It took five years for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to go from idea to finished manuscript, but the results have very clearly been nothing short of spectacular. Perhaps you also have an idea for a novel kicking around in your head. Maybe it came to you in the shower one morning before work, or maybe it came to you one evening on the commute home. Maybe you're planning to participate in National Novel Writing Month in November. Whatever the case, writing a novel is an ambitious endeavor, but one that the web is making a lot easier to accomplish.

Though you'll still have to do your writing using the old fashioned method — one word at a time — web applications and social media have made the process of writing a novel considerably easier and arguably more enjoyable. Here is a toolkit for using the web to write a book. If you know of any other great applications useful to aspiring writers, please leave them in the comments.

1. Organize

One of the most important and perhaps most often overlooked aspects of writing a novel is staying organized. Without organization, it can make the already daunting task of putting your ideas down on paper even more difficult. Characters and places can become confused and the timeline of events in your novel can get mixed up in a hurry.

While your idea is still in the brainstorming phase, many people find it helpful to create a mind map as a way to figure out how all the events and characters in your story tie together. One of the best mind mapping applications on the web is Mindmeister, which gives users a way to create, edit, and collaborate on mind maps in an intuitive and visual manner. Once you know who your characters are and how they interact, you can start laying out the progression of your novel and keep track of what you still need to write by using an outline created using Loosestitch, and a timeline created using Timeglider. Both tools will help you visualize your novel while you put it down on paper so you always know what comes next and how the pieces that you're writing will fit together.







If your story is very character heavy, keeping track of all the people in your novel, who they are, and how they interact will be vital to making sure the continuity isn't interrupted. It may seem silly to treat your fictional characters as real people, but using an online CRM application like Highrise (which offers a free account good for 250 characters), can be a great way to keep track of the people in your book. Create an entry for each character and treat them like real people, attaching notes about their interactions, histories, and characteristics as you write.







To make sure you never forget an idea, check out Evernote, which is one of the web's best note taking apps. It allows you to sync together text, audio, video, and images and offers mobile applications so you can be sure you'll have a record of your thoughts any time inspiration strikes.

2. Research

Even if your novel takes place in a completely imagined fantasy world, research into the real world may be necessary to make sure your book has the level of realism necessary to allow readers to suspend belief and really identify with your story and characters. Research used to mean hours in the library pouring over dusty tomes, but the web is changing that.

Online resources like Wikipedia and Google Books give you access to thousands of articles and volumes on a wide range of subjects. If you need to know, for example, about popular ladies clothing in Victorian France, there is no reason that information can't be found online (or at the very least, web research can provide you with a comfortable foundation on which to build with more in depth library research).







Though it costs $19.95/month, another good resource is Questia, which offers full text, searchable access to over 1.5 million books, journal and magazine articles, and newspapers. Be sure to also check out The Free Library, which has a library of over 5.7 million articles and books available, and the Smithsonian: Research page, on which writers can find materials from many of the institution's museum collections.

If you're suffering from a case of writer's block, a trip over to the Project Gutenberg page may prove fruitful. Gutenberg lets anyone read — for free — from a library of nearly 30,000 classic books. What better way to unstick your writing muscle than by revisiting the classics?

3. Write

Once you actually get down to the business of writing, the web can make that easier as well. If you need a full-featured word processor, the leader of the pack in terms of price (free), feature set, ease of use, and reliability might be Google Docs. One great thing about using an online word processing environment is that your work is stored online and can be accessed from anywhere. You can also collaborate on writing projects with fellow authors. One of my favorite books, Good Omens, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, was written in the late 1980s by mailing floppy disks back and forth between authors — imagine how much easier it would have been for the two writers had they had access to a web app like Google Docs!







For those who need a more distraction-free writing environment, check out the recently launched MyWritingNook, a full-browser-screen writing application that is great for just getting your ideas down without worrying about formatting or anything else. MyWritingNook auto-saves as your work, provides sidebar access to a dictionary and thesaurus (the sidebar can be turned off, though), and lets you easily create and switch between multiple documents, so you can separate chapters as you write. It's an ideal tool for your first draft, when the focus should be about the big picture and just getting your ideas out of your head and onto the page.

If you're a Mac user and a fan of the popular WriteRoom software, another distraction-free, full-screen writing environment, check out their new iPhone application. It automatically syncs with your WriteRoom files, and lets you read and edit on the go, including in landscape mode.







Of course, the web is a social medium, so if you crave a more collaborative writing environment, look no further than Protagonize. Protagonize is a collaborative writing community on which writers share, develop, discuss, and refine works of creative writing with one another. In the nearly two years since opening, authors on Protagonize have shared over 25,000 pages of writing with one another.

4. Connect

Writing can be a very solitary task. The image we have of writers is often that of a lonely person, sitting in their attic or locked in a hotel room typing away until they go mad (like Johnny Depp's character in "Secret Window"). Social media has brought us all closer, including those of use for whom putting words down on paper is a trade.

One of the most established social networks for writers is Red Room, on which wordsmiths — including a large number of well-known published authors — connect and discuss their craft. Of course, the most well-known social resource for writers is probably Writing.com. Though it's a little old school, the site has over 650,000 members and thriving forums for writers.







If you're looking for feedback on your work, check out WritingRoom and 1000Keyboards.com, social networks targeted at authors that both offer peer review functions. Or visit The Book Oven, a new site on which users can upload stories and then invite friends, colleagues, or perfect strangers to help polish and edit their work.

5. Publish

It could take years to write your manuscript, or it could take a few weeks. But whenever you're done, once you have your book in a publishable form, the web can also help you get it onto bookstore shelves. Print-on-demand publishing services like Lulu and Amazon's CreateSpace can not only publish your book in a number and variety of great looking formats, they can also help you with the details, like securing an ISBN, getting your book listed in the Bowker's Books in Print catalog, and helping make your book available in store shelves — both real and virtual.







If writing is more of a personal hobby and not a vocation for you, then Blurb might be a good choice for printing your book up in a very beautiful and readable format that you can share with family and friends. Whichever service you choose, if you go the self-publishing route, you can make your book even more professional looking and make it stand out more on store shelves by having a cover designed by the crowd using a service like 99designs or crowdSPRING.

Before you turn to self-publishing, though, it can't hurt to at least try to find a traditional publisher. In that case, you'll probably need an agent, in which case AgentQuery is an excellent service. The site's free, searchable database of literary agents has gotten it recognition as one of the best web sites for writers by Writer's Digest magazine five years in a row.

So, now you have the web-based tools that can help you go from idea to book — the rest is up to you. Stop procrastinating and start writing. Good luck!

See also: WRITER'S TOOLBOX: 35 Best Tools for Writing Online

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, MiquelMunill