A page from Benjamin Franklin's Calendar.

Benjamin Franklin’s calendar is admirable, but what’s more impressive was that he had a stick-to-it-ness to complete all his daily tasks and reach his goals that to a mere mortal like me seems impossible to achieve.

I love calendars and to-do lists. Every year I vow to emulate Franklin and keep myself better organized, and every year I spend too much money on beautiful leather bound calendars for desk and purse, along with fancy pens, sticky notes, and just about any gimmick that will be an incentive to keep my daily tasks in order. What happens, though, is I end up writing everything on backs of envelopes and napkins; I lose my pens or a certain Beagle decides to make a notebook or pen his chew toy of the moment.

A Certain Beagle. Photo by Rebeca Schiller

I’ve eschewed the lovely Filofaxes, Moleskine, and Clairfontaine notebooks, sticky notes and pens, and now this mania to keep organized has shifted to software productivity tools. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise to those who read this blog: I am a self-admitted software junkie. I love planning out my day and setting up alarms to remind me it’s time to do a certain task; I love the entire concept of organization… until it’s time to actually do the task.

But I’m getting better and after playing around with certain tools there has been some progress. I’m developing a method to my madness in getting my tasks accomplished and reach my goals. So if you’re interested of how I keep my messy house in order, here’s a rundown of some of the programs I use:

At the top of the list is Scrivener. There’s no question that using Scrivener has helped me keep all my writing projects organized. I use Scrivener for everything and that includes this blog, Julius, all the articles I edit and write for HAND/EYE Magazine. What’s my favorite feature? There are too many to list, but I’m fond of the document notes, and the scratch pad. Both allow me to jot random ideas that might pop in my head while I’m writing an article, a post or working on Julius.

A Certain Ditzy Beagle. Photo by Rebeca Schiller

One of my key issues is that I putz my time away. Because I have the attention span of a certain ditzy beagle there are many times throughout the day that I need to force that will power to keep me away from email and the virtual break rooms (Twitter, Facebook, and Google+) so I use one of two applications: Freedom or Self-Control. I wrote about Freedom back in the middle of June, used it and liked it, but  a month later I discovered Self-Control. It’s similar to Freedom, but I like it better because it doesn’t block everything. The issue I have with Freedom is that it blocks out all Internet based resource applications. Thus, I can’t use my dictionary, or any of my style books (AP or CMS online). With Self-Control, I can create a blacklist of the programs I want to block and not access as well as a whitelist of those I need. It works well and it keeps me less distracted. Incidentally, Freedom cost $10 after the trial period and Self-Control is free.

As far as keeping a to-do list, I’ve tried just about everything from calendars to sticky notes and nothing seemed to work for me, except those stray envelopes or napkins. I’m a huge fan of Yuvi Zalkow and in one of his presentations on time management he recommended Omnifocus, which allows you to to store, manage, and process tasks into actionable to-do items. Although there is a bit of a learning curve, I like the program’s flexibility. And so far it has helped me with prioritizing numerous projects and completing my tasks.

For some projects, I tend to type the same thing over and over again and after a while it becomes tedious and time consuming. I’m not a programmer so I can’t design a macro that will allow me to write the same snippets in just a few keystrokes. But I don’t need to learn how to design macros because the very handy TextExpander does it for me. With a minimum of three letter abbreviations of sentences or words, I have ready-made standard responses, I don’t have to type out names and titles I use often. The best part is that there’s no learning curve at all.

For web research, I use Evernote, which is designed for note taking and archiving. A note can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a handwritten ink note. Notes can also have file attachments. Notes can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported as part of a notebook.

One of the most time-consuming tasks I usually face is trying to find a file, and it’s much harder when all the files are the same blueish-gray color. Mac gives you the option to color label your files, but it’s not the label I want colored, but the file itself so it will stand out. There are several applications, some on the expensive side, difficult to use, and glitchy. I recently discovered Folders Factory that allows you to create colored folders with logos, photos, labels. It’s quick, easy to use and for $5.99 it’s worth every penny. Now I can open up my finder go to document files and easily find my folders because they pop with color!

And now with all these tools to keep me organized, I think I can follow in Ben’s footsteps. I may never reach his level of greatness, but at least I’ll finish a handful of projects.

The title of this post could mean many things. For instance, it could be a review of Jonathan Franzen’s novel; it could be my thoughts of what freedom is to me politically and philosophically, or it could mean that I simply have the day off from work and spousal responsibilities. Except it doesn’t mean any of that at all.

In the many blogs that I get through the email and RSS transom, one them is Victoria Strauss’s Writer Beware. This blog is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America along with the Mystery Writers of America and provide posts that, “shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. We also provide industry news, writing advice, and a special focus on the weird and wacky things that happen at the fringes of the publishing world.”

Today on Writer Beware, the post had to do with procrastination. If you’ve read my posts, you know that I am the Empress of procrastination and that I’m always looking for ways to cure my tendencies to get to work and not get distracted by the tumbleweeds of dog hair, the dirty dishes in the sink, email, Facebook, and whatever else that distracts me. So when I read Victoria’s post I was happy to learn that I’m not the only person who sometimes has the attention span of a Labrador retriever (sorry, Lola).

Strauss laments that she has tried to avoid the Internet with the sheer force of will power, but that usually fails. Other strategies to avoid the seductive call of the Web has been emails and nonfiction writing on her desktop and writing fiction on her laptop and so forth. Yet these strategies don’t always work because they can be circumvented. She notes that she’s not alone and mentioned she discovered a blog post by ShelfTalker’s Elizabeth Bluemle who interviewed other writers about their techniques to not fall into the pit of procrastination. Most of the ones mentioned I’ve attempted and failed like: responding to email at a certain time of the day; don’t go online until I finish that day’s word goal; move to another part of the house (I’m actually writing this on the front porch.) Turn-off the WiFi, etc.

Now let me back up and talk about will-power. Essentially, I have none. There are times I have spurts where I push myself to avoid checking email, Facebook, and researching but those are short-lived. The only one program I avoid is Twitter because I find it annoying. Recently I’ve turned off the email application because I can’t stand hearing the alert beep that a new email has arrived or looking down at the docking station to see the red circle with the bold white numbers, showing that I have fifteen new messages that need to be read and possibly answered (yes, I can turn off the sound and hide the docking station, but it’s convenient to have both turned on, although I am experimenting with the hide and show). So far, I have fared pretty well in not obsessively checking email while I work. A recent Facebook hiatus was not as successful. I still spend too much time around the virtual water cooler And as for researching…well, let’s just say my intentions are pure, but I somehow get distracted and run searches on a certain handsome Magyar.

The one tool that caught Victoria’s attention (and hence the title of this entry) was a program called Freedom, which blocks Internet access. What’s the big deal when you can turn off your WiFi? Well, as easy as it is to turn it off, it’s just as easy to turn it back on. With Freedom, however, once it’s off it stays off until you reboot. Now if I were still using the HP laptop, the incentive of not having to reboot would be great since it was a nightmare to get everything loaded and discover that half my morning was gone. On the Mac Pro booting up takes less than thirty seconds so it’s not a great sacrifice. But I like the idea of not having that instant access, and that I have to restart to read email and research. Software geek that I am, I’m giving Freedom a whirl.

And if you’re wondering whether I’m writing this on WordPress while I’m online, I’m not. In fact, moving forward all written material will be drafted on Scrivener and then transferred over to WordPress. That’s after I reboot, of course.

I wasn’t planning to write anything until Saturday, but I really cannot contain my enthusiasm for this marvelous software. Yesterday, I was still in the throes of completing all my deadlines, plus trying to get photos for an article I wrote for the print issue of HAND/EYE Magazine (this issue is all on Haiti, so you don’t want to miss it).

I was going back and forth between word and Scrivener, writing my stuff but still going through the tutorial when I finally decided to jump right in and play around with it. The first thing I did was create a binder for HAND/EYE Online. Every week, I have a folder with all the articles and images that will run online. So I created a binder and in it, I have a folder that I labeled Articles for October 28th. And then I created a file for each article. Because there are importing bugs, I simply went to my article, copied it and pasted it into the body of the text editor. And voila, I had my first Scrivener file. The neat part is that each folder and text file comes with a corresponding notecard. So on the notecard I can write a sentence or two summarizing the article. I love this feature because once I have all my files, I can switchover to the corkboard and see all my notecards. Another feature to notecards is that I can label them (article, chapter, research etc) give a status (first draft, revision, final, done). And I can timestamp when I modified it—so no more searching for the current version. I can also assign keywords, and whole lot more, which I haven’t even touched upon yet.  The best part of notecards, especially for HAND/EYE is that I can see my summaries for each article and actually use that when I write the letter from the editor. That already that has saved me time in trying to figure what I have to write.

For the actual complete article, there are some formatting bugs and right now they’re not so much a bother. I know this is just one of many iterations of the beta version, and it’s really no big deal to just copy and paste it back into word and format it the way I want. But I can imagine how powerful it will be once the full release is ready in February.

The second task I did was to create a photo album for each of the artists profiled in the articles. I kept that in my research binder. Each folder has the photos and each photo is essentially a snapshot that’s on the corkboard. Again I can move them around add notes to them like captions etc.

I was so impressed how well organized this system is that I actually went ahead last night and planned next week’s issue. So now I just have to write/edit the stories, but I have a majority of the pieces ready to go to my graphics guy next Monday.

Since I was in such an organizational roll, I went ahead and brought Julius over to Scrivener. Now, the BIG problem was that I couldn’t find my current version, but finally remembered I had it in Writing Outliner add-in program for Word. So I copy and pasted eight chapters, played around with the formatting and set up my notecards on the corkboard.This is how it looks

Pretty nifty, eh? Now I have to transfer all my research and notes over, and start. . . .REVISING! In the mean time, I’ve started outlining The Wilde Solution so I can get a jump start on Monday.

One final thing I did and that was emailing my project files to myself so I can have them on my netbook too. Worked like a charm, but I think as further back-up I might get an account with Dropbox and keep things there as a back-up.

More to come on Saturday with a mini-tutorial!

Scrivener for Windows is here.

After all the nail chewing, obsessively checking the forums, Facebook, Lit&Lat’s blog for a month, what’s the verdict? It’s amazing. And I haven’t even started fooling around with it. Although this is BETA 1, it’s still very buggy. A lot of people have gone through the tutorial and have found numerous issues. So far, I’ve had a few crashes, text doesn’t import properly, and some odds and ends that seem a little off. Within the next few days I’ll start the heavy duty writing and figuring out all the functions and capabilities. Right now I’m learning the very basics.

Starting Saturday, when I’m supposedly not working on any articles, I’ll start a series of Scrivener for Windows Tips. I hope this is helpful for those who recently downloaded the software. Please don’t expect for any super high-tech explanations. Last night on the forums, several people were saying that they couldn’t even open the beta version then went on with details of their operating system. All Greek (or Geek) to me. I’ve downloaded the software twice. On the HP laptop with Vista and on the netbook with Windows 7 starter and it all seems to be working fine with some of the glitches I mentioned.

Okay, I have one more article to write, and a letter from the editor. I think I’ll try them out on Scrivener.

Yes, I am beating a dead horse into the ground. I want Scrivener! Well, let me tell you a little story. My Facebook buddy, Rebecca Coleman, posted a photo of the corkboard on her Mac. I was green with envy because I really want a program that will keep me organized.

Writing Outliner has been good, but it’s a little buggy and I just love that Scrivener corkboard. I decided to PLEAD with the guys at Literature and Latte to design a version for PC users, and as soon as I got to their Facebook page, I saw the news: Scrivener is releasing October 25th a beta version for Windows. Hooray! Just in time to learn how to use it for NANOWRIMO.

The official sell date will be in January 2011 and if you participate in NANOWRIMO and complete the 50K word limit and it’s verified by NANOWRIMO, you get fifty percent of the price. So yes, I am participating in NANOWRIMO this November. I will complete my 50K words, and I will have the beta version of Scrivener.

To learn more about the windows version, you can read it all on the Scrivener for Windows page. And if you want to see how it will look, here’s a sneak preview:

I’m counting the days until I get my Scrivener!

I still want Scrivener, but until the developers actually create a Windows version, I am S.O.L. Now, I really like yWriter, but I love the idea of Scrivner’s corkboard and I’ve tried to find other writing software that duplicates this feature, but I haven’t found anything close to it except an alpha version of Lyx-Outline which is supposed to be an add-in for LYX. I had both, but found them too clunky. If I need a back-up word-processor, I can use OpenOffice, but considering I just upgraded to Word 2010 and I actually like it, why fiddle around with another word-processing program?

However as I was perusing the Lyx-Outline comments, one response caught my eye. It seems that someone decided to design an outlining add-in for Word. It’s called Writing Outliner and it’s boasting that it will have a cork board feature for index cards. Hooray!

I used the trial version of the software and I liked it very much so I plunked down the $49.00 to buy the full version. The concept behind Outliner is project-based,  in other words, if you’re working on a book or a research paper it’s ideal to manage each chapter or section as a smaller writing project. I can have character bios, scenes, research notes, the whole shebang. Now I can do a lot of this in yWriter, but the issue with that software is really more about formatting. With Writing Outliner because it is an add-in for Word, I can have my margins, fonts, line-spacing formatted in a style I like.  In addition, I can export work I’ve already have written into the program.

Another program I discovered is SuperNoteCards. The concept behind that is to jot down ideas as they come. I haven’t used it yet, but  it’s similar to Microsoft’s Office One Note, which is essentially a centralized place to keep all your notes, videos, ideas, and photos.  So now that I have all these resources to keep me organized, it’s time to stop using the backs of envelopes  and paper napkins for notes.

Oh, on another note, my subscribe option on the home page now works. So if you want to read about my trials and tribulations, feel free to sign up!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am a sucker for software and if it’s free even better. For several months, I’ve been reading about the value of mind mapping . According to  Chuck Frey, author of the Mind Mapping Software Blog:

It helps you to become better organized. You can use mind maps as a very efficient front-end process for your new projects, to create meeting agendas, to do lists and other valuable time-savers. Your maps can also contain links to files, web pages, notes and individual e-mails. This means you’ll spend less time looking for key documents and information, and more time accomplishing great things. In addition, several mind mapping tools enable you to capture ideas on the fly, so you don’t lose any of them.

Well, I’m not going to argue that I need an tool that will help me with organization. A lot of my ideas, I store in the grey matter that floats around in my skull. However, what I have in my head sometimes doesn’t seem to jibe when I write it down because I know that I’m forgetting some key stuff.

Although I haven’t mind mapped anything yet, I just downloaded XMind to play around with some key concepts in Julius and see if it helps me generate more ideas. The one issue I’m trying to iron out are some of the subplots and whether they work or not in the overall plot.

Will mind mapping help me see the forest and the trees? Or will I see a bunch of circles and lines connecting with each other, and confuse me even more? It’s worth giving it a spin. If I don’t like it,  I can always uninstall it.