A picture paints a thousand words, but what about those artists who paint with their words? Writing is an art in and of itself, with styles and techniques as vast of those in any artistic discipline. But like with any form of art, there are hurdles and trenches to cross because successful writers have to first collect, organize, hoard, and then retrieve that information to complete complex writing projects. Time is also not on your side when it comes to writing; the longer it takes to research, filter, then organize the information, the more elusive the task becomes. Enter the lifesaving world of productivity apps; a vast number of programs, websites, mobile apps, and online services both free and paid. Here we narrow it down to a few of the crème de la crème of writing productivity aids.
OL’ FAITHFUL
Google Docs is the tech giant’s free alternative to the ever-popular MS Word. The main advantage of it is the ability to collaborate with multiple people on the same document in real-time reducing significantly the time between edits and proofreading between multiple members of your team. Another useful feature is its ability to retrieve past versions and with detail down to the person who changed it, and what time, all the way up to the point of the document’s creation.
DOCS.GOOGLE.COM
PRICE – FROM FREE TO $6/USER/MONTH
THE OG
Elephants never forget, but we, the humble jotter, forget all the time. Evernote has been in the information hoarding, organizing and note-taking game for 20 years. To describe it as a simple note-taking app would be doing it a disservice. A more prudent way to look at it would be more along the lines of a second brain for all the thoughts and ideas that your real brain can’t hold. Note down whatever you may need, take web clippings while researching, and be able to organize and archive all that information. With an upgrade to Evernote Business, however, you get the option of creating spaces for entire teams to work within for $14.99/month per user.
EVERNOTE.COM
PRICE- FROM $7. 99/MONTH
THE MINIMALISTS
Abundant functionality is not the end all be all of writing productivity. Sometimes, you need to clear space, a blank canvas. Zenpen and Calmy Writer are just a couple of many similar web-based systems that offer you the most basic layout possible writing interface possible. This would be an ideal layout for those who are looking to dig in and get cranking on a large story and zone out from the world.
ZENPEN.IO & CALMLYWRITER.COM
PRICE – FREE
PERFECT RECALL
As a writer, it is common to find the research information for your writing overwhelming. Roam Research allows you to organize this knowledge in an associative way rather than hierarchically. It goes a step further than Evernote has by employing the Zettelkasten method, a knowledge-management and note-taking method linking notes to each other thereby creating an interconnected web storing all the knowledge in a way that you can find them under the context you would like to stumble upon them. This allows you to focus on thinking and generating ideas instead of trying to remember things that you have forgotten. Priced at just $15 a month, it comes down to your use case; Evernote does notetaking brilliantly, but offers no ‘networked-thought’ as Roam does.
ROAMRESEARCH.COM
PRICE – FROM $15/MONTH
JACK-OF-ALL-TRADES
Notion has quickly become a major player in the productivity space. Notion seems to be the only tool on the market with a philosophy of allowing you to mould it into whatever you need it to be. The easiest way to think of Notion is like a box of Lego; you get everything you need to make something, all that’s left is to decide is what to create with endless customization. Like most other services listed here, Notion also allows you to upload and save information. If you are moving from another service the app allows you to upload the entire archive you have saved in the old service.
NOTION.SO
PRICE – FROM FREE TO $8/USER/MONTH