Every writer needs a few essential tools, regardless of the type of writing they’re doing or their idiosyncratic approach to the task of putting words on paper.
The staples in my writing tool kit include Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, Roget’s Thesaurus of the English Language in Dictionary Form, and Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. I suspect most writers would name those three resources as essential to success, addressing the fundamentals of grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word usage. While I rely a good deal on the pre-loaded spelling and grammar, thesaurus, and dictionary “tools” in the Microsoft Word® program I use for my writing, I often find myself turning to those tried and true hard-cover resources.
I find it difficult to work solely on a computer, more often than not beginning my writing the old-fashioned way. Something about putting pen or pencil to paper stimulates my creative process, and I’ve found that if my preferences for particular pens, pencils, and paper are unavailable, my writing is blocked. So, I keep a pretty hefty stock of PaperMate Sharpwriter® #2 pencils, blue and black medium point gel pens, college-ruled pads of paper, and spiral bound notebooks (one for each writing project), as well as plenty of scrap paper for quick notes.
I also use loose-leaf notebooks for completed drafts of chapters, necessitating a three-hole punch. I’m more apt to catch errors (typos, word usage) by reading over a hard copy of a draft than reading on the computer.
Peculiar to the mysteries I find myself writing are two new tools: a map I’ve drawn of Woodson Falls and a calendar. I use the map to situate the key roads and places mentioned in one of the Gaby Quinn mysteries, adding new roads and places to the basic map as I continue to develop the series. The calendar helps me to ensure that my references to time sequences make sense.
I recently saw a post recommending an erasable calendar, which I’m trying for the third Gaby Quinn mystery that I’ve just begun writing. I’m hoping that will be a useful replacement to the old calendars I’ve kept (in love with the pictures).
Are you willing to share some of the best tools in your writing tool kit?