When You Can't Find the Writer for the Apps....

By Nancy Sackheim

A Google search for writing apps and tools pulls up 157 million results in less than a second. Modify your search to apps for fiction writing and in a blink you whittle that list down to a mere 38 million. Narrow the field to the best 2018 apps for fiction writing and you are now at a manageable 12 million. Which apps will make you a best- selling author?

Scrivener will hold your hand from that first kernel of an idea all the way to the finished product, claiming to not only make you write faster, but better. A bargain at $45. But if you want to learn how to use Scrivener fast, you'll need to pay between $200 and $300 for... Learn Scrivener Fast.

Grammarly automatically detects grammar, spelling, punctuation, word choice, and style mistakes, which can be a godsend for people who struggle with grammar issues. However, Grammarly is not the writer. You are. Never forget that you are the boss of Grammarly.

There's Confidence Blueprint so you can learn to feel good about your writer self; Cliché Finder for, you know, clichés;  Zen writer will minimize distractions by blocking everything on your screen but your writing page, perhaps making you feel not so Zen; yWriter automatically breaks your work up into chapters and scenes, letting you focus on just writing. Huh?

And then there is Write or Die, the app that escalates punishments for not reaching your writing goal.  Pause and you are assaulted with disgusting images or loud and annoying sounds.  Pause a little longer and what you've written starts to disappear, word by word, until you begin writing again.  Writers pay for this app. Yes, they do.

Bottom line, there isn't an app or tool in the world that can make you a writer.  Only writing will make you a writer.  So get to it.  All you need is a blank page to fill with words telling a story created from your imagination.