How much do you write outside of your work in progress? Do you make the most of digital opportunities to improve your writing?

The past four weeks of this series have been something of a deep dive into particular aspects of writing so I thought I’d step back and do a light skim over some important tools which I use regularly in my writing.

This post will look at a writing improvement tool, a tool to turn your book into an e-book, a facility for sharing snippets of your writing/day-to-day thoughts, and a facility to help increase your social media engagement.

However, the key takeaway is that the more we concentrate on all of our writing (even instant messages), the better our writing will become. (Key points in each section are in bold)

NB: All tools described are free to use (though some offer more advanced features at a cost) and I am not affiliated with any of the services described.

A Robot to help you write better?

The first tool I’d recommend is Grammarly. On the face of it, you might assume that Grammarly is little more than a spell-check tool. Lots of word-processing programmes and even web browsers have these built-in, what makes Grammarly different?

When you install Grammarly on your browser you’ll see a small set of symbols on the bottom of any writing input window you use on the internet (it even shows up in chat windows). One of the symbols will be an emoji, this is Grammarly’s take on the tone of what you’re writing.

For example, this post is currently registering as 4/5 joyful and 2/5 informative. It’s a nice feature and one I’ve come to use regularly in my copywriting work (the less discussed bread-and-butter end of a writer’s life). I’ve never seen another spelling/grammar check that does this and it can really make a difference in your writing.

Grammarly also looks at ways of improving your writing in general. You can insert text into their web-based checker or you can even download their own version of a word processor. Not only will Grammarly tell you when something isn’t right, but it will also explain why it isn’t right.

You’ll find your knowledge of grammar, in particular, will improve dramatically once you use Grammarly regularly. What’s more, Grammarly will make you more aware of your own writing style on a day-to-day basis. I have a bad habit of becoming formal in my writing (probably from writing so many essays etc. in the past). Literally, at this moment, Grammarly has told me that this post has become ‘formal’, which was not my plan, so I now know it’s time to rein it back in.

The quick simple take-away on Grammarly is that you should use it regularly. The level of awareness that Grammarly offers you will allow you to produce step-by-step improvements in your writing. However, this will only work if you apply it in all walks of life (it’s not simply for use when you sit down to work on your WIP).

Here’s a link to Grammarly’s website.

Get your book out in the world in moments

This next tool was an absolute life-changer. There’s no doubt that self-publishing can leave you in some very muddy waters at times. Your inexperience in a particular area can occasionally make that into a bigger stumbling block than it needs to be.

That’s where I was about five/six years ago. I had a book, I wanted to put it on Kindle, but I had no idea how to do that. Then I found Calibre.

Calibre is a free piece of software which takes your text file (no matter which word-processing programme you use) and converts it in moments into an e-book. It creates the type of files used by most major e-book stockists and allows you to get a look at how that book will look in its e-book form.

I’ll do a more in-depth post about the process of publishing an e-book when I’m closer to that point with my newest book. However, for the time being, I would thoroughly recommend downloading Calibre and playing around with it (here’s the link).

You’ll learn a lot about formatting and visuals in e-books as you do. Images may not display the way you expect in an e-book. Certain fonts may not work as planned. It’s good to see these problems long before you launch your e-book.

The last thing you want is for reviews of your book to talk about the formatting mistakes more than they talk about your actual story. Playing around with Calibre now could prevent headaches later on.

Get weekly experience with a solid bit of writing (and meet new people)

This next tool/resource is a little different. You may already use it yourself but even if you do I’d suggest you might want to make it into something like a habit.

I started using WordPress in June 2012. WordPress is a website builder, but I have always leaned on it’s blogging capabilities. Back in 2012, I was a store manager in a toy shop and I used my experiences from the shop (and as a parent) to blog about toys.

I blogged every week (or at least tried to) and the blog got so much interest that within a year a local newspaper had me write a regular feature on toys. During the course of that blog I also wrote an article for a well-known toy industry publication, my viewership went up massively (five years after writing my last post I still get around thirty views a day on it), and a couple of my posts actually went mildly viral.

Overall it was a great introduction to the nature of blogging, but it also forced me to improve my writing on a regular basis. To be honest this was probably the most important personal takeaway from that experience.

I don’t think that it’s a huge coincidence that I started taking writing seriously again during the heyday of my toy blog. After years of dabbling and procrastinating in my fiction writing, I started to feel more confident in myself and within a couple of years I had completed my first book.

Blogging isn’t just a way to journal your life. If you listen to your audience and try to see what works for them you’ll begin to develop a feel for which aspects of your writing are going to sit well. Blog about whatever you like but do it passionately, do it regularly, and do what you can to make each post your best. The more you do it, the better your writing will get. Here’s the link to get started (if you don’t have an account already).

Let the robots share your thoughts

This last tool might be a little controversial but it harkens back to what I was saying about building a community of readers/potential readers last week.

If you are busy, if you have a day job, family, various other commitments, you might find it hard to engage with your audience on social media regularly. It can be difficult to keep yourself visible and relevant on social media if you only post every other day. However, with the help of robots, you can get your ideas out there much more regularly and spend your own time responding to the responses those ideas get.

I use a facility called Hootsuite to schedule regular posts on Twitter (though it can schedule to Facebook, Instagram, and lots of others too). Here’s a link to their site.

I make sure that I still respond to comments etc. myself but the scheduled posts force me to think about new topics that I can use to start a discussion.

I schedule a post once every few hours (not wanting to bombard people with posts). Normally these take the form of talking points linked to blog posts from my site. I’ve been a little lax in this in previous months but over the past few weeks I’ve made sure that I have a bunch of posts set up for the week by Tuesday.

You can write up a week’s worth of posts in a few hours then sit back and let Hootsuite share them on Twitter at your appointed times. This way you know that you are participating in your community regularly. Your posts will go live and you’ll be plunged into the discussion as they do.

There may be a slight sense of artificiality to scheduling posts but I find that it simply helps to remind me to stay engaged. If you choose to do the same thing just be sure not to step back and forget about it. Please remember that social media is about engagement so be sure to keep it that way or your account will quickly start to look like a robot.

Weekly advice for self-published/ soon-to-be self-published authors

Every Monday you’ll be able to pop over here for another post about the self-publishing process and/ or the day-to-day life of a self-published author.

Each post I publish uses my activity from that week to take an in-depth look at a topic that’s important to the self-publishing process. (You can find all of my ‘Getting Serious About Writing’ posts by clicking this link)

As the weeks go on, and as we approach the launch of my newest book, you’ll follow me through final edits, formatting, printing, and digital publishing, along with the other essential aspects of self-publishing.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss a post you can subscribe to receive each post on Monday by e-mail, simply click this link to subscribe to my mailing list via Mailchimp (it’s just me so don’t worry, you won’t be getting a dozen e-mails a day).

As always, thanks so much for reading, please feel free to add a comment/ question here or over on Twitter (you can find me at @Johntoyshopguy).

All the best, John