Recently, I’ve taken over leadership of a writing group in my area, and I’ve been meeting a lot of new talented writers in this role.  As part of this, I’ve also met the primary developer of a free novel-writing website called LitLift.

The website is currently in beta, and allows you to intuitively organize books, characters, settings, and items.  LitLift lets you organize your thoughts for your novel while staying out of your way in order to allow you to focus on the business of writing your book.

I’ve been using LitLift to organize my thoughts for my current novel — where I am approximately 25% complete with the first draft.  Having access to my character data from anywhere is a useful feature, especially since I’m not always at home when I have my next idea.  Some of the next planned features will make it even easier to write my story wherever I happen to be.

Since LitLift is in beta, there are new features being added often.  New users will be able to request additional features, and help guide the development of this software so that it’s as useful as possible.  For writers to have this level of influence on new software is a rare opportunity.