Research and Writing: Tips, Tech and Tools for Producing Top Copy

As a writer, you’ll know that time is money, which is why you’ll have a number of ways you try to make the most of your time. However, there are also a variety of different tools available which can help you to produce stellar copy by enabling you to organize your time and remove any unwanted distractions. Here are just some of them:

Removing Distractions

One of the hardest things most writers face is distractions, whether these are chores that need doing around the home or the Facebook tab you’ve got open on your laptop. However, an app has been designed to help eliminate many of the distractions you’ll find on your computer – meet FocusWriter.

Available on a number of computer systems, this has been designed to try and remove things from your computer screen that you may find distracting, allowing you to focus on one thing – your writing.

Recording Conversations

If you’re a journalist or you’re involved in interviewing clients, you’ll no doubt find it quite stressful gathering notes from your meetings. This is especially challenging if you’re not going to be working on the piece until a later date, as you’ll want to make sure you’ve captured all the essential details you’ll need, just in case you forget them.

However, there is an app that enables you to keep track of all your important conversations for a later date – Call Recorder for Me. You can automatically turn this on to record all your conversations, or you can pick and choose which ones you want recording. One thing’s for sure – you’ll never have to take notes again!

Editing Work

Even though there are plenty of apps you can download to help with your work, it’s always nice to find something that’s available online and without the need for a download. The Hemingway App can be a writer’s best friend as it’s a free web app that helps you to edit your work with ease. Highlighting your text in different colors to draw your attention to various things, including common grammatical errors and complex sentences that are too long, it helps you to see where you might have gone wrong in your work.

Unnecessary adverbs are also picked out as are uses of passive voice, which helps you to see where you might need to make changes. This is a really good tool if you’re editing your own work or want to double-check your text before you send it on to your clients.

Creating eBooks

Writing books doesn’t have to mean publishing hard copies, as many authors go straight to an eBook. And there are a number of ways you can create an eBook, including uploading your work from your favorite word processor. However, one app has been designed to help you edit books with much more ease – Sigil. As it hasn’t been bolted onto an existing app, Sigil allows you to check your book against EPUB standards (eBook file formatting) and offers WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editing. It also allows you to fix and format your work and comes with a number of optional plugins, which you can use to further enhance your eBook.