Category: Uncategorized

Organization: Top Time Savers

Motivation and the Writing Life, Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

An alarm clock in the foreground emphasizes the need for writers to save time and be able to write more.

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.

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Twitterific Writing Links

Twitterific, Uncategorized

Bluebird with beak open and 'Twitterific Writing Links' by ElizabethSCraig superimposed on the image

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

A weekly roundup of the best writing links from around the web.

Twitterific writing links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 39,000 free articles on writing related topics. It’s the search engine for writers.

Conferences and Events / Miscellaneous

Creativity and Inspiration / Goal setting

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Top Time Savers for Writing

Motivation and the Writing Life, Tools for Writers, Uncategorized

Alarm clock in foreground demonstrates that time savers are important to writers.

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

Better Images for Social Media Sharing

Promo Tips, Uncategorized

Boat on lake at sunrise demonstrates the importance of good images.

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

For a long time I was oddly resistant to rethinking the way I approached images on my blog.

I knew there was a better way than the method I was using, but I didn’t want to find the time to figure it all out. I also am terrible at design.  Additionally, I didn’t really see what the big deal was, although I kept reading that better use of images can help us in terms of sharing. Images can give a post more views, especially on platforms like Facebook.

I finally got the memo when Twitter suddenly got more visual.  I also noticed that when I’d share links on Twitter, if the image on the writer’s post was optimized, it would automatically share the image with the text of the tweet.

I have a feeling that my process here is slightly convoluted, but I’ll share it anyway, along with resources that I know of to make better blog (and other platform) images.Continue reading

Top Time Savers for Social Media and Blogging

Uncategorized, Writing Tips

 

Image shows an alarm clock in the foreground and the post title, "Top Time Savers for Social Media" by Elizabeth S. Craig is superimposed. by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The biggest complaint I hear from writers is that there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all that we need to do.

Tasks facing writers include reading publishing-related news, doing research, promoting, updating websites and social media…on top of working on our books.

And most everyone is doing the above in addition to a day job, parenting, or caregiving.

It’s a lot, for sure.  The only thing that I can recommend is that we save time where we can.

With that in mind, I’m sharing my own biggest ways of saving time.  With these methods I give myself more time to do…whatever.  It could be more time to write, more time to do housework/cook/run errands, more time to spend with my family.

I started to include all of my tips in one post, but realized it was far too long for a post. I’ve divided them up by category: social media and blogging, writing, book production, and general tips.  I’ll run this series on Fridays for the next month.Continue reading

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