in lieu of the Voyagers hangover breakfast I'm going to commemorate six years full-time freelance writing with a geek mega-thread of my most cherished small business and writing apps and sites that have helped me survive #freelancelife.

Much of this won't be news to a lot of you but I hope something in here is useful for your work if you're starting out (MUTE ME NOW, the rest of you, this went to like 40 tweets )

OK, first off: Money. Luke McPake recently introduced me to NZ company @Hnry, a virtual accountant and bookkeeper. I spent a fortune on accountants and Xero every year and have only been using @Hnry for a month but I love it.

Xero was way too bloated and expensive for what I needed and annoyingly devious with the limits on its tiered plans. I also never felt comfortable approaching my Big Professional Accountant Dudes with my latest noob GST question, which would come up, like, weekly.

@Hnry_nz (sorry wrong handle before) is cheaper overall and you get amazing, near-immediate and super nice customer service for every tax question, no matter how dim. They handle your GST, tax, ACC, expenses, deductions, invoicing, and late payment chase-ups.

For the first time I feel like I'm in a safe pair of hands accounting-wise, and it's taken away a huge amount of stress. I love you @hnry_nz, you are the perfect sole-trader app. On the budgeting side, @YNAB taught me how to budget properly and plan ahead for expenses.

The app was a learning curve but I'm converted now. During the first week of Level 4 when I lost more than $8000 of work (not to mention this ongoing media uncertainty) it helped so much to have all expenses listed and work out a way to survive the next few months.

Even when it's telling me I have no money, @ynab still gives me confidence and a plan (ugh this is all sounding so free set of steak knives and sponsored but promise it's not)

OK, the writing side. Getting jobs! Mostly come via word of mouth but I just started looking at http://Pitchwhiz.com , which has heaps of interesting job ads for intl pubs (haven't yet been successful with my 2 pitches but I remain hopeful). Thanks for the recc @kate_g_evans.

Also, a great tip for finding work from @TWC_pod that I haven't yet tried is to keep an eye on job ads for content manager positions, see if one of the role's requirements is to work with freelancers, and then later email the new hire and see if they need writers.

In general @TWC_pod is a mine of information for finding work and dealing with freelancer issues; @jenni_gritters and @wudanyan are 100% useful and blessedly free of classic podcast awkwardness and rambling bullshit.

. @TapeACall is the obvious best choice for interviewing but their auto-transcription is hilariously bad. @Otter_ai has been the best auto-transcription software I've found (entirely due to @thebrittmann).

But I still find retyping interviews is faster, so http://transcribe.wreally.com  has been the best. Listening back to an interview and dictating via various means works too. (I hear @kirsty_johnston snuggles her mike to her audio file and lets it play and auto-dictate, genius right).

I use @ScrivenerApp for writing complicated and research-heavy feature stories for @nzgeo et al, as @kate_g_evans inspired me to try (I first off tried using it to write Southern Nights but the learning curve was taking too long for my deadline).

Handy if you also need to keep like 100 PDFs in order and dozens of pages of writing available at a glance. Of all the reference managers I tried, I settled with the free @Zotero to use alongside Scrivener, they integrate fine together.

Research: I so miss the Stuff internal library. Not having national news archives is hard. I used @ExpertAccessOrg for @LexisNexis All News access for a while until it got too expensive for me.

But it was super handy when I was working on a local history book and needed every national news story on a topic since the 1990s, would sign up again if I was ever writing something like that.

Grateful to @scihub for existing to help science writers without a university affiliation (i.e. all journalists) *theoretically* find research papers when it would otherwise cost $46 a pop to read one. And I'm obsessed with @PapersPastNZ of course.

For website, @Squarespace obviously. For archiving stories, @AuthoryApp is handy to keep a tagged library of everything you've written. Good when there was that thing from a column in 2009 that you want to find but it's lost in Stuff (where it should stay, by rights).

For headlines and subheads, https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com  is great (via @rebekahwh) and when you need to calculate that a pile of water is 4 Olympic-sized swimming pools or a distance is the length of 5 rugby fields, google 'The Measure of Things'.

For inspiration, a rare feeling of collegiality, and advice, @Open_Notebook is marvellous for people who write science (check out their pitch database at https://www.theopennotebook.com/pitches/ ). I loved @Open_Notebook's The Craft of Science Writing book, too.

Of course @niemanstory's Why's This So Good? is great for dissecting the art of narrative and helping you feel like you could one day write better. @Longformpodcast never fails to make me excited about journalism and publishing again.

. @ev_rat, @maxlinsky and @aaronlammer have been doing this for so long and they feel like the oldest friends by now, they are a joy to listen to and crucially never interrupt their guests, thank God.

Distraction and time management: @SelfControlApp for when you're feeling bad or directionless or unsure about what you're writing so you keep procrastinating. It locks you out of whatever site you want for the length of time you choose.

I heard it from @ZadieSmith and if SHE struggles with internet distraction when trying to write, then I don't feel so bad about my own scroll addiction. The venerable @RescueTime shows you how successful or abominable you've been in managing this.

And https://pomodoro-tracker.com  helps stave off deadline anxiety by keeping you on task 25mins at a time, which can be very calming, thanks @kirsty_johnston for that. Out of 100s of time-tracking apps, @HoursTracker has been the easiest and longest-lasting, um, hours tracker for me.

On the iPad, @NotabilityApp has been the best way I've found to seamlessly highlight and take notes on PDFs and send them around the place - I use it with the Apple pencil which was all stupidly expensive but it's so handy.

on @NotabilityApp you can record an interview while taking notes, and when you read back your shorthand you can play the interview and it SHOWS YOU WHERE YOU WERE UP TO IN YOUR SHORTHAND. So good for when you're old and can't read your shorthand anymore.

I sometimes end up doing a lot of international interviews at once, and I got so over the endless emails trying to find a mutually sane interview time so I set up an @Acuity link with my calendar and put it on my website. It is SO HELPFUL, you guys.

You just set up the times you work regularly and when you want to be unavailable (like 10.58 am on Saturdays), and when I send the person the link, it shows them what time they can book in THEIR TIME ZONE based on my calendar.

They can also upload PDFs and papers and their phone number and what have you, so we only have one email in total. I love @Acuity so much, fuck you Meeting Planner

Off the computer, I started using @Passion_Planner when they did their first Kickstarter a few years ago and found it so helpful for dealing with those situations where you're working on like 15 projects at once.

So much of being a freelance writer is managing anxiety (for me, anyway) and this planner layout just works for me and helps you see progress. Also, I love their kaupapa in their get one, give one scheme, and they have heaps of free downloads of their planners. Good people.

all right that's probably heaps and I forgot to number them, but I'll restrain myself now. I would love to see your go-to small biz/freelancing helpers, too!