Have you ever had one of those moments where you volunteer for something that’s outside of your comfort zone, and then immediately regretted your decision to be such a sterling example of what it means to be a team player? Well, apparently I didn’t learn my lesson back in February, when I volunteered to host our monthly webinar. This time, I raised my hand to do a 10-minute training on how to be a better business writer during this month’s Junior League of Annapolis meeting, of which I am a proud member.
I bring this up not to rehash the same tired (albeit true) moral that pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone is often a good thing. As we all know, the accomplishments we’re usually the most proud of are rarely achieved with ease. Instead, my presentation got me thinking about a topic we’ve touched upon before in webinars and in other blog posts. Not only is writing content the foundation of inbound marketing, tell me you don’t feel an immense sense of pride when you hit “publish” on a blog post, eBook or whitepaper you’re really proud of – no matter how hard it was to write.
Yet content creation remains a seemingly insurmountable challenge to some. This can be for a variety of reasons, as we’re all unique snowflakes, but lack of time, inspiration or basic willingness to commit the effort are the usual suspects.
So today, I’m taking a break from my usual role of creating content here under the Quintain roof to pull back the curtain on a few of my favorite writing apps that have completely changed the way I write – for work and for myself.
App No. 1: OMMWRITER
I have a confession to make. Even though I make my living as an editor and writer now, I absolutely hated writing when I was younger. In fact, one time when I was eighth grade, I turned in an essay where the last paragraph was the same sentence copied and pasted over and over again, just so I could meet the minimum word count requirement without having to put more effort into it. As you might have guessed, my teacher didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. Or at least I’m pretty sure the “C” didn’t stand for, “Congratulations! You’re a comedienne!”
Obviously that’s no longer the case. My change of heart only came about, however, because I realized that (a) I was good at it, and (b) it wasn’t the act of writing I despised so much, but rather I hated the cluttered and distracting writing experience of Microsoft Word.
Once I figured this out, it was easier for me to “suck it up” in order to get the job done. Still, I felt frustrated. It seems like app developers are positively tripping over themselves to create beautiful working experiences for creatives in the graphic and web design fields, but us writers are left sitting on the curb with romantic notions of the antique typewriter we’ll never buy.
Then Matt introduced me to OmmWriter.
OmmWriter’s beauty is its simplicity. It’s a distraction-free application where you can fully customize your writing experience – from backgrounds and audio tracks, to a variety of tactile keystroke sound effects and font choices.
And, if you have multiple monitors like I do, it dims your other display while you’re working in OmmWriter on your active screen. I love this feature, because it makes it harder for me to give into those, “Hey, I wonder if Buzzfeed Tasty posted a new recipe video on Facebook,” urges.
This app is available at no cost, but donations are requested to support continued development efforts.
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App No. 2: Hemingway
Whether you’re a seasoned content creator pro or you’re a new kid on the inbound block, you undoubtedly know how hard it is to write and edit your own work, and not just because you are too close to your writing to gauge its quality.
Thankfully someone created Hemingway.
In addition to being one of my favorite authors – as well as my favorite character in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris – Hemingway forces you to evaluate the readability of your work. Something I’ll admit I didn’t give too much thought to until a year or so ago.
Not only does Hemingway tell you what grade level your work reads at, it also scans your work for sentence complexity, passive voice and overuse of adverbs. And, as you can see above, this excerpt from a previous blog post of mine, shows I have a tendency to present ideas in a way that are very hard to read. Oops.
While you have the option to write directly in the Hemingway app itself, I find these kinds of mark-ups to be very distracting while I am trying to form my ideas for the first time. Instead, I typically create my first draft in OmmWriter – if I’m at my own computer – and then I copy and paste the work into Hemingway.
You can use Hemingway for free through your web browser at www.hemingwayapp.com, or you can download the desktop version for $9.99.
App No. 3: WordCountTools.com
During my Junior League training, I told my audience that one of the most important editing lessons I have ever learned is not to edit for everything all at once. Instead of trying to edit for style, grammar, and narrative progression at the same time, edit your piece for those points in phases.
That’s why after I put my work through the readability test of Hemingway, I drop my work into the textbox on http://ift.tt/1U9YwRJ.
Not only does this website tell you how many words your composition has overall, it also targets one of my biggest writing “quirks” – redundancy. Seriously, I don’t know what my problem is, but I am incapable of going a single column, essay or blog post without repeating certain words or phrases. Sometimes even in the same sentence! That’s why this has quickly become one of my favorite editing tools.
Below the area where you paste copy, you’ll see a keyword density box which counts how many times non-“grammar words” appear in your work.
I know, I know. It seems almost stupidly simple. But as someone who spends a good portion of my day editing the work of others, trust me when I say it’s likely that more than a few of you reading this post should also be using this tool.
App No. 3: NOISLI.COM
So the previous three apps are really for those who are spending most of their time writing and editing their own work. But if you find yourself in the position of having to edit outside of the comfort of your own applications – say, when you’re uploading and formatting a blog post in HubSpot, or reading a printout of an old client case study – www.Noisli.com should become your new best friend.
Noisli is a stunning, minimalist (and free!) background noise generator. Or, as they like to say, Noisli is “your productivity companion.”
I used to spend so much time at work trying to find the perfect work playlist on Spotify to keep me on track, because music is supposed to help spark productivity and creativity, right? Wrong. Well, for me, anyway. I don’t know whether I’m defective or something, but most of the time I find myself distracted by music. Either I get wrapped up in the song itself – even if it’s only instrumental – or when one song ends, I don’t like what comes up next, so I break from my work to spend 20 minutes trying to curate the perfect soundtrack.
Even though there are multiple studies showing the positive effects of ambient noise on productivity, Noisli required me to take a leap of faith when I first discovered it. Listening to noise while working seemed… strange. Not to mention completely boring. Now I’m a total convert, and it’s pretty much all I listen to when I’m at the office.
“Noisli required me to take a leap of faith. Listening to noise while working seemed… strange.”
With my free Noisli account, I’ve created custom blends of sounds – which you control using the scales shown on the left – that can set the tone for my entire working day. Sound options include rain, thunderstorm, wind, forest, leaves, water stream, seaside, water, bonfire, summer night, fan, train, coffee shop, white noise, pink noise and brown noise. (For the past two days, I’ve been listening to one I named “Amtrak Northeast Corridor.” It’s a personalized symphony of train and fan, with a dash of coffee shop, that transports me back to those trips I used to take to and from Washington, D.C., when I still lived in Boston.)
If I still haven’t convinced you to give it a try, let me tell you about my husband, who is notoriously difficult to impress with new technology.
Patrick is not a writer or an editor. He’s a service manager at an IT consulting firm in Baltimore. When I found Noisli about a month ago, I sent it over to him – as I do with most things I find exciting. Flash forward in time to yesterday, when he’s telling me to remove him from our Spotify premium account, because he now listens almost exclusively to Noisli at work.
Like I said, Noisli is life-changing.
Noisli is available for free through the website. There is also a free Chrome extension and iOS app available for $1.99.
Final Thought
Even though all four of these apps have revolutionized the way I think about and approach my work, the best piece of advice I can give you about how to boost your content creation capabilities is this: Have an open and brutally honest discussion with yourself about what specifically you don’t like about the writing process. No app or program can tell you what your problem is; they can only help you once you have some idea of what pain point you’re trying to address.
The answers will vary drastically from person to person, as they should. For instance, while my struggles were rooted in distraction and focus, yours may be founded in writer’s block, which is an entirely different beast.
So while I think each of you will like at least one of these apps, I hope you’ll also do yourselves a favor and figure out what part of your own personal writing process really needs improving.
My 4 Favorite Apps for Writers and Content Creators
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