iWrite

I’ve never been an Apple fangirl. I’ve always thought the Mac laptops were pretty and perhaps a little more suitable for artistic types, but the price tag always seemed a little insane to me. I mean, in the end, it’s just a computer. Different operating system, yes, maybe a bit different on the inside as well, but still just a computer.

That said, I am an iPhone junky. I can’t say I wouldn’t have been just as happy with an Android-based phone, because I’ve never spent enough time on one, but my husband got me an iPhone for this past Christmas and I absolutely love it. Some days I have a hard time convincing myself to put it down and do little things like eating and bathing.

So it was only a matter of time before I started searching for apps specifically designed for writers. In the past month or so I’ve read through dozens of lists created by fellow app-using writers and I’ve downloaded every free app I could find (I’m not cheap, I swear, I just find it hard to justify paying for an app before I can actually see if it’s going to be useful to me). I’ve downloaded everything from time-management apps, to apps meant to help keep track of manuscript submissions, to word processors (seriously? Are people seriously writing entire novels on their iPhone?). I’ve since deleted many of these apps as I found them either unhelpful, unintuitive, or just plain unlikable. But there are a few I’ve held on to and I thought I’d share them in case anyone is interested in using their own iPhone (or alternate smartphone, in the case of some of these apps) as a writing extension.

WriteChain
There isn’t much to this app, but it was one of the first ones I downloaded because the premise is very satisfying for a tracking junkie like me. Basically this app allows you to set your daily word count goal and submit your daily word counts. For each day that you succeed in your goal the program adds a link to your ‘chain’. It’s a self-motivation kind of thing. 🙂

Dragon Dictation
This app works on speech recognition software. You speak to it like you would to one of those handheld recorders, and it translates your speech into text, that can presumably then be copied and pasted to wherever you need it. I haven’t used it much yet, but I suspect it would be great for quickly putting an idea to ‘paper’ for later use.

Wikipanion
An app version of Wikipedia, excellent for spur-of-the-moment research. As with anything on Wikipedia though, you’ve got to take the info you find with a grain of salt!

SimpleMind+
I haven’t put this one to too much use yet since I’m at the final stages of the novel I’m working on, but I can definitely see it being useful in the future. This is a mind-mapping app that allows you to create little trees of info and link them together, building a little ‘map’ of information for future use in your story.

Daytum
Not specifically designed for writers, but useful just the same, Daytum basically allows you to keep track of…whatever. You give it a type of data to track, say ‘Words Written’, and if you so choose you can further categorize, say ‘Blogging’ or ‘Novel’, then input your count. I’m using it to keep track of my word count (as seen in my clever example). Whereas Writechain only counts words as one quantity, Daytum allows me to break it down into what those words were put toward, so I can see if I’m spending enough time on my novel as opposed to making constant blog entries. *cough*

So there you have it. Of the (at least) 30 or so apps I tried out, these are the ones who made the cut for me. Please feel free to share any apps that you’ve come across that are great tools for the iPhone junkie writer. I’d be happy to try out some more!!