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5 Tools Writers (+ All Creatives) Should Leverage (Or, “Why I’m Kind Of Obsessed With Google”)

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud-based tool for word processing, spreadsheets, forms, presentations, etc. It’s like having all your Word documents in your pocket. (Note: I secretly adore the iPhone app for Google Drive, too.) Save your whole life on the cloud, if you want. I’ve used it to jot down quick notes, paragraphs, topics, titles, sentences, phrases, etc. when I’ve just arrived at work and have a half-baked idea formulating from my commute, on campus (when I was in college), and even still on my laptop. It eliminates the need for hard drive space and makes sharing easy for collaborative inter-office communications or writing groups [link here].

Gmail

I admit it. I send myself emails like a total dork. Some of them are links on links on links of writing, design, communications, marketing, etc. articles I want to read/tweet/pin later. Others are things I suddenly remember I wanted to do, like send a chapter to a friend or finish my editorial calendar. Then, the ones I have to write down (and can’t keep because I’m not at home or don’t have paper) go in a folder labeled To Read.

Google Calendar

I told you. I’m obsessed with the big ‘G’. I have had a crush on Google for probably 10 years. And somehow, in all the insanity that was my life in high school, I had no idea that Google made time management look like color-induced bliss. Google Calendar allows you to have multiple color-coded calendars (each set to hidden or visible) all on one nifty screen. So naturally, it’s a great option for editorial calendars (shareable with other Google Accounts) and moving through any submission-based editorial process or plotting your blog’s monthly topics with deadlines for yourself and guest contributors. You can also choose how far in advance you’d like to receive a pop-up notification and/or email notification for any given calendar event.

Notes

Sorry, not sorry, but this is a tad bit ‘Apple is Ah-mazing’ biased because I am in love with the Notes app on iProducts. I have written entire blog posts in Notes (also see the dictation feature) while sitting in my car in the library or Wegman’s parking lot. All the notes sync with my Google account, so I can see them in the Notes folder of my email, too.

Dictionary

Not the hefty paper weight. That’s cool, yo, but not the book. I’m talking about the dictionary built into your computer. Click on the word and choose ‘Dictionary’ from the ‘Tools’ drop-down menu. Word. Defined. Bam. (Coolest part: the thesaurus). I’m a sucker for words, so I’ll be writing something and know that there is this word inside me, I know it but can’t explain it, and I’ll search the thesaurus for every other word I’m thinking of until it hits me. It’s sort of boring, sure, but it’s better than using the wrong word. (Word nerds: back me up on that?)

What are your go-to writing/editing tools? Did you hand yourself over to technology or holding your pen to paper until your wrist aches? Or both?

By the way, every month I send out a short + sweet newsletter brimming with cool finds related to the monthly theme. It'd be stellar if you subscribed. If it's not worthy, it doesn't go in the newsletter. That. Simple.

Kiss The Curb You've Fallen On

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For most of my life, I have kept the peace by not knowing. I did not know how to choose a presidential candidate or narrow my job search prospects to a particular geographic area. I did not know the proper way to break a boy’s heart. I did not know when a boy became a man, when I was in fact breaking a man’s heart. I did not know how to get an auto insurance quote or change the oil in my car or buy an EZ Pass transponder.

Above all, I did not know that not knowing wasn’t doing me any good. That there wasn’t always peace sitting inside stillness. There wasn’t always a road map just beyond the uncertainty.

I am so young. Let me just pin that piece of truth to the bulletin board of my life and know it for a couple thousand more days. I am so young and don’t know much of anything. But I know this.

You’re not doing yourself a blessed good thing by wishing to unknow the pain or drama or anxiety or pure adrenaline.

There will be mornings when you expect rain without checking the weather because it couldn’t possibly be sunny on a Monday in December when your black dress is spread across your bed and you’ve only held the title teenager long enough to want to return it to Target’s customer service desk.

There will be afternoons when you’ll have to double-check the phone lines still work because you have been in this house too long without another human breathing in the same air. And you will wonder if loneliness is literal and actual or just a train station stop.

There will be nights when you will wonder how soon you can curl up in bed even when the neighborhood is chanting over games of beer pong outside and you are supposed to be out there. Supposed to be living. Supposed to be wild and reckless and gosh, what a failure you’ll feel like.

And it won’t be easy, knowing funerals before you know double digits or wishing for normal when all God ever wanted from you was a little fight, a little heart, a little push toward newness.

He had His plan and it didn’t include not knowing. It didn’t include quiet uncertainty or second-guessing. It didn’t include always taking the perfect path, the one people want from you, the one that doesn’t make your mother skittish.

He had His plan and it was all about knowing how to slip into what feels right, in the midst of crisis or chaos or control issues, and reassess later.

We don’t always hear that. We focus on the mornings and afternoons and evenings that tell us there will never be a right answer, that making a decision to feel good or bad is just a recipe for disaster, that if we can just numb ourselves into believing we don’t know anything, there will be less pain.

There won’t be.

There never has been.

But in knowing our choices and choosing them bravely, we step farther from the holes. We splash around the puddles. We kiss the curbs we’ve fallen on and stand up, brush the dirt from our knees, and remember that dirt as we trudge onward.

Know this. The way it feels to make a massive mistake and right yourself.

Know this. The way it sounds to hear that voice on the phone say you did good.

Know this.

Make choices. Take chances. Know them. Own them. And let Him lead you, chance after chance.

Please, oh please, don’t let yourself be paralyzed by wanting to unknow the world. It was meant to be known a thousand times over, all in different ways.

On Braving Sandy Alone

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My grandma called at 5:33 on Sunday evening. I was already perched on my couch, had been all day, squinting out the kitchen window as if I didn’t trust the tranquil trees to tell the truth.

“How are you, Kal? How is the hurricane?”

I’m fine. It’s fine. It’s not even raining yet. Just a little breezy.

I wanted to say that disaster is never real until it is too real. That there is nothing more unnerving than calmness before calamity sets in. That I have not slept well in three days because I imagine that sequence in Twister where the little girl watches her dad leave the cellar forever.

When the Twin Towers fell, I sat in history class huddled around a PC reading MSNBC.com headlines. When Osama bin Laden was killed, I ran downstairs to tell my roommate in the living room. When last year’s earthquake struck, I sat in the newsroom laying out pages with my co-editor.

I have never held disaster in my hands without someone sitting next to me, ready to relieve me from the burden.

I have done what I can, what the three-page document affixed to my front door has recommended: I have gone to Wegmans, carted a bottled water case up two flights of stairs, navigated Wal-Mart for the last flashlight in the sporting goods section.

I have no cooler, no ice, no plan for how to keep in contact with the people I love. Tell them that I am safe, sitting in the dark but safe, wind batting against my bedroom windows but safe, huddled in the closet safe.

When my grandma called, I wanted to tell her to leave—go anywhere but back to her family room with the Cherished Teddies in the windowsill, the stained glass lamps on the end tables, the big maple tree in the front yard.

I wanted to tell her to find someplace else for a while, someplace not sitting in the eye of this storm, but I didn’t want to scare her.

My life is in pieces, dotting the Eastern shoreline. And I know that in the stretch of time ahead, I will lose contact with some or all of those dots. And that’s scary.

Disaster is the ultimate loss of control. It’s the reason I’ve been on my couch all day, watching the scrolling text telling me who to call, when to be worried, T-minus how many hours until it’s all upon us.

I hope I never have to wonder whether we’re all OK. I hope days don’t pass without some small message of hope.

Hello world!

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