Free Resources For Writers

When writing web articles, writers often need to know how many times they have used particular keywords and keyword phrases. Some employers specify a particular keyword density, while others ask for some keywords to be used a certain number of times in a written article. There are hundreds of keyword density analyzers online, some of them free, some not. These are great if you want to analyze an existing web page but no use at all if you want to check keyword density before you've uploaded a piece of writing. But a bit of searching uncovered a couple of tools that allow writers to do just that.

Textalyser is an online text analysis tool. Near the top of the page is a box where writers can paste their text. They can then set a minimum number of characters per word, ask it to analyze a particular number of words, and apply a stoplist (words to be ignored such as 'and' and 'but'). Then just press 'analyze the text' and wait for the results, which arrive quickly. The results include a word count, lexical density percentage and readability assessment as well as a frequency count and listing for words and two, three, four and five word phrases.

I have found this incredibly useful and there are features I haven't even used. I could, for example, ask for a particular word or phrase to be analyzed.

Also consider:

Although I prefer Textalyser, there's also an alternative that I've used from time to time. Mark Horrell's Keyword Density Analyser does exactly what it says and it works almost the same way as Textalyser. Paste the text into a window and you get a simple table which shows the word, frequency and density. However, it does not show phrases, so this limits its usefulness in my view. That said, there are a number of other free tools on Mark's site, including another spell checker. I haven't used any of the other tools, but some of them seem worth a look.

As a freelance writer, you should be writing regularly and submitting your work to as many places as will take it. If you're doing that, you'll need to keep track of what you've submitted, when and to whom.

Now, I didn't have a huge software budget when I started submitting my work, so I did some research and found a submissions tracker you can get for free. It's called WriteAgain from Asmoday Enterprises.

WriteAgain manages projects, markets and contacts, submissions and deadlines. I've been using it for about seven months and haven't used all the features yet, but here's what I've done with it:

• I have started a project file for an article series. Each time I complete an article I add it to the series

• I have input the titles and genres of all my articles, stories and other writing (adding genres as needed)

• I have put contact details for all the publishers to whom I have submitted work

• I have made a note of the date of submission, whether it was email or snail mail and how long it should take for publishers to get back to me.

• I have viewed submission status reports, which allow me to keep track of all my work (and to decide whether it's time to chase for a response)

The software also includes a time planner, finance manager and market viability reports. A full list of features can be found here.

The software comes in three editions: Professional, Standard and Light. The Light edition will be enough for most people and is free.

While I was checking over my articles for a new website, I noticed that some strange characters had appeared in the text. I knew immediately that the error came from Microsoft Word. Word is one of the best of Microsoft's programs, but all its functionality relies on special codes which usually mess up your formatting. (Don't, whatever you do, write and upload HTML pages from Word. Your code will be messy and will break in some browsers.) I've known this for a long time, which is why I usually use Notepad or Wordpad to write my articles. However, both these programs have two major failings: no spell-check and no word count.

Now, word count is the most useful tool in Word, IMHO, because writers, editors and publishers always need to know how long a piece of writing is. What I normally do to avoid the problems caused by Word is compose in Notepad or Wordpad, paste into Word to spellcheck and count the words, and paste back into Wordpad or Notepad. As I found out today, that doesn't work quite as well as I thought it did.

Instead of tearing my hair out, I got on the net and found two tools that appear to solve the problem. A free online spellcheck is available from spellcheck.netand a free online word counter can be found at allworldphone.com.

I can't make any grand claims about these two services, as I've used them only once each, but they did what I needed at the time. And I'm sure there won't be any strange characters in my next batch of articles.

And by the way, if you want a program that saves in rich text format automatically (no funny characters), and has a built in spellcheck and word count, you could do worse than Jarte. And it's free, too!

Numbers are not my strongest point. I'm OK with the basics - I can add and subtract (and occasionally multiply and divide) but that's as far as it goes. As a freelance writer, you often find yourself having to deal with numbers. And if you want to be known for accurate copy, you'll need to have a grasp of more than just the basics.

That's why I was so pleased to find this guide to Statistics Every Writer Should Know by Robert Niles. Robert is a writer of long standing, who describes himself as having been caught up in the collision between computers and journalism in the 1980s (check out his home page for the full description). In Statistics Every Writer Should Know he gives a guide to the basics (mean, median and percent) as well as some more complex figures, tests and analyses. Read his guide and you should avoid being taken for a ride. It's easy to read and very useful.

Deborah Ng's Freelance Writing Gigs blog lists jobs from a number of jobs sites, including Craigslist. What's good about this list is that Deborah tries to weed out the scams before she publishes, so for the most part, these are genuine writing opportunities. The list is updated four or five times a week, Monday to Friday. Where it's available, each job has a location and rate of pay next to it. There are also markets looking for freelance writers. Deborah sometimes includes other jobs related to writing, such as design and web design jobs.

There are other sites that include lists from jobs boards, but in my opinion this site does the best job of weeding out the cr*p, which is good news for freelance writers. I've already had a couple of jobs through the site. Hope it works for you too.