Christmas gifts for writers

After spending the better part of the last three years writing, I have come to realize there are few tools for writing that would be hard to live without. If anyone is looking for a gift for your writer-loved-one out there, then if they’re anything like me, they might enjoy one or two of these.

Writing Tools

For writing tools, Dabble is my favorite writing software that I’ve found. As someone who is working on multiple projects at one time, Dabble makes it easy to look through my bookshelf of works-in-progress. Each project is organized neatly into chapters for easy access that can be named or numbered (or both), and the chapters can be easily moved, copied or deleted without having to do any reformatting.

The Hemingway Editor is another handy tool that I’ve used when I have a mostly completed draft and I’m ready to head into heavy editing. It doesn’t use fancy AI to re-write the book, but it does tell me what grade level each chapter is in, suggestions for how many adverbs to shoot for and remove, and tells me what sentences are hard to read so that I can work on re-writing myself. It’s a must-have editing tool for me. Plus, it’s affordable, with a one-time fee instead of a monthly subscription.

Comfort Tools

I’m a coffee drinker while I’m writing. Day, night, 5 AM… I’m drinking coffee. Until I found the Ember mug, I was taking sips of surprisingly cold coffee after a long stream of consciousness when I didn’t realize I’d been sitting for a long time. I would have to break, dump and re-pour several times in a 2 hour period. I’m super picky when it comes to mugs, and I wanted a mug that felt like a “real mug” while drinking but also kept the coffee hot. The Ember mug does that.

I use Cognitive Surplus notebooks for jotting down all of my ideas. For each novel I’m writing I use a different notebook. They have various options for lines, grids, or blank pages, so I’ve tried a few different types over the years. They lay flat, are durable, and they have cool designs. They are my go-to for note taking.

Pair these with a weekend at an Airbnb for some time alone, good coffee, chocolate almonds, a warm robe, and a pair of slippers, and I’ve got everything I need to write in 2025.