2008/09/06

Web Worker Daily

6 Tools for Changing Your Writerly Rhythms

Posted: 05 Sep 2008 06:00 PM CDT

I remember reading an interview with Sting one time where he said that writing is like a muscle you must exercise every day. That’s true, but writing every single day can also turn into drudgery if you don’t mix up your skills and the applications you work in. Many web workers spend a lot of time writing. In this post, I’ll round up six tools that can help you mix up your writing habits and stay fresh.

Many of us write in Microsoft Word most of the time. If you do, check out this post with seven little-known tips for Word. These include instructions on how to hop paragraphs around in documents, and return to the exact point where you were editing last time you shut Word down.

DarkRoom is a port of the popular tabula rasa word processor for the Mac called WriteRoom. Both of these word processors present you with a stripped-down interface designed to keep you focused on the text you're working on and little else. There are no menus, no toolbars–just your pithy text missives. You can also see a lot of text on screen at one time. WriteRoom now costs $24.95, but DarkRoom is free.

Does your mouse have a scroll wheel? If so, this post Nine Ways to Make Your Mouse Roar presents several ways to move around documents very efficiently, whether you’re looking at a web page, or working on a document.

Want to take the documents you work on and give them that desktop publishing look? PagePlus SE is a free download that gets lots of good reviews for being easier than most desktop publishers. It’s free, and comes with a ton of templates. Over on the OStatic blog, Lisa Hoover recommends the free and open source Scribus desktop publisher if you’re on a Mac.

What do you reach for to add panache to your writing and documents?

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