- Arrange your workspace wisely
and
- Record your surfing history
To arrange your workspace wisely, think about the daily habits you have. What do you do when you turn on your PC? What sites do you use daily? Do you have your working space online and a separate creativity and research space?
Think about how you work and consider how to save you time opening up an array of windows. You probably do use one or more websites or services to help you do this. There are many ways to centralise your favourite websites. You can use igoogle, a personal page that you can add news, photos, weather, and stuff from across the web to your page, and make it your homepage. Here is a cute video on how to use igoogle.
Your Google search history may be stored in your browser, the Google Toolbar or in your Google Web History. Go here for more info from google on how to do this.
For chrome for example:
- Click the Tools
- Select Options.
- Click the Under the Hood tab.
- Select the “Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar” checkbox.
- Click Close.
Or use delicious to save, stack and share the web. Instantly save your favorite links, collect your discoveries in stacks, share what you find, and dig deeper into your favorite topics. Or you can pay $10 to hooeey to save, retrieve and analyse your web pages easily.
- Choose your creative platform carefully
Whether you use blogger or tumblr or write lenses on squidoo if you are serious about writing you should consider having your own website. I use wordpress, wikipedia says: WordPress is currently the most popular CMS (content management system) in use on the Internet.
As with other blogging sites, you can use WordPress for free if you want to, but there are many reasons why you should have your own website.
With a self-hosted website you can make your site into a brand (have your own domain name), you can customise the blog, advertise and monetise your blog, boost your site with plug-ins and above all else, look a lot more professional.
This is where the title is relevant. Once you have your own website you will only need to blog the once. You wont need to add your thoughts to all the different sites – hoping for some readership. Concentrate on your own website and making that the best it can be!
- Use a diary and set aims and objectives
There are many Online diaries to choose from: my diary, my journal uinvue, penzu, Open Diary, Up to the sky are all examples of free online diaries. Use your diary to set deadlines and daily objectives. A few comments to your self a day will help you tie up loose ends and prioritise your tasks.
- Do your research – get the app
Be in the know! Get involved with other writers online. Join writing forums and communities like writing.com, Meetup Writing Groups, My Writers Circle, and Media Bistro. Try to find out how other Writers, Bloggers and Authors use their workspace and how they use the internet to improve their productivity. Here are a few cool writing aids that all writers should check out:
The simplest text editor is q10 it is a minimalist full-screen text editor that includes a spellchecker and a couple other nice features.It is a must have for all writers.
EverNote is extremely popular way of capturing images, web pages, excerpts, voice memos or even handwritten “ink” notes. The free version has limitations to usage but still fantastic app, which you can pay for if you want all the services offered.
Freemind is Java-based mindmapping software. Great for brainstorming and taking notes. (Runs anywhere Java runs) Brilliant for visualising your ideas and organising plots and tasks.
Zotero is an essential firefox extention that allows you to capture bibliographic info from web pages, organize citiations and documents, and create bibliographies in Word and OpenOffice.
yWriter4 is Novel-writing software created by a working writer with writers in mind. Keeps character descriptions, notes, and other essential information at your fingertips as you write.
Sonar is submission tracking software from the same guy who wrote yWriter4. It helps you to keep track of markets and submissions easily. (Win and Linux)
Foxit Reader is a really fast PDF reader.It will open almost every document much quicker than Adobe Reader. Great time saving app!
PDF Creator is an open source program to create PDF files from any application that can print. It installs a “virtual printer” under your programs “Print” menu; select it to save as PDF.
