I used to teach First Year Composition. For ten years at various colleges and universities, I sat down in front of bright eyed (and not so bright eyed) college students and tried to give them tools to succeed in a broad range of writing situations. 

It took me an embarrassingly long time to take my own damn advice. 

When writing Disability and Fandom, Zotero was my BFF. It helped me keep track of the overwhelming amount of information I was working with. And it helped me with my citations. I have beef with CMOS, so yeah, Zotero, seriously important too. 

For my critique group, Google Drive has been a lifesaver. We all have access to the drive, and can keep things organized with folders and tags. Everything is in a central location, and we’re not wasting time emailing back and forth. Google Docs, too, although that feels obvious. I highly recommend that everyone learn to use the comments function on Google Docs. 

I don’t think I’d be as inspired or even as productive without Audible/Libby/any audiobook platform. Why? Because I get to engage with my genre (and many others) in a totally different format than I’m writing in. This means my brain and eyes get a break, but I don’t have to pull out of the creative/inspired space altogether.

The same thing can be said of reading the work aloud. I send voice messages of chapters to one of my beta readers, less for feedback, and more so I can listen to them back and hear what’s going on. This really helps my revision and helps me make things like dialogue and exposition more clear.