Stuff I Read & Apps I Use

Books I Think Are Actually Useful

Save the Cat Writes a Novel, by Jessica Brody

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I swear, I’ve read a jillion books about writing novels but this was the first (and only) one that helped me create a doable outline. Right now I’m slooowly making my way through scene-writing  an archaelogical adventure story called the Columbian Artifact. Although it’s taking me forever, cause I have paying work to do first, at least I know how to structure the novel, thanks to this book. If you want to buy it, here are two links:

This link goes directly to the book.

This link goes directly to the book and I earn a few pennies for your purchase.

Either works for me.

The Poet’s Companion by Jill Addonizio

I’m not sure why, but this book feels like it wants to be in my bag all the time. It’s the kind of book I can open at almost any page and find something about useful about poetry.  I fell in love with Emily Dickinson when I was in college and the poetry bug has never left me. These days I do my best to create poetry for me, for submissions, and (my favorite) for Rattle’s monthly Ekphrastic Challenge.

This link goes directly to the book

This link goes directly to the book and I earn a few pennies for your purchase

Apps I’m in Love With

I use an iPhone and an iPad, so all of these apps are iOS-based. That’s not to say there aren’t Android versions, I just don’t know.

  • Microsoft Word (I have the Office 365 subscription, $99 a year and I can use it on 6 devices)
  • Bear – I truly love this app. It’s the one I use to store all of the articles I find online that I know I’ll refer to when working on my novel. I can use multiple tags on articles, making it simple to search everything I’ve saved. I’ve added a screenshot below just to give you an idea of how Bear functions (click to enlarge). Bear has a monthly and a yearly Pro subscription – I’m blanking out but think the yearly was around $15
  • Story Planner – this is my go-to app for creating scenes, characters, locations, and plot.
  • Notability – ok, I don’t love this one but am trying to. I got it because there are times I just want to hand-write notes. If you know of a better one, let me know.
  • Mobiography – this is an app-based magazine for iPhoneographers. If you’re into that sort of thing, you might like my iPhoneography Gallery

Classes

I really like the challenge of writing essays and have taken two courses from Nicole Breit.  If you’re interested in exploring various essay forms, check out her site.

I wish I could recommend lots more, but these are the ones that really moved my essay writing forward.