Becoming A Writer Seriously

For the past couple of months, I’ve been looking at various time tracking options.  I was initially kicked into action by a post about online time tracking at Monika Mundell’s Blogging Web 2.0.  I started playing with one of the four options mentioned there.  Then I started looking farther afield.  It was fun.  It was also frustrating too, as nothing seemed to do all that I wanted and needed.  So I started looking more broadly.

I’ve found that time trackers fall into several categories.

First, some offer rough gauges of time-allocation that require a lot of discipline to start and stop the timing devices.  Often they do not provide very much detail about the exact work that is underway, certainly not enough detail to document billing to clients.  These programs, however, do provide a useful measurement that may provide all that a writer needs.  And some of them are free.

Other tracking software can be very detailed indeed, with very thorough reports that will be especially useful to free-lancers who bill by the hour.

Aside from level of detail, time-tracking software can be categorized by whether they are desktop or internet based.  There are some even that maintain the cumulative database online, while working from a kernel on the desktop that tracks activity even when the computer is offline.

I will be presenting individual posts about some of the best options I’ve found.  All will present a fairly detailed review, along with screenshots showing me at work.  [Guess I’ll have no more secrets about how I spend my time!]  Hopefully, this series will save you a lot of time searching through the options yourself.

Combe back next week for the first review — about the online service SlimTimer.

[I’ll be travelling over the next two weeks, but will continue to make ocasional posts while on the road.]

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