I use two. After writing just about anything, I load it into Grammarly and see if I get the same good feeling I used to get from Mrs. Green. I’m getting better, but details about clauses and commas still trip me up. I suppose using Grammarly could make you lazy, but they send me a weekly usage report and damned if I don’t want to improve over last week. So I play a game to see just how little I can leave for the robot to discover. It’s an end-around to make the mechanics of writing fun.

I use the free version. Ads and emails tell me that I have more – deeper – issues that will be revealed with a paid account. If it were a buck-ninety-nine or so a month, I would probably pony up just to thank them and support the program. But it runs ten or twelve bucks (with frequent offers at about six dollars) and I just think that’s too much. For me anyway.

I did pay for Scrivener. And smiled when I did so. Don’t think of Scrivener as a word processing program. There is nothing you can do here that you can’t do using MS Word. But Scrivener allows me to manage my writing in a way that is difficult or impossible with other writing programs. I love it. If you end up using it, watch a couple You Tube videos to see how expert users have set it up. It’s one of those programs that is easy to use straight from the box, but has depths to plumb for those so inclined.

I’ve also just started using the Writer’s Database to track submissions. It has an easy and comfortable feel. More to come later with more use.

Cheers and please let me know of any other tools you use.

My Writing Set-Up. Same as Tolstoy used.

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