Five iPhone apps for writers

When people ask me if it's hard to be a writer, I tell them the challenge is not just thinking up the words, but putting them in the right order. Then they roll their eyes and walk away, reminding me I need to work on both my material and my delivery.

Anyway, like any professional, a writer relies on tools. Here are five that make a great addition to any iPhone or iPod Touch:

• Dictionary.com Duh. Every writer needs a good dictionary and thesaurus. This one, a freebie, serves up 275,000 definitions, 80,000 synonyms, and even spoken pronunciations. And despite the dot-com moniker, there's no Internet connection required to use it.
• iTalk Recorder Whether for recording a brilliant idea for your next novel or just preserving the inspiration that struck in the night, a voice-recording app is essential. This one's free, and it lets you append text notes to your voice notes.
• NameShake Need help coming up with a name for your child-prodigy dentist who moonlights as a screenwriting bounty hunter? Give NameShake a shake. It contains more than 19,000 names, complete with definitions, etymology, history, and even a pronunciation guide.
• SAT Vocabulary Builder Word power alone doesn't guarantee your success as a writer, but it certainly doesn't hurt. Though designed with students in mind, Vocabulary Builder has tools that can help anyone learn big, fancy words. More than 1,200 of them in fact.
• Stanza Good writers are good readers. Stanza is my favorite e-book app by far, as it can pull purchases from my Fictionwise account and download both free and commercial titles from a variety of sources. Of course, there's much to like about the Kindle app, too.