Great Gifts For Writers 2021
If you have a writer in your life, chances are you plan to get them a writing-related gift this holiday season. Here are some of my favorite things which range in price from $4.99 to $600. I own and use all these items, so each one is writer approved!
Note, all but the last two gifts include affiliate links. Using these links won’t cost you anything extra, but the retailer will pay me a small commission for the referral.
As a writer, I like highlighting my books and making notes, but as a reader, I don’t want marked up books. These sticky notes are amazing; they’re so clear you can read the text and highlight, circle, or underline what you want without damaging your book.
I love pens, but I’m picky about what I use. My must-haves are a pen that feels good, has a dark, smooth ink, and is reliable. I also like retractable pens to keep the inside of my handbags clean. Right now, my favorite pens are the PILOT Acroball with a medium point. I use them for everything (including book signings!) and haven’t had one fail me yet. These are refillable, but even with as much as I write, none have needed refilling.
I like this mug so much I bought two—one for work and one for home. Even though it has an infuser, I often use it for bagged tea too, to prevent dropping the entire tea bag into the mug. I like the weight and balance of this mug, and I think it’s the perfect amount of water for a single tea bag. When I’m not drinking tea, the larger size saves me trips to the coffee pot!
While I’ve never been much of a calendar person, this past year I had so much going on that this planner became my lifeline. I used it to keep track of outstanding tasks and as a content planner for my weekly blog. I also used it to block out time I needed for writing or editing. This planner provides monthly, weekly, and daily views. The cover is sturdy and handled being shoved into bags and suitcases without issue. It has extra pages for notes, and a pocket in the back. I’ve already ordered mine for 2022!
The Writers helping Writers thesauruses by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi are amazing resources for writers. I have all eight of them, but if you can only buy one, I’d recommend The Emotion Thesaurus. This book is so useful I actually have it in both ebook and paperback so I can always get to its information. I reference it while drafting and when I’m editing.
If your writer already has the Emotion Thesaurus, I’d recommend purchasing the Conflict Thesaurus. This is their newest book (published October 2021) and so, so useful. Conflict and tension together are the engine that drives a story forward, and this book is great for building ideas and for fleshing out the ideas you already have.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame is a lovely book. In it, Gilbert empowers and inspires writers (and other creatives) to pursue their art. I found the messages inside encouraging and powerful and will often reach for it when I doubt myself or the time I spend on my writing.
I read a LOT of ebooks, and honestly, I didn’t love my Kindle eReader. It was heavy, hard to read at night, and couldn’t display colors. However, I loved how easy it was to make notes, purchase new books, and download books from Amazon. My happy solution was the Fire 7″ tablet. As an Amazon product, it acts just like a Kindle, but it’s lighter and cheaper too! Bonus, the tablet has a blue light filter so you can read in bed at night without worrying about sleep hygiene. According to Amazon, you can load it up with apps just like any tablet, but mine gets so slow it becomes almost unusable, so the only thing I use mine for is the Kindle app.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out my book makes a great gift! Oil and Dust is a heartwarming, fantasy adventure imagining a kinder, gentler world after our existing world of technology ceases. This is the first book in the series, and the second is scheduled for release in March 2022.
Oil and Dust is perfect for fantasy readers, people who enjoy low-stakes quests with a quirky band of followers, readers interested in art-based magic, and anyone who has wondered what life could be like if modern society collapsed. It’s available in ebook, paperback, large print paperback, and hardcover. Content warning available.
I’m a huge fan of how Alex Newton and the K-lytics crew display the genre data mined from Amazon. Their reports combine a comprehensive video walking through the data with a pdf file that includes live hyperlinks to the top selling books and authors in your writer’s genre.
If you want to read more, I devoted an entire blog post to them! The link above will take you to the main shop with all genre reports, but if your writer is working on science fiction or fantasy, use this affiliate link to go directly to the scifi/fantasy report.
Story Engine Deck $39.99 – $89.99
I love this gift idea so much that I’m putting it here even though I don’t have any kind of affiliate or referral agreement with them. The Story Engine Deck is a genius story-generating system developed by a fellow writer. The deck includes 5 types of cards, an Agent, Engine, Anchor, Conflict, and Aspect.
In the most simple usage, you draw an agent card and decide from the 4 options on the card who your character is. The engine card provides 2 opposing character motivation. Choose which one you want, then pick an anchor card. These each contain 4 options, and provide objects, location, or events to help set your story. The conflict card provides obstacles and/or consequences. The last card is the aspect, which modifies or describes an agent, anchor, engine, or conflict.
In addition to the main deck, the creator has built multiple expansion decks to dig into fantasy, horror, steampunk, scifi, creature, dystopian, apocalyptic stories.
reMarkable 2 Tablet $350-$600
I purchased a reMarkable 1 tablet after the first time I took my novel to Staples to print it out. Even though I’d printed double sided using a thrifty font, I was horrified by how much paper my draft required. The reMarkable actually feels like real paper, and I use it for editing, taking notes at conferences, and sketching. I’ve taken it backpacking to use as a journal and worked on plotting my second novel on it. This is one of my favorite writer tools, and though expensive, I’d replace my reMarkable with a reMarkable 2 without hesitation.
I hope these gifts help you shower your favorite writer with support and encouragement. What are your favorite writing-related gifts?
Header Photo by Jess Bailey on Unsplash