I've reviewed a few paid-for writing products recently, so I thought today I'd feature a free service.VocabGrabber is a web-based tool for writers and editors. It aims to help you identify words that are over-used in a piece of text and suggests possible alternatives for them.VocabGrabber is free to use, although it also links to ThinkMap Visual Thesaurus, which is a paid-for service. Using it is simplicity itself. Just copy and paste your text for analysis (up to a hefty 200,000 characters) ... Read Full Story

Like myWriterTools, which I reviewed in this recent post, PerfectIt operates as an add-in for Microsoft Word.It works with Word 2000, 2002, 2003 and 2007. In versions of Word prior to 2007, PerfectIt is listed in the Tools menu. In Word 2007 (which I use) you click on the Add-Ins tab at the end of the Ribbon, then click on PerfectIt to run the software.So what exactly does PerfectIt do? Essentially, it checks that any Word document is internally consistent. For example, it ensures that if you... Read Full Story

Just a quickie to let you know that I now have a public Facebook Page.If you're a Facebook user yourself, you are very welcome to sign up as a 'Fan' of my Page.You will then receive notification via Facebook of my latest blog posts and selected Twitter updates (e.g. those with links to websites of particular interest to writers). As with all Facebook Pages, you will be able to comment on any of these items, ask questions, start discussions, and so on.I will also add extra material on my Page ... Read Full Story

Autoblogging Decoded is a PDF manual which shows how you can automate the process of updating your blog by importing content via other websites' RSS feeds. There are certain legal and moral issues around this, which I'll discuss later, but if you can live with these, Autoblogging Decoded actually makes the process of setting up an 'autoblog' very quick and easy.The main manual starts by looking at how you can set up autoblogging on Blogger blogs. As a Blogger user myself, I was pleased to see... Read Full Story

* * *Web 2.0 technologies have empowered authors to write, publish, sell and promote their books online in many different ways. There are so many options now that utilise free software. They take some time and effort to achieve, but you can gain fantastic results.One effective book promotion tactic is to use articles. These can be segments of your book, or an article written on the topic of your book. This works for both fiction and non-fiction. Repackage parts of your existing written work i... Read Full Story

Regular readers will know that this blog is sponsored by my publishers, The WCCL Network.WCCL publish my courses such as Write Any Book in Under 28 Days and The Wealthy Writer, along with a wide range of other training courses, software, CDs, and so on.You might not know, however, that WCCL also offers a number of free websites, resources and services for writers.First among these is my forum at www.mywriterscircle.com. This is an open-access forum with nearly 9000 members all over the world.... Read Full Story

As a freelance writer/editor, I get to work on all sorts of books, some more interesting than others, but this one definitely fell into the 'very interesting' category.The full title of Gill's book is How to Live on Less - A Guide to Everyday Budgeting and Self-sufficiency. As she says in her introduction:How to Live on Less is about taking a new and exciting look at financing our everyday life and the ways in which we can achieve the same, or similar, for less. Just because we want to econom... Read Full Story

A reader wrote to me recently regarding the Writer's Block CD, a product from my sponsors and publishers, The WCCL Network."Why is the apostrophe placed in front of the 's'?" he asked me. "Surely more than one person in the history of the world has suffered from this condition?"I understood what he meant. The normal rule with possessives is that the apostrophe comes after the relevant noun. So the boy's room refers to a room belonging to one boy, while the boys' room signifies a room occupied... Read Full Story

PayPerPost has just launched a brand new version 4.0, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a fresh look at it. For the moment version 4.0 is running alongside the old version 3.0, but presumably in due course (and if feedback is positive) version 4.0 will take over.The first thing you notice about the new PayPerPost v4.0 is the simple, straightforward interface (see screengrab below). There are just two tabs, Opportunities and My Account. My Account is where you can check you... Read Full Story

With a couple of easy-to-install add-ons, you can get all your Google searches to display the results of the same search on the micro-blogging service Twitter as well. As an example, here's a screengrab of the results of a Google search for Lichfield (my nearest large town) with the relevant add-ons installed...The screengrab shows the Twitter search results (with some interesting links to explore). These appear at the top of the results page. Below this in the search was the usual list of re... Read Full Story