060: My 4 Essential Writing Tools
- Click here for ways to work with me + a free character profile template: www.thekatiewolf.com/info
- The last Tuesday of the month is a Q&A episode! Submit your questions for me HERE.
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@katiewolfwrites
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katiewolfwrites
My 4 essential writing tools
Welcome to an episode about writing tools. And when I say writing tools, I just mean the things that I that are absolute musts for me when it comes to writing. I am nosy. I'm nosy about other people's writing lives. I want to know, how they write when they write, where they write, what their practices, like what their rituals are, I want to know all of that stuff. I'm just curious. I'm just nosy, y'all, I just want to peek into your lives and see what you're doing. Which is why social media and YouTube, you know, are just fantastic to kind of see how people write, I love seeing people's like setup, what their routines are, what time of day they write, all of that.
And so I thought, hmm, it'd be good to do a podcast episode about what my essentials are and how I write. And then the other reason I thought this might be helpful is because I'm always looking to what other writers do just to see if there are things that I want to try. Not that I'm constantly searching for something that's going to be turbocharge, my, my productivity or my output, because I think there's something wrong with how I'm doing it. That's not it at all. There's just it's fun for me to try on different things and see what works and see what doesn't. I'm constantly experimenting. So if you're like that, if you're curious, or you want to experiment with some different things, this episode is for you.
Okay, before we get into what those things are, I'm of two minds about, about something. And I'm just going to share with you where I'm at right now with this. On the one hand, I think it can be extremely beneficial to create a habit and a ritual around something so that when you sit down to write your brain recognizes the external cues that are around you the things that you're doing. And your brain says, oh, okay, I recognize this, I know what we're doing, it's time to write and that can help you, that can help you get into the writing mindset, it can help you set aside distractions, it can help you focus. So on one hand, especially if you are new to writing, and you're still working on developing a practice, and you don't really have a habit yet, or a ritual or anything. It can be helpful to do those things. Again, it's just all of these tools, all of these practices, these things that you do are cues for your brain, about writing. And it can almost lessen the resistance for when you sit down to write.
The other part of me the other part of me thinks that if we rely too heavily on routines, and rituals and external circumstances, then we can easily take that to an extreme where we can only right when everything is perfect, we can only write when conditions are absolutely ideal. And we have all of our little tools, and we've done our ritual, and everything is just absolutely perfect in the way it needs to be and under our control. And then we can sit down and write. And obviously, that's bullshit, you can write standing in line at the grocery store on your phone, like it doesn't, you don't have to write the same place the same way every single time. And in fact, for some people, the idea of having a routine where you sit down every day at a certain time, or you do a certain set of practices, you have a certain drink, you do things in a certain order. For them that is like creatively creatively stifling. I can't talk that is just going to be the absolute worst thing for them. So those are, I'll just be honest with you and say, those are the two ways that I look at this. I think sometimes it can be so helpful to have those things.
But then also people can easily take it to an extreme and only write if all of those things are in place. It can operate as like a check, a list of things you have to check off like, Have I done this? Do I have this? Is this right? And then you can and then you can sit down and work on your manuscript. And yeah, that's just not true. So anyways, maybe that's just food for thought for you. If you're like me, and you're sort of wrestling with the idea of a routine and if that's something you should do, I'll just say for me at some points in my writing life a routine has been extremely helpful. Mainly when I'm trying to finish something or I'm on a time crunch. Not not even necessarily a time crunch where oh, I've got to get this done in three days. But I have a set amount of time in order to get something done. or I just want to get something done in a set amount of time. And in that case, the routines and the habit doing things in a fairly similar way, is how I get that push done. It's how I do things. That was the case when I really was struggling and I wanted to finish my second book. I implemented habits in a writing tracker, and it was just exactly what I needed to really create a routine around it.
So now that I've shared all of that, let's get into the actual writing tools. These are my essential tools. Number one, number one is a timer. I prefer to use a timer on the computer, or physical timer that only, you know one of those little like hourglass things or digital timer. But if I have to set a timer on my phone, it will but what I'll do is I'll put my phone away from my desk or away from where I'm writing, so I can't reach it while I'm doing a writing sprint. And again, writing sprint just means you set a timer for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever length of time. For me, I found that 30 minutes is the absolute most I can do than I. Then I want to take a couple minutes of a break. But I will set that timer and I will write I don't I don't go on social media, I don't check email, I don't go back and read what I've previously written. I'm only writing and I'm writing as fast as I can. Because if I only have 15 minutes, that 15 minutes sprint, I want to get as much written in that 15 minutes as I possibly can.
If I'm just drafting it doesn't matter how crappy it is, it doesn't matter how rough it is, I just get it down. And a timer is essential for that. I rarely write without a timer. I think the only time that I will work on writing and not have a timer is when I'm editing because when I'm editing, oftentimes I can do longer bursts of time and especially- I just finished up doing edits to my manuscript in sending them to my agent and I worked for hours on the manuscript. So I didn't need a timer then because I was on a time crunch and I had to get it done and I had procrastinated. So editing, I don't, don't always set timers. But if I'm drafting 99% of the time, I will set a timer.
Number two, Microsoft Word. I wrote my first book in Google Docs, and then switched over to Word for my second book. And I swear by word, I think word is just familiar to me. It's what I edit in when I'm editing clients manuscripts for, you know, my editing business. But when I'm writing, I write in Microsoft Word. Occasionally, like I mentioned, 99% of the time, I'll use a timer. The 1% is if I'm somewhere and I want to just write a little bit on my phone, then sometimes I'll open up Google Docs just because I have that on my phone. And right. I also have the word app on my phone, but I just haven't, I haven't done anything to connect my manuscript to that. So I guess I can do the same thing on word, but for whatever reason, I just write on on Google docs on my phone.
But with the exception of that, when I'm on my phone somewhere, I always write in Word. Again, it's just familiar to me. I don't need all the bells and whistles right now of something like Scrivener or any other writing software, I just haven't found it necessary. I might experiment with that down the road and just purchase Scrivener or some other kind of tool just to write and see. But for right now, it's a little overwhelming to think of learning something new and I just don't feel like I need all of the extra assets and benefits of something like Scrivener. So Microsoft Word.
Number three is some kind of ambient music or like mood music. This does vary a little bit what I listened to, I have a couple of like deep focus ambient playlists on Spotify, they're playlists that Spotify has created, that I will listen to. Sometimes I want something instrumental or a little bit like eerie sounding or ominous sounding. If I'm working on a scene that suspenseful listening to that music helps me get into that frame of mind to write something suspenseful. If I'm writing something really big and climactic that feels very cinematic, I will put on some instrumental cinematic type of music. But just the most important thing is that it's music without lyrics because if I have lyrics, I will focus on the words and get distracted and I want to just be writing. I want to just be focusing on on the words that are coming out.
I've also been experimenting the last couple of weeks YouTube, there's this channel on YouTube, that's I think it's named like coffee shop or something like that. I'll link it in the description of the episode. So you can check it out if you want but it's like they have this instrumental music like it's holiday music or its piano kind of jazzy music and they'll show an illustrated coffee shop and snow falling in front of it. So it's very cozy. Sometimes I'll put that up and write to that. But some kind of music, that it helps me. I guess I really haven't examined why it's so helpful to me, maybe, maybe it just helps me get into the zone and kind of focus. Again, I think this is one of those things where if I'm always doing this, it's a cue to my brain that it's time to focus. And it's time to do some deep work. So maybe me putting that soundtrack on or the playlist on is a cue to my brain, like, okay, we're entering writing mode.
Number four a drink. If I'm writing in the morning, which when I write lately, it usually is in the morning, so I'll have an almond milk latte. But the point is that I have to have something to drink. I don't, I'm someone who has to have like three beverages next to me at all times, like water, tea, coffee, a smoothie, something, have to have something to drink. If I don't have it, I feel incomplete. It's kind of like my phone, like I'm so attached to my phone, and I feel almost naked or like something's missing without it. It's the same thing with a drink, if I'm sitting down at my computer, just have to have it. It helps me feel stable. It's my support drink. I don't know what the psychology is there, but a drink. I thought about including some other tools that I've used at different points throughout my writing, but they aren't things I use anymore. And I don't know, maybe I'll do another episode where I talk about those. But for now, those are the four things that I use 99% of the time, they're my essentials, they helped me get in the zone. And yeah, and they really make the writing practice the practice of writing more fun, it flows easier, it lessens my resistance to actually sitting down and opening up my manuscript.
So you know, again, it, that's kind of why, like I said, I'm always looking to what other writers do to see if there's something that I can try that will make it a little bit more fun and a little bit easier. Why not? Why not make it more fun and more easy. So those are my tools. If there's something that you absolutely need to write if you if there's something that you have settled on that is like an absolute must for you. Send me a DM on Instagram let me know at theKatieWolf, I'm curious about, again about other people's writing routines.
Happy writing and see you next time.