specific, and not just because my phone has been dinging at me all morning. When I’m ready for the weekend, I can discourage myself from opening Asana or Dropbox or Dubsado to check a project’s status—I can look at each and every one of those notifications when I’m ready to do the work on Monday.

Unplugged: 24 Blissful Hours without My Beloved Phone

A QUICK DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY USE AFFILIATE LINKS.

The time spent on my phone has officially become unsustainable. It’s often my closest companion all day, never more than an arm’s length away. Like so many bad habits, I don’t even realize what’s happening . . . and then I can only cringe when I see those stark weekly usage reports.

then and now

Digital detox

I did a “digital detox” a couple months back. I’d just finished reading How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life, which culminates in a challenge to give up your phone (or, better, all screens or internet-enabled devices) for 24 hours and had convinced (coerced?) my husband to participate with me. We did a puzzle instead of watching TV and both read more than we might have otherwise.

I could sense that I had benefited from the exercise, but I was also practically counting down the minutes until time was up and I could get my hands back on my phone.

This time, I was participating in the National Day of Unplugging. Inspired by the Jewish Sabbath, a day of rest beginning at sunset on Friday, the day encourages participants to engage in life beyond their devices for 24 hours.

Stop relying on the TV

I turned off my phone around 6:30 on Friday, just before my mother-in-law came over. We usually visit over or around the TV: she shares our interest in true crime, and that always sparks interesting conversation related to whatever series or docuseries we’re following.

But this time, we (gasp!) left the TV off. A chat about how everyone’s week was going turned into funny anecdotes from the workplace; mentions of recently read books sparked the retelling of childhood memories. With tea in hand and candles lit, it felt very hygge. We turned toward each other instead of arranging ourselves around the television. And it was lovely!

The rest of my unplugged time felt just as wonderful: listening to vinyl records with Ali; attending a workshop without fear of my phone ringing (or temptation to check it under the table); running my errands on foot, spending the time outside feeling untethered to any schedule or route; reading a book on the couch in silence.

I actually found myself a little reluctant to re-engage, to open myself back up to the inbox, to dinging notifications, to the compulsion to scroll through feeds.

Baby steps

While I don’t think I’m ready to be unplugged a full day every week, I’m setting a goal to try it for an hour each day. I often spend that much or more reading, but still find myself reacting to each vibration or choosing to pick up my phone to look up a word . . . and then losing track of time or purpose as I get sucked into one app or another.

It’s kind of unnerving to realize how reliant we’ve become on having a tiny powerful computer in our pocket. But I appreciate the resistance I’m seeing in so many circles: setting aside time away from phones, being less reactive and more proactive in how technology is used, not being so afraid to just unplug for a bit.

Have you tried a digital detox? Is unplugging part of your regular routine? Tell me what’s working for you!

One Helpful Trick for Preventing Writer’s Block

A QUICK DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY USE AFFILIATE LINKS.

I started this post intending to say that when you write a lot, you start to write better. Words come more easily, you develop a kind of muscle memory that helps keep you going.

And do you know what happened? Writer’s block.

Proving, if nothing else, that the universe has a sense of humor.

Finding the thread

Writing can be a tricky business. Sometimes I sit down to write and feel like my fingers just cannot type fast enough to keep up. Other times I’ve made myself dizzy spinning in my office chair, hoping to catch any thread of anything to say something at all interesting or valuable.

ink pen and open notebook that only reads "Ummmm..."

Practice does help. As I started building my freelance business, that’s one of the greatest things I noticed: as I transitioned out of a 9-to-5 job that only required me to write in email form—and started writing more long-form content—it became easier to write well. I was more likely to have the speed-typing problem than the chair-spinning problem.

But like so many things in life, a plateau is inevitable. You get into a groove and then it becomes a rut.

Morning pages

One tool I’ve been using to stave off such a rut is the Morning Pages practice from Julia Cameron. I haven’t actually read The Artist’s Way (or at least not past the introduction; curse you, shopping ban) but I’d seen Julia’s name in enough acknowledgements sections to be familiar with the gist of this practice that so many artists swear by: three pages of longhand, stream-of-conscious writing every single morning.

There are no rules to Morning Pages. You just have to keep doing them.

My own Morning Pages practice is still very new. But while there was some horror in showing up on day two and feeling like I’d already run out of things to think (and then write), it’s making a great addition to my day. Usually part brain dump, panic over to-do lists and deadlines, and trying to remember whether or not I’ve already fed the cat, it’s also showing me patterns in my thinking, releasing mental clutter, and giving me the opportunity to play with language that I otherwise might have thought but not written down.

It’s also a chance to engage both my inner critic and my inner mentor, to practice my real-live handwriting, and to reform that callous on my right ring finger that I’ve hated since I was a kid.

If one of the most important ingredients of good writing is just to keep doing it, Morning Pages is creating an invaluable daily space to do just that—writer’s block, be damned.

On Writing Rituals and Routines

A QUICK DISCLOSURE: THIS POST MAY USE AFFILIATE LINKS.

I had a professor in college who said he had a dedicated laptop for writing. It had never been (would never be) connected to the internet. He only wrote on that computer, standing up at a podium.

Seeking a routine

I often find myself trying to create a specific writing ritual, but I haven’t found anything in particular that’s stuck. Sometimes I write at my desk on a standard desktop PC. Sometimes it’s on my laptop (at my coworking space, at the library, on my couch, in bed) or even on my phone. I write at 8 a.m., at 8 p.m. Occasionally at 2 a.m. I write in silence or with music, with coffee or without.

I’m learning that it really doesn’t matter as long as I keep going. Stephen King wrote in On Writing that “the sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate – four to six hours a day, every day – will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them.”

Even as a bookworm and a professional writer, that can be a tough benchmark to hit consistently.

Setting priorities

There’s always extra stuff on the to-do list, things to be tempted by: getting trapped in my inbox, worrying about my personal brand, doing chores around the house, trying to exercise more than once a year, not shopping, binge-watching Game of Thrones with my husband.

But it feels great to make the time.

This morning I spent a couple hours on my bookkeeping and on client work, and then I spent the afternoon reading a novel from cover to cover before sitting down to write. It felt like such a luxury!

And a rejuvenation. It turns out that writing after a few hours of reading a book (especially when you’re reading for recreational purposes and not out of obligation or requirement) feels a little less harried than after a big chunk of time in front of a screen . . . or several.

Maybe one day I will have an eccentric or very specific writing routine. Until then, I’ll just keep plugging away whenever—and however—I can.

What about you? Do you have a setting, time of day, or tools that you always use to write?