writing GPS Archives - Ann Handley

8 Writing Tools I Use Every Day

What writing tools will help you produce your best work? Last week, two interviewers asked me about the tools I’d recommend for writing. One of them asked about writerly things I might covet the way some people do—like first editions of favorite books, or fountain pens, or antique Underwoods. (Not to be confused with other kinds of Underwoods.) I’m sentimental about a lot of things, but not about writing tools I use. Instead, I look for frictionless tools that ease the process, not complicate it. Part 6 of Everybody Writes is stuffed full of a bajillion tools that can help a content creator be more efficient and hale: But which are my faves? I used to think that tools alone held a kind of mysticism. When I was in middle school, my mother bought me my own IBM Selectric electric typewriter. It came in a hard plastic case with a […]

A Writing GPS: The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Next Piece of Content [Infographic]

The writer Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) has described writing as inching your way along a very dark, very long tunnel: you can make out the next few feet in front of you, but you’re not quite certain where you’ll end up or when you’ll get there. What helps with the uncertainty and enormity of the task is to start with some kind of process to guide the way. Process? Ew. I know. Process is one of those things that in many parts of life I consider hopelessly boring and mind-numbing. Like alphabetizing canned goods. Or peeling beets. But in writing, process is necessary, because you need a kind of road map to get you to where you need to be. So here’s an infographic based on the 12-step writing GPS I outline in more detail in Everybody Writes. This GPS gets you from one place to another:

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