I love trying out new software and websites to help improve my writing process. It's a lot of fun to see what works for me and what doesn't. At ConCarolinas I had the chance to sit on a panel all about what everyone uses for writing, and I thought it'd be fun to compile some of the things I mentioned, and some that I forgot about.
Cold Turkey Writer (previously known as Writer's Block) is a software I have on my computer. It is mean and amazing. When the software starts up it takes over your whole screen. You tell it if you want to write for a set amount of time, or until you write a certain number of words (or if you don't want to be blocked). From there it takes over your whole screen until you meet your goal.
So far I have not found a way to make it stop once it starts without force quitting the program and losing my words. It also disables some features like copy and paste which can be a bit annoying. However, using this software I wrote 90,000 words during NaNoWriMo.
Cold Turkey Writer's start up screen.
Freedom is a software that blocks the Internet. Super helpful and a pain to get around, it helps when I really need to focus on writing. This will keep you from losing yourself into a social media or research rabbit hole.
750words.com is a great website that I love. You write in the web browser. While you write, it tracks how long it takes to reach 750 words (and beyond), how many times you were distracted and what words were frequently used. It's a great way to stat out your writing.
Some of the many stats 750words tracks. I've been using it for a while.
Coffitivity is a fun website (and app) that lets you enjoy the ambient noise of a coffee shop right in your own home, it's an awesome way to give yourself background noise that's not too distracting.
And no list is complete without mentioning Scrivener. While the steep learning curve can make it incredibly intimidating, I've grown to love it and recently finished my first project written entirely in Scrivener. It was great to be able to set target goals on my chapters and even set up how many words I needed written by a certain date to determine my goals.
One of the many view options on Scrivener.
Those are the things I use most frequently at the moment. It changes all the time as new websites and software appear and as my writing process grows and evolves. What kind of things do you use to help turbo charge your writing?