If you’re not familiar with Roy Peter Clark’s “50 Tools for Writers” you ought to be. These tools aren’t literal hammers and nails (pens and pencils), or even pieces of software. Rather, these tools are rules and guidelines for crafting a sentence, a paragraph, a story. They range from the overarching (“Work from a plan”) to the nitty-gritty (“Begin sentences with subjects and verbs”). There are now podcasts for each of the 50 tools–neato!–and a book. For me, I just tape a printout of this page over my desk and I’m good to go.