Tools for Writers

Organization: Top Time Savers

February 24, 2017February 23, 2017Motivation and the Writing Life, Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is the last post of the time saving series. You can find the first post here (on social media), post two here (on saving time writing), and the third post here (on book production). Today, I’m focusing on general organization. I’ve found if I’m better organized, I can free up more time for writing.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve got tons of information to organize and work through. It could be writing craft posts. It could be research for your book. It could be ideas and images for blog posts.How do you store this information so that you can easily access it?

I use a couple of different tools for organizing information: one is Evernote and the other is OneNote. Both are free (Evernote has a paid version if you’re an especially heavy user). This post will include both the writing-related and personal uses of the apps because, in my house at least, if I’m not organized with both home and writing it impacts my writing time.

Top Time Savers for Book Production

February 17, 2017February 17, 2017Business of Writing, Tools for Writers

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This is the third post in my series on how writers can save time. You can find the first post here (on social media), and the second post here (on saving time writing).

If you plan on having only a single book or just a couple of books, you probably can just skip the information I’m sharing today. This is more for those of us who have either multiple series or many books or both. It’s the nitty-gritty of book production–the tedious inputting of data into the retail and distributor sites.

By keeping track of the data we use over and over again, we can not only make our process go a lot quicker, we can also make sure it’s consistent. Although it does take some time to compile these lists, sometimes we have to spend time to save it.

Here are some examples:Continue reading

Top Time Savers for Writing

February 10, 2017February 10, 2017Motivation and the Writing Life, Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I rely on a lot of time savers to help me stay productive. I’ve spoken to writers before who’ve asked me how long I spend writing each day. I usually spend no more than thirty minutes writing, but that thirty minutes is enough for me to publish 2-3 books a year and get a head start on another.

I think it’s because of these time saving tricks. Not everyone wants to be a faster writer or needs to be a faster writer. If you’re someone who is already trying to increase your writing speed, here are the things that work for me. Some of them help me stay on track and fight distraction. Some of them are memory crutches that help cut my revision times dramatically. Continue reading

Process: Finishing One Book While Starting Another

January 27, 2017January 21, 2017Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Some of my more popular posts have to do with something pretty ordinary and (unfortunately) boring … process.

Everyone’s process for writing and publishing books is different. Maybe that’s why we’re curious about what works for other writers. I know I like reading those types of posts, too. I never know when there’s something that might be helpful to try or something that I could work into my own writing process.

Keeping all of that in mind, I thought I’d share my own process for finishing a book and starting another book. It’s fresh in my mind because that’s been my last couple of weeks (some of this I touched on in last Friday’s post).

The process for the book that’s releasing

While the book is in edits, I start loading the book and the book’s metadata up on distributor and retail sites (which can be, if you use a lot of distributors, something of a tedious process).

I draft a newsletter to announce the upcoming release.

I make sure the book is linked to the rest of the series on Amazon and other retail sites.

I update my website, LinkedIn, and Goodreads.

The process for the next book in that series

Whatever book I’ve just finished, I start immediately outlining the next book in that same series. I’ve found this is a big time-saver for me because my head is still in the series. It takes a lot less time to create situations for the characters to respond to, etc. Continue reading