The Coach SpaceWriting a book is no small feat. Beyond mastering the craft of storytelling, it takes incredible persistence and determination to bring your vision to life. Fortunately, in today’s world, there are plenty of resources designed to make the process smoother and more efficient.
In this post, we’ll explore a few tools that can help boost both your productivity and organization as you write.
1. Coffitivity
The human brain is an amazing organ—it can generate up to 25 watts of electrical power and handle multiple complex tasks at once. And yet, I find I can’t write without some ambient noise in the background.
Sometimes, the hum of a coffee shop is the only thing that helps signal to my brain that it’s time to focus. Luckily, there’s an app for that! If you want to recreate the cozy atmosphere of a coffee shop—complete with the clinking of cups, murmur of conversations, and the steady drip of a coffee machine—Coffitivity has you covered. With a variety of sounds to choose from, including “Morning Murmur” and “Lunchtime Lounge,” it’s a versatile, distraction-free alternative to YouTube. Best of all, it’s completely free.
2. Diffchecker
When you start a book, you might naturally name the first draft “Untitled-1.” As the story progresses, you’ll soon have a folder with “Untitled-2” and “Untitled-3” and so on ad infinitum. As you start editing, you’ll frantically go back through your drafts to try to remember the difference between “Untitled-178” and “Untitled-179.”
That’s when Diffchecker can make a real, well, difference. This simple tool lets you compare two versions of a document and highlights the differences between them, making it much easier to keep track of your edits. Instead of searching through endless drafts to remember which version had a specific change, you can just upload them into Diffchecker for a quick audit.
3. Reedsy Studio
Microsoft Word is fine for basic writing, but for authors, it’s often a clunky, frustrating tool—especially when it comes to formatting. The Table of Contents feature is notoriously difficult to use, and there’s no easy way to prepare a manuscript for professional typesetting.
That’s where Reedsy Studio shines. Unlike Word, Reedsy Studio offers a streamlined, distraction-free environment designed specifically for authors. It allows you to collaborate directly with editors and beta readers, set writing goals, and track both your word count and word deletions (just as important!). Best of all, it includes a built-in book formatting tool, so when you’re ready to publish, you can generate a professional-quality print or eBook file—no extra software or complicated formatting required.
4. Diigo
Diigo is a powerful tool for research and workflow management, offering a range of features, including:
- Bookmarking
- Tagging
- Research outlining
- Virtual sticky notes
- Collaboration tools
For writers, Diigo is a game-changer when it comes to research. How many times have you stumbled upon a great piece of information that you want to reference later, only to forget where you saw it? With Diigo, you can save webpages, annotate them, and organize your research so you can easily revisit it whenever you need. It’s the perfect tool for anyone who’s tired of dealing with a mountain of physical sticky notes—and it also improves your overall browsing experience.
5. Cold Turkey
Speaking of browsing experiences, sometimes browsing just goes on for too long. This is a pretty unique problem for modern writers. The entire Internet is basically one big attention trap.
Some writing apps offer distraction-free interfaces, but if you need to go one step beyond and actually block time-sucking websites, there are plenty of apps that allow you to do so. I’d recommend Cold Turkey, but any one of them would do. Just make sure that you install it and actually use it in order to make the most of your writing time.
Good luck with your work in progress!
Linnea Gradin is a writer and editor who writes about everything writing and publishing-related, from how to set your editing rates to how to use an Oxford comma correctly. When she’s not reading or writing, she can be found exploring the local cuisine of whatever country she finds herself at the moment.
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