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A sketch-style black-and-white portrait of Crystal Crawford, the author from this website.

Welcome to Crystal Crawford's official author blog!

Find my Announcements and all my other typical Blog content here!

(Looking for my fiction? Check my Story Subscribers Content page! I've relocated my available fiction content there, but not everything requires a paid subscription. You'll find the "FREEBIES/SAMPLES" section right at the top of the page.)

Or explore my most recent posts:

A screenshot of Plottr's timeline feature.

Writing Software Review: Plottr!

Welcome to my 8th post in my "Writing Software Review" series! (This post is an extension of an older blog post series I created, my "Free Writing Software Review" series, which was an extension of my earlier post, “Free Scrivener Alternatives.”) While Plottr is not a "free" software like many in my original post series were, it is by far one of my favorite writing tools, and has truly saved my book series and my brain many times over. On that merit alone, I'm adding it to th

Author Business

Crystal Crawford

Sep 411 min read

An Awesome Tool to Help You Prep, Plot, and Plan for NaNoWriMo (or ANY novel writing project!)

Right now as I'm writing this, it's the last day of September 2023... which means it's about to be Preptober! For those who aren't as familiar with NaNoWriMo (a write-a-whole-novel-in-a-month event which takes place in November), many writers use October as their prep month to get everything planned, prepared, and ready for their November writing sprints. 50,000 words (minimum!) in a month is no joke--and the planning definitely helps! But you don't have to be doing NaNoWriMo

Author Business

Crystal Crawford

Sep 30, 20236 min read

ChatGPT: What Is It, and How Does It Work? (Featuring an Excerpt Written by ChatGPT)

If you're following the writing landscape much these days, you've probably heard about ChatGPT... and you've probably also heard people freaking out about it. I wanted to understand more about what ChatGPT actually is and how it works, and whether or not it is bringing about the end of writing and publishing as we know it like so many are worried it is (or possibly the impending doom of civilization, depending on whom you're listening to). So I decided to play around with it

Author Business

Crystal Crawford

Apr 24, 202315 min read

Free Writing Software Review: yWriter!

[NOTE: Updated as of September 2026. The original post was written in November 2016.] Welcome to the 7th part of my “Free Writing Software Review” series. (This is a companion series to my earlier post, “Free Scrivener Alternatives.”) Today’s topic: yWriter! The original yWriter I reviewed was version yWriter5. The latest version now appears to be yWriter7, which you can download at the link at the end of this post. The basic functionality of the software hasn’t changed much

Author Business

Crystal Crawford

Nov 21, 20163 min read