Boy, Have Times—and Technology—Changed

NOTE: Normally, I write this blog in the second person to connect directly with you, the writers who need help in getting started with your careers and those who need any tips they can get to prolong theirs. But this week I’m writing about a situation that I’m going through at the moment that has a lot to do with both my professional life and my office.

When I started out writing nearly 40 years ago (I’m not that ancient, really), I began in a world without computers, without email, without tablets, FIOS, and an Internet that has brought the world into my life. I didn’t realize just how different that all was and how it affected me until I discovered that I had a major structural problem with the floor of my office back in May and would need to deconstruct the last 30 years of my full-time career.

As writers, we’re so intent on moving forwards that we seldom look backwards. Even later in life, I don’t dwell on the past. But deconstructing my office bit by tiny bit has shown me just how much I’ve accomplished in the last 30 years.

Assembling my office began when I started freelancing fulltime. Until then, I worked in various rooms of wherever I happened to be living at the time. But even then I began accumulating informational materials, books, and files that would stay with me until now. Believe me, you don’t realize just how much you’ll accumulate as a writer until you have to go through it all.

I haven’t moved since I started freelancing fulltime. And while being in one place has its advantages, it also has its disadvantages. One project led to another and to another, each with its own set of notes, files, and reference books. When I began writing books in earnest, that all got bumped up a couple of notches.

The reason I’m telling you all this is to strongly advise you to review what you’re accumulating from time to time. While some of you may naturally do this and not save much, others, like me, save everything. And rightly so.

By saving notes and references, I’ve made thousands of extra dollars spinning off material from many projects. As a non-fiction writer, I often created new articles from parts of main ones and from sidebars. I’ve sold many a piece as a reprint, bringing in extra money for practically no work. And the wealth of material gathered in writing 15 books has given me information to spin off into any number of other projects.

One of the ways I chose to add to my income was by teaching adult evening classes and giving lectures. The material for over 75 courses and lectures came from my articles and books and from my knowledge of writing, specifically for my writing classes. But I also created courses based on my specialty of writing about antiques, for which I also wrote two books.

Another facet of my work has been in photography. From the beginning, I’ve always billed myself as a writer/photographer. For the most part, I’ve illustrated most of my articles and several of my books. This, in itself, created a whole other section of my office. Notebooks filled with negatives, boxes of slides, and a complete darkroom filled over half the space. With the advent of digital photography, I store my photos—over 30,000 digital images alone—in my computer. But I still have several thousand slides and negatives that are still useful and can be digitized.

My advice to you all, based on what I’m going through right now, is to plan ahead. Plan your office for efficiency and make an effort to review and cull through your files and other materials periodically to keep from getting overwhelmed later. I teach my students in my digital photography classes to start an organizational scheme right away before they accumulate so many images that they won’t be able to find what they’re looking for.

Even with the best planned file system, the shear volume of files can prevent you from using them as efficiently as possible.

In my next blog, I’ll discuss what you need to keep and what you can safely throw away. Since my office will be completely torn apart in August, I’ll do my best to post a blog or two, but I won’t be able to do one a week until most likely mid-September. 

Efficient Note-Taking Tips

No matter how good your research skills are, they won’t do you any good if you don’t have an efficient note-taking system. Organizing all the information you collect is just as important as finding it. Without good organized notes, whatever you write will take twice as long.

While some writers still cling to the one-note-on-an-index-card system they learned in school, that’s not the most efficient way of organizing your information. First, it’s a technique that originated before the Digital Age. Today, there are far better ways of doing the same thing.

One of the simplest ways to take notes is to create a note file in your word processor. Into that, you can type in whatever notes are pertinent to the writing project you’ll use the notes for. At this stage, don’t worry about gathering notes in any particular order. Add them to your note file as you find them.

Let’s say your writing an article. At some point, you need to block it out. Blocking is a simple technique that lists the main parts of your piece. It’s not detailed like outlining. Try to stick to a half dozen or so sections for your article. Think of the phrase that you write for each section as its heading. Organize the sections in the order best suited for the article, beginning with the lead. Finally, number each section in order from the lead to the conclusion.  This should take about 10 minutes.

Once you’ve gathered all the notes for say an article, print out your note file. Read over your notes, underlining key passages. In the left-hand margin, jot down which section of your article that piece of information applies. After completing this sorting process, go back and place the section numbers to the left of each note. The numbers won’t be in order. But by following their chronological order, you can begin to write the first draft of your article. Depending on how many notes you have, this should only take 10-15 minutes.  If the subject of your article is pretty straight forward, you should be able to complete the first draft in 60-90 minutes. By allowing another 30-45 minutes for editing, you should be able to complete the finished article in about two hours, not counting your note-taking time.

There are lots of other ways to gather information. You could use a tiny digital recorder and take your notes orally, then transfer what your read into the recorder to a word-processor-ready file in your computer.

If you’re taking notes from written material, you can use a program like Dragon Naturally Speaking, to read selected bits of information into your word-processor directly. This program is extremely accurate and will cut down your note-taking time considerably.

Another option, especially if you don’t have the time at the moment to read through and select information is to use an OCR program like Omnipage Pro. In this case, you scan the pages you want to use and the program converts the printed text to workable word-processing text. Afterwards, when you have more time, you can either go through the text on screen or print it out and underline those parts you wish to select. You’ll then have to go back and using the side-by-side feature of your word processor, copy and paste the parts you selected to a separate note file.

Keep all the notes for each writing project in a separate file folder. Obviously, you’ll have many of them for a book project. In that case, create a folder for each chapter in which you may have several printed out note files.

Being a successful freelance writer demands that you work as efficiently as possible. After all, time is money. The less time you spend on note-taking, the more money you’ll make for each project.

You Can Take It With You

As a busy day-job writer, you need to be ready to mix it up, to write on the go, to always have a draft or a research article or a final edit in your briefcase or under the seat of the car, or on your laptop, tablet, cell phone, or thumb drive.

Today’s technology makes it possible for you to take your writing with you.  Laptops, tablets, readers, and smart phones are all available.  But you may not own all of these devices, you most likely have one or two.  And even if you aren’t this electronically connected, you still have pen paper and perhaps a clipboard.

One of the most useful tools for today’s writers is a laptop.  Some use only a laptop computer.  Perhaps you live in a smaller apartment and don’t have space for full desktop setup.  While you can purchase a new laptop – preferably one with wireless—you can often find one for less that’s refurbished on a manufacturer’s web site.

The same applies to tablets.  While you may not have the keyboard flexibility of a laptop or desktop, nor the full word processing power, you can always purchase an optional add-on keyboard to help you jot down notes or make lists. Tablets and e-readers are better for reading overdrafts or for doing research—bookmarking web sites for later use.

Evernote, a program that allows you to save articles and whole web pages, as well as create to do and idea lists, as well as random notes, then access them on another of your devices at another time, is an excellent tool.

Even smart phones offer a way to access notes or to do pulmonary research while on the go.  With so many restaurants, cafes, and coffee shops offering free Wi-Fi, it makes sense to get plugged into today’s technology.

But while owning and using electronic devices is a start, you’ll have to get into a mobile mode if you expect to accomplish anything while on the go.

When you’re at your computer in your office, you have everything at hand—handwritten notes, printed out notes, lists, computer files—all at the ready. But when you’re on the go, you may not have all these things at your fingertips. To successfully work on the go, you have to prepare your work ahead of time.

Type up and print out your pages of notes. Save the files on your desktop but also save them to a thumb drive or directly on your laptop or tablet via a wireless connection. Also print out your notes. While some writers do all their work on their computers, it makes sense to have notes or drafts of articles, stories, or chapters of a book printed out so that you can mark or edit them with a colored pen.

Not all locations have Wi-Fi available. If you’re in a situation where there’s not electronic connection, then you can take out your printed notes and such for current projects, and continue working. But you have to prepare these beforehand.

One problem that can occur when working with a thumb drive is that you create or edit files on it but forget that the version on your main computer hasn’t been changes. Get in the habit of copying all the changed files onto the hard drive of your desktop or laptop at the end of each day or upon returning home if away for a length of time. If you’re using a laptop and a desktop, make sure that you save files to both in their most current form.

If you choose to read over drafts on your tablet or e-reader, don’t forget to delete them when you’re finished that project so that they don’t clog up the memory on your mobile device.

Another way of working while on the go is to use a service like GoToMyPC. With this service, for which you’ll have to pay a monthly fee, you can access the files on your desktop computer while working away from home on your laptop, tablet, or a third-party computer, such as those in a hotel business center.

Using your mobile devices will allow you to make better use of the incidental spots in your daily schedule—lunch hour, waiting for your kids to get out of sports practice, a half-hour between school drop-off and your morning commute, waiting in a doctor’s or dentist’s office, waiting to board your flight at an airport—when, given the right setup and equipment, you could easily fit in a solid session of writing or editing.

Prioritize

When you decide to quit your day job and write full time, you’ll have to give careful consideration to your priorities. No longer will someone else be deciding what work you have to do and when you have off. Now it will be your responsibility. For some writers, this works great. For others, it doesn’t.

The first thing you’ll need to do is figure out when your peak thinking and writing times occur. Are you a “first-thing-in-the-morning” person, a midday person, or an evening person? Also, do your peak thinking times and peak writing times occur at the same time or at different times during the day? If yours are separate, you’ll want to focus more on the former, giving it top priority in your daily schedule. It’s harder to think out a piece of writing than it is to actually write it.

To help you set your priorities, you must first create a daily work schedule. You don’t have to stick tightly to it, but it should act as a guide. To begin, block out a schedule for the week, indicating when you’ll begin work. You may want to use the same schedule you used in your former job. Working from nine to five is good for a start. Next block out time for lunch, 30-60 minutes should do.

Now that you have your start and end times, plus lunch scheduled, you can lay in blocks of time for your work. If you know when you’re at your peak for thinking, block in time at the appropriate hour. Then lay in some time for writing and research. It helps to mix up your day by working on several projects in different stages. While you’re getting ideas for one, you may be working on the first draft of another, and starting research for a third. Doing this actually helps exercise your brain and prevents getting burned out by writing for hours on end. It pays in the long run to not write for more than two hours at a time.

And don’t forget to allow time to get more work. You’ll need to send out E-mail messages to editors, or perhaps call them on the phone. And when will you study new publications to see if you’re right for them? Many editors schedule staff meetings on Monday and often Fridays are wrap-up times before publication, so you’ll want to limit your editorial contacts to the middle of the week.

What many people who work for themselves forget is allowing time for other obligations. Do you have to take or pick your kids up from school? When do you do grocery shopping? Must you cook meals for your family? What about talking to friends on the phone?

It’s a real temptation to procrastinate when you work at home. You may say to yourself, “I’ll do that later,” but do you? If you have a tendency to procrastinate, you need to attack the problem head-on. Doing so will increase your production and your income immediately.

You should try to schedule time to write every day. Some days you may have more time while on others less, but writing every day will help you keep up the momentum. Be sure to divide your time adequately among important projects. If you know you have deadline coming up, be flexible enough to allow time to finish the project that’s due. This means you must be careful that deadlines don’t pile up on one another. And for some writers, having no deadline takes away the impetus to get things done.

To help you prioritize your work, create three lists—one for Top Priority items, one for Secondary, and one for Do at Leisure Tasks for each week? This will help you stay on track. You might plan on taking care of the items on the first two lists during “working” hours and leave smaller tasks, like filing, correspondence, and organizing notes for evenings or Saturdays.

And while it’s important to get your current work finished, it’s just a important to plan ahead for new work. Do you have days or evenings when you are systematically building your files, increasing your contacts, beginning speculative new ventures, adding to your catalog of possible topics, and promoting yourself?  How about the time it takes to read and answer your E-mail and check on your social media sites?

If you keep your priorities in order as you start out in your writing career, you’ll be in a better position to recognize and take advantage of golden opportunities as they arise. The more you priorities your work, the easier it will be to tackle really complex projects and do them without stress. And as your career progresses, you should have more and more work to do. There are only so many hours in a day, and you can’t squeeze more work out of them than you already are unless you set your priorities.

Plan diversions into your work schedule. Don’t be a workaholic. But do so with care. It's too easy to take time to have that extra cup of coffee.