by Scot Herrick on September 7, 2007
This month, I’m providing a writer’s technology tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you in your writing goals.
Today’s tip: Technology for Time Management.
Managing your time as a writer is critical to your success. Most of us have day jobs that pay the bills while we carve out time for our passion for writing. Full time writers need the discipline to write full time. It’s not an easy thing to do.
Enter the myriad of time management tools available to writers. Whether it is simple notepads, index cards, notebooks, or digital time management tools, it is critical for a writer to have a time management discipline for managing time and tasks.
Angela Booth is all over the time management needs of a writer. In her series of articles on time management, she starts off with something we all need to understand: See yourself as a competent writer. It all starts with our attitude to writing doesn’t it?
Her next tip is to “list everything.” And whether it is analog like paper or digital like Outlook, the key is that if you don’t capture it, “it doesn’t happen.”
There’s more, of course. The key is: manage your time and use analog or digital tools to do it.
Scot
by Scot Herrick on September 6, 2007
This month, I’m providing a writer’s technology tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you in your writing goals.
Today’s tip: Use technology to make a best seller.
How many of you have been turned down cold by a publisher submitting the book you want to write? More than a few and we have entire courses on “dealing with rejection.” Appropriate, for the most part, as much writing out there could stand to use a little improvement.
But, there are always diamonds in the rough.
Take, for example, The 4-Hour Workweek hitting number 1 on the New Your Times best seller list.
The book was “turned down by 13 of 14 editors” which is not surprising, considering that only 5% of the 200,000 books published in the US “ever sell more than 5,000 copies.”
The quotes, of course, from The Blog of Tim Ferriss, the author of the book.
It’s not just small talk. This really happened.
What helped turn great writing into a best seller: Using technology to create a phenomenon.
The full story is in “How Does a Bestseller Happen? A Case Study in Hitting #1 on the New York Times.”
Yes, the writing counts. But technology, according to Tim, can help the marketing.
Your technology channels can help make your book a best seller.
Scot
by Scot Herrick on September 5, 2007
This is a bit off topic for a technology for writers blog — but writers read this blog, so I wanted to pass on some news.
Alison Kent has a promotion going on right now through Saturday night, September 8th, at 8 PM Central Time, where Jo Leigh is giving away tuition to her class to one reader of Alison’s blog.
The class?
The Core Decision is all about creating characters. It’s about using your own life, the joys, the tragedies, the love, the desperation that made us who we are. It’s about breathing life into your hero and heroine and your villain so that each of them leap off the page and into the reader’s heart.
If you are interested, add a comment to the Alison’s post “The Core Decision” to get entered into the promotion.
Find out more about the class by visiting Jo’s blog, or, if you just want to take the class, go to the sign up page.
Learning how to write characters with depth and believability is part art and part skill. Jo can help develop that skill.
Scot
by Scot Herrick on September 5, 2007
This month, I’m providing a writer’s technology tip-a-day (along with other posts) to help you in your writing goals.
Today’s tip: Do an annual writing tool checkup.
A writer uses a surprising amount of software to support a career. Whether it be blog software such as WordPress, or client blogging software such as BlogDesk, or the software you use to write your manuscripts, the brainstorming and organizational tools to create, the software — and your use of it — changes over time.
Yet, we as human beings use our natural tendency to stay with what we use even though it is not working for us any more.
It requires discipline to clearly examine the benefit of the software to us over time. After our review, it requires effort to change to a different software program that we think now meets our needs.
Sometimes, we change out our software as Gordon over at After the MFA where he stopped using Word over two years ago as noted in “The Last Word on Word“. Steven Poole documents the change that Gordon picked up on in his post “Goodbye, cruel Word.”
Each had used Word in the past, but felt that the software no longer met their needs.
Other times, we find the software is fine for how we are using it now.
This is not to pick on Microsoft. I’ve changed my blogging software, changing from Blogger to Squarespace (a great hosting site) to WordPress. I’ve tried different programs to write my blogs. I’ve changed virus spyware protection programs from Symantec to Zone Alarm.
The point is this: once a year take a hard look at what is working and not working with the tools you use that help you make your writing career a career. You owe it to yourself and career to use the right tools for the job. Don’t just settle.
Scot
by Scot Herrick on September 4, 2007
At the end of the summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s still sizzling in places — even in places that traditionally don’t burn.
Anne Wayman, over at The Golden Pencil, is in San Diego where the temperature Sunday morning was already 87 degrees and the humidity not much better. Tough to work, tough to sleep — so she went and bought an air conditioner. Installed it. Didn’t like the closed in feeling — but she can sleep. She can work.
In my comment, I noted that I had never thought of “air conditioning” being “technology for writers.” But if you can’t sleep and can’t function because of the heat, an air conditioner can be a writer’s best friend.
I’ll have to expand my outlook on the technology tools for writers! Check out Anne’s story on A Freelance Writer’s Workspace.
Scot
