The 8 Must-Have Writing Apps for Travel Writers

Ah, the freedom and fun of being a travel writer. Your laptop and the open road. And all sorts of exciting things to discover.

It’s the dream life.

No wonder travel writing is one of the most popular ways to become a digital nomad. Who doesn’t want to see the world and tell tales about it?

But you have to make enough money. Otherwise, you can’t sustain your lifestyle.

Travel writing success depends on creating good content and monetizing that content, whether that be through paid work with a client or your own travel blog. It also depends on your efficiency.

This is why you should utilize writing apps and tools.

As someone who’s worked professionally as a travel writer since 2011, I understand writing more productively is crucial to your success. Because if you don’t work smarter, faster, and better, it becomes difficult to boost your income.

Here are 8 writing apps that can make you a more prolific, proficient writer. Cure writer’s block, catch grammar errors, improve sentence structure, and more.

Photo by Chris Spiegl on Unsplash

The Best Writing App for Faster Editing: Grammarly

Grammarly has emerged as one of the most popular writing apps. It allows you to quickly check grammar, word choice, punctuation, and spelling. It also analyzes writing clarity and readability. The writing editor app also features plagiarism detection. It’s free to use, so definitely put it in your toolset.

Get Grammarly

The Best Writing App to Improve Readability: Hemingway App

Yes, this writing tool takes its name from Ernest Hemingway, promising to make your text “bold and clear.” The Hemingway App highlights lengthy, complex sentences (Hemingway is known for short sentences!). This tool enables you to efficiently clean up dense parts of your work. The app also highlights unnecessary words and common errors. If you want to write more concise articles, the Hemingway App can help.

Try the Hemingway App

The Best Writing App for Book Writing: Scrivener

Writing a travel book? Scrivener can take you from “nascent notion to final full stop.” Great for long-form pieces, Scrivener features a project management system that gives you the ability to:

• Organize notes and concepts
• Store research and references for easy access
• Compile everything into a single document for printing, self-publishing, or exporting to different formats

New York Times Best Sellers, such as Michael Marshall Smith, have given Scrivener good reviews:

“I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor.”

Use Scrivener

The Best Writing App for Travel Blogging: ProWritingAid

Advertised as a style editor, grammar checker, and writing mentor, ProWritingAid can benefit your travel blogging efforts tremendously. The writing tool evaluates your copy for overused words, vague wording, over-dependence on adverbs, and passive voice (use action verbs!). Travel blogging necessitates you engage your readers. And ProWritingAid ensures you don’t lose readers with poor flow, silly typos, and other errors.

Learn More About ProWritingAid

The Best Writing App for Collaboration: Google Docs

You probably already know about Google Docs. If you collaborate with other writers and editors, this writing tool can streamline communication throughout content creation. It speeds up the drafting and editing processes. And when you do work for clients, they can directly request edits and changes within the document. Google Docs also has Word-like editing features to catch silly errors—before you publish!

Check out Google Docs

The Best Writing App to Cure Writer’s Block: Day One

A personal journaling app, Day One makes putting down your thoughts as easy as a tweet. You can add photos, drawings, and audio recordings. Keeping a journal organizes your thoughts, which comes in handy when suffering from writer’s block. A journal makes it easier to find inspiration and get ideas for travel blogging.

Note: Day One is available on Mac and iOS devices.

Journal on Day One

The Best Writing App for Note Taking: Evernote

When travel blogging, I take notes while researching. Evernote makes the process effortless. You can add attachments, clip web pages, make article outlines, and more. It has a powerful search feature so that you can locate information quickly and as you need it. You can even collaborate and manage projects. I also find Evernote very useful for jotting down notes on-the-go, as you can record memos. This way, you don’t forget those billion-dollar ideas!

Try Evernote

The Best Writing App for Dictation: Dragon Speech Recognition Solutions

Need to speed up your travel writing? Create drafts just by speaking with Dragon’s speech recognition solutions. I’ve heard of writers punching out more than 1,000 words per hour with it. Their dictation writing tools for individuals leverage deep learning technology to transcribe quickly and accurately. This technology could boost your productivity with travel blogging.

Try Writing with Dragon Dictate

Other Useful Apps for Travel Writing and Blogging

The following tools aren’t exactly writing apps, but they will benefit your travel blogging efforts.

For instance, if you want to drive more traffic, use tools like:

• Ubersuggest: Get better keyword ideas for free!
• Ahrefs Keywords Explorer: Analyze ranking difficulty and calculate traffic potential of keywords.
• Moz’s Keyword Explorer: Identify which keywords your travel blog could rank well for today!

You may also discover the advantages of using brainstorming and topic generation tools like:

• Ayoa: Supercharge your creative thinking by combining mind mapping with visual task management.
• HubSpot’s Blog Ideas Generator: Need travel blogging topics? Enter nouns with this tool and get ideas.
• Portent’s Content Idea Generator: Enter a subject and get intriguing travel blogging topics. If you like to inject humor into your travel writing, you’ll enjoy this tool.

Make Writing Apps Work for You

Technology, especially artificial intelligence, will change travel writing. This is a good thing, especially in a field where human perspectives will always have a place.

By utilizing these writing tools and apps, you can eliminate typos, enhance your writing style, work more efficiently, and more. That increased productivity should deliver many benefits.

Most of all, you can focus more on the bigger picture: Engaging your audience with high-quality content.

Ultimately, employing the right writing tools will increase your chances of success in travel writing.

About the Author

Nick Callos has always had a passion for reading, writing, and discovering the new and unknown. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Nick holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Boston College. He currently splits his time between his hometown, Chengdu, China, and the open road. A full-time travel writer, Nick hopes his work can inspire others to explore the world more deeply and enjoy the digital nomad lifestyle.