Friday Recommends – Tools and Time-Wasters

Sometimes they’re the same thing, yeah?

But first, a repeat of a FANTASTIC tool for anybody who has to write anything. It was designed for the fiction writer, but would be great for a report, a speech, a non-fiction book, and anything else that needs to be free AND structured. You could probably use it to plan a web site. Anyway, it’s yWriter5. It’s kind of complex, but there’s an ongoing help forum on the web site, lots of help documentation, and working with it opens up its possibilities. I am SO NOT an outliner, but this program makes outlining work for me as part of the flow. It’s amazing. And it’s FREE. Did I mention it’s FREE?

If you have any questions about spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, or usage, Dan Persinger is your man. He does not suffer fools gladly, but he does suffer them, which is why he tolerates me. He writes mysteries under the name of Jack Hardway. The fact that that name totally cracks me up probably says something analyzable about me. Anyway, Jack Hardway also has a blog (or, as he correctly calls it, a web log) with the subtitle A Lot Of Writers Are Dopes.

While at WordCamp last year, I met Niles Flores, a woman who loves blogging, social media, web design and Egypt, not necessarily in that order. Her business site, blondish.net, is the mostest funnestest business site EVAR.

My new BFF is HootSuite. That’s what I’m using to schedule promotional posts on FaceBook and Twitter. I can schedule three at each place at different times a day, then relax and just use the social networks to be social. I like it because it works on both networks, and I can write the promos that make sense for each. No Twitter hashtags in MY Facebook stream, (oops! I think I just did that by askident. My bad.).

[By the way, many grammarians ~waves to Dan Persinger~ dislike multiple sentences inside parentheses inside a sentence. Tough.]

My best time-waster is Pinterest. It’s invitation-only, so, naturally, Holly Jahangiri invited me in order to waste my time and distract me from the Race to the Hugo Award. Nice try, Holly. Won’t work. yWriter5 has foiled you. Ha HAAAAA!!

WRITING PROMPT: A character “wastes” a lot of time on something that becomes suddenly useful. An oldie but a goodie.

MA