Andrew Ferguson
Children's/YA Author
Archives
App Review: Tomato Typewriter
Posted on June 12, 2021 Leave a Comment
If you’re the sort of writer who enjoys writing on your Android tablet or smartphone but need the threat of a deadline to get you going, Tomato Typewriter by Zest Works might just be the app for you.
What’s On Your Writer’s Utility Belt?
Posted on June 8, 2021 Leave a Comment
Just like Batman has a utility belt which is loaded with all deus ex machina gadgets he needs to help him save the day, so we writers all have our (figurative) utility belts loaded with all the tools we rely on to help us whenever we sit down to write…. Don’t we? 😶
App Review: Character Story Planner 2
Posted on June 4, 2021 Leave a Comment
Everyone and their granny seems to have produced an app to help writers draft or plan their stories, most of which I personally don’t find very helpful. Nevertheless there are a few diamonds in the rough to be found and today I want to tell you all about another one I recently discovered: Character Story Planner 2 for Android by Ifantasia.
App Review: Storywriter
Posted on April 25, 2021 Leave a Comment
I, too, despair of the hope of ever finding such an app. It was in this context that I downloaded Storywriter by Raindrop for Android but the question is: did it deliver?
App Review: Goodreads Android App 2.0.2
Posted on April 16, 2021 Leave a Comment
Anyway, today I got an email asking me to download the new and improved Goodreads App.
‘Yes, I will.’ I thought. ‘And then I’ll tell all my faithful readers exactly what I thought of it, mwahaha!’
Super Snappy Speed Reviews – Writing Apps for Android
Posted on April 3, 2021 Leave a Comment
As ever, the apps I have reviewed here are not necessarily apps that I particularly liked or disliked, but are simply a random selection of writers’ apps that I have tried out at one point or another. As usual, these reviews only reflect my own personal opinions and impressions, squished, squashed and squeezed into a few short sentences.
Want to Add Handwritten Notes to your Scrivener Project? Try Notebloc.
Posted on March 22, 2021 Leave a Comment
Let me introduce you to Notebloc for Android and iPhone. This handy little app not only uses your smartphone’s camera to capture images, but it also automatically adjusts the colour and angle of your image(s) before easily exporting them as jpg or pdf files, making adding your handwritten notes to Scrivener a breeze.
Can’t Afford Scrivener? Try yWriter.
Posted on March 6, 2021 Leave a Comment
Many years ago, when I decided to make my first serious attempt at writing a novel, I did what a lot of enthusiastic beginners probably do: I searched high and low for the perfect novel writing app. I didn’t know about Scrivener back then (in fact, I’m not even sure it was available for Windows at that time) but I did come across another app in a similar vein called yWriter by Spacejock Software.
My Thoughts on FocusWriter
Posted on February 12, 2021 Leave a Comment
There’s an old saying I tend to adhere to: you need to use the right tool for the right job. For me as a writer, that means I have lots of different writing tools depending on the kind of writing I’m doing and what stage of the writing process I’m at. For instance, I use Scrivener to write my novel and other large projects; Hemingway Editor for times of editing; Jotterpad to scribble notes and song lyrics on the go (you didn’t know I wrote music too, did you?) and FocusWriter for short and flash fiction, which is the subject for today’s little review.
There are, of course, plenty of “distraction free writing environments” out there. In fact, even the other apps I mentioned at the start of this post boast distraction free modes which hide most or all of the toolbars to allow you to focus exclusively on your words. What sets apart FocusWriter from these, however, is how highly customisable that environment is and how many features of a typical word processor are still available without being intrusive. Personally, I sometimes find that even the best distraction free interfaces can be a little too sterile when it’s just you and the blinking cursor on a blank screen, daring you to write a word. With FocusWriter, that’s not a problem. You can make the interface as pretty or as sterile as you see fit.
Typewriter: An Old-Fashioned Solution for Modern Writers
Posted on January 13, 2021 Leave a Comment
I guess there’s not that much demand for word processors with virtually no functionality whatsoever. I found a grand total of three that ran on my PC plus one for Mac called Rough Draft (I don’t have a Mac so I cannot tell you if it’s any good or not. Let me know if you’ve reviewed it on your blog and I’ll maybe reblog it for you). Of those three, one appears to no longer be available except as a fifteen day trial version and the other was a very clunky web-based app that I found needlessly complicated to use. The other problem with both of these apps was that they emphasised the look and feel of a typewriter more than the simple functionality — which is what I really wanted.
Then I found it.
Typewriter – Minimal Text Editor.
Andrew Ferguson 