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SuperNoteCard: Carrying Index Cards to the Max

Many writers turn to index cards to make notes about work in progress.  These cards are traditionally filed away in card boxes, perhaps carefully organized by topic.  Writers in particular like to tack cards onto cork boards, creating a visual outline of their work.  A lecture at a past Maui Writers Conference recommended notes scribbled onto stenographer notebook pages and filed into manila folders, a system utilized also by followers of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology.

SuperNoteCard harnesses the computer to accomplish these tasks, following the index card metaphor and extending into capabilities that cards alone cannot achieve.

Here’s the developer’s description:

SuperNotecard is modeled around the time-tested technique of using 3 x 5 notecards to organize and prepare written compositions. Traditionally writers use notecards to record facts, jot down ideas, or sketch out dramatic scenes and then organize them. The organizational process includes shuffling the card order, categorizing cards with stickers, and manually creating relationships between cards. Some get fancy and use colorful rubberbands, cork boards with pins, or cards without the lines.

The intent of this software is to take the traditional approach a few steps further. SuperNotecard exports directly to any word processor, offers search tools, an intuitive, visual categorization mechanism, character profiling, reference databasing, and makes it easy to flag and notate content for later revision. SuperNotecard is part outliner, part word processor, and part content manager: everything writers need to bridge the gap between a handful of good ideas and a formatted manuscript.

I first became aware of this software a couple years ago, while exploring Sebastien Berthet’s Chapter by Chapter, which is designed to utilize SuperNoteCard as a plugin.  [Expect a review of CbC soon.]  During my initial analysis of the program, I found that it fell a bit short of my needs as a writer organizing lots of historical research.  Since that time, it has undergone additional development, adding tools to organize references and handle notes submitted by cellphone while on the run.  Version 2.8 has just been released.  I’m giving it another test drive for my own needs; it looks very promising indeed.

Certainly other writers will find this tool — $29.00 to purchase — very useful.  You can download the program for a 30-day trail.  The software homepage does not itself do an adequate job of explaining the various capabilities of the program.  I recommend that you look at the software manual, which will download onto your computer.

While you are at it, you may wish to evaluate EverNote as well.  I’ll be reviewing it soon.  At first glance, however, it appears EverNote excels at general notetaking, while SuperNoteCard is superior in organizing notes into stacks and outlines directly useful to writing projects.  Personally, I think both programs deserve a place on a writer’s computer.

If you try either or both, please share your thoughts with us.

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Time-Management Comic Book: A Fun Weekend Read

What?  A comic book about time management?  You gotta be kidding.

Well, actually, there is such a thing:  Time Management for Anarchists, just released about 3 weeks ago by very free-spirited writer Jim Munroe, who left the safety of a contract with Harper-Collins to pursue a freer life.  Munroe is making the comic available in PDF format, downloadable from a link at his website No Media Kings.  It is easier to download from the archive.org link.

While you are at the site, look around.  Munroe is a very funny chap.  I found this comic by poking around, after Jim Kendrick first led me there to watch a flash movie.

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Getting Things Done — Online — with Nozbe

When I first started my disjointed series on Getting Things Done for WRITERS a few weeks ago, I struggled with the sequence in which I would present several resources I’ve found and liked.  I decided finally to just present them in the order in which I found them.

First is NOZBE, an online application to keep you organized.  It turns out that blogger John Kendrick has discovered it too,  John has just finished a five-part series about Nozbe in its various flavours.  His presentation is so clear and thorough, I won’t provide much explanation here.  Just visit John’s TOUR OF NOZBE.

However, I suggest that you also visit the Nozbe home page.  [Be careful with your spelling or you will arrive at a directory of porn sites!]  You will find there enough explanatory and tutorial information that you will walk away with a good overview of the GTD methodology.  Especially useful is the 10-Step Simply Getting Things Done Course, a series of free tutorial videos.  This is a great place to start.

You can sign up for Nozby for free and track up to five projects without paying a penny.  If that’s not enough, you can upgrade to the Solo Account, which supports 100 projects for a very reasonable fee ranging from $7.50 down to $3.50 a month [it's more expensive paid month-to-month, less so if paid a year or two in advance].

I suspect once you visit this site and also go through Kendrick’s tour, you will understand why GTD may be particularly helpful to writers.  I’ve looked all over the web, and these are about the best explanations of GTD out there.  The related articles below are very informative as well.

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Some Twitter Tips

As you’ve noticed, mentions of the microblogging facility Twitter are beginning to creep into my posts.  As the weeks pass, I’m finding it more and more useful, especially in getting leads to useful articles, information, new products, software and such, some of which I’ve been passing on here.

You, as a writer, may wish to join the growing crowd of tweeters.  But why?

First, it’s a convenient way to get immediate, short answers to pressing questions you must solve.  This becoming increasingly true as your community grows.

Second, if you blog or post comments anywhere, a tweet notice may draw traffic.  I don’t tweet about all of my blog posts, but I certainly bring the most important to the attention of those who are following me.  I’ve noticed an uptick in my subscription numbers on account of this.

Third, if you are a published author wishing to grow your fan base, Twitter is an excellent tool.

I’m sure some of you have your own reasons for using Twitter.  Please share them with us in a comment to this post.

While I’m mentioning Twitter, I’ve uncovered an article by Sarah Evans about “How To Build Community On Twitter.”

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Cover It Live: Useful Tool for Blog Interaction

Call it fortuitous, following my previous post about Twitter, but I just learned via a Twitter tip about 15 minutes ago about a most interesting new facility on the internet:  Cover It Live.  While it has been conceived as a facility to allow people to join into a chat about breaking news, live sports events and such, I can see it being truly helpful in building interaction with one’s blog readers or author fanbase.

As I write this, I am jumping back and forth to a blog that has set up a live chat among a number of news experts covering the election.  Not only are they chatting among themselves, with their comments scrolling down the screen, but there is also a box where any viewer can post a question to them.  There’s also an intriguing set of continuously updated polls relevant to the ongoing chat.

Don’t be surprised if I announce a scheduled chat for all of you with an invited expert.  I already have a topic and expert in mind — but it still has to be organized.

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Free PDF tools

PDF documents - those that one views with Acrobat Reader - are truly valuable to many writers. In fact, if you ever consider self-publishing or creating an e-book, you’ll find yourself working the PDF files.

Gizmo’s Tech Support Alert website recently carried a post evaluating the best PDF tools available today. You may find something here that’s quite useful for your work.

If you visit the site, look around. This is truly one of my favorite sites on the internet, ranking perhaps in my top ten. Especially valuable is the link at the top left, Best-Ever Freeware. This site is legendary among freeware fans. I go there frequently when I need a software to accomplish some new task. You will find there reviews of lots of software pertinent to writers, with links for downloads.

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Wall Street Journal Trumpets Twitter

When the Wall Street Journal decides to write a glowing piece about an emerging technology, it’s time to take notice. The Journal has recently run an article about Twitter, a facility initially discounted as frivolous but which is now being increasingly used by business, journalists and writers to promote their work. it’s time for writers to pay attention.

In case you don’t know, Twitter is considered a “micro-blog” where one is limited to posts not exceeding 140 characters. One fiction writer even created an “award” for the best Twitter novel — a story reduced to 140 characters!

Here’ a snippet from the article:

Other users are flocking to Twitter as an easy self-publishing and promotional tool. People are using it to build up their professional reputation by sharing updates about their work in a less time-intensive way than starting a blog. Andrew Flusche, an attorney in Fredericksburg, Va., recently used Twitter to promote a webinar he was holding on trademark registration. The session got 15 attendees, compared with seven for a subsequent seminar he didn’t promote on the service.

I started using Twitter a couple months ago, just to see what it was all about. At first, I searched out people that I thought would be interesting to “follow.” Twitter makes this search easy, using keywords. From this exercise, along with others added along the way, I’m following 48 people. Some of them are internet high-flyers and gurus. Through this exercise, I’ve identified information that I’ve passed on to you here in the blog, long before most people even knew about it.

More importantly, I set up my own Twitter profile page and began very selectively writing tweets of interest to writers. It must be working, as over the last 3 weeks or so, I’m beginning to attract my own followers, forty as of today. And this blog has also gotten 20 new subscribers during that time, some of whom probably came from my Twitter exposure.

Active writers should be able to find interesting ways to use Twitter, promoting book signings, keeping people abreast of progress on one’s novel, or directing one’s readers of material of interest.

Communication by snippets, in fact, may be the wave of the future. I spend lots of my time in the Philippines, long the cellphone text messaging capital of the world. However, the US is fast catching on. Dan Gould at the PSFK blog recently wrote:

Is the world’s attention span shrinking? Recent data from Nielsen indicates that “snack-size” communication is becoming the new default mode for many people. They report that as of Q2 of 2008, Americans are sending or receiving more text messages than phone calls. Nielsen says that U.S. mobile subscribers sent and received 357 text messages per month as compared to only 204 phone calls.

By the way, you too can FOLLOW ME at Twitter. My handle is simply “tomcolvin”. Let me know, and I’ll follow you back, expecially if your tweets are substantive.

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An Impressive Productivity Toolbox for Creative People

The new blog Lateral Action focuses on the intersection between creativity and productivity.  It’s the brainchild of three creative folks with lots of experience on the internet.  Take a look at the most entertaining, engaging and provocative ABOUT PAGE I’ve ever encountered.

Even more useful is the blog’s post The Ultimate Productivity Toolbox for Creative People.  I myself use most of the tools they recommend and can vouch for them myself.  Remarkably, almost all of them are free.

Whatever else you do today, visit this page.  While there, subscribe to the blog, either by RSS feed or email.

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Awesome Video: How to build a blog in 12 minutes

Ryan Deiss is one of those “internet marketing gurus” who seem to be sprouting like mushrooms. To promote his latest venture Continuity Blueprint, he’s posted several videos which you can, at least for now, view for free. I’ve looked at all of them and find them extremely interesting. But many writers, especially those with a creative bent, may be turned off by the marketing emphasis.

Still one of these videos will appeal to any writer considering setting up a blog. Ryan walks us through, with stopwatch ticking, the process of building a blog from scratch within 12 minutes. It’s very simple; it’s very affordable. I highly recommend this video, even to those of you who already have a blog. You will probably learn some new tricks — I did.

If you are curious like me, you may even wish to take a look at the other videos. His concepts of “continuity” and “membership” sites are truly provocative. He even talks about AUTHORS and PUBLISHERS in a manner that writers may find illuminating.

Ryan is talking primarily to people who want to make an easy five-figure income per month. Well, I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. But the sales prices he recommends and his hard-sell approach will not work for many writers. I wonder, however, what might happen if a writer adapted Ryan’s approach, applying it with cost levels more in line with the real world of books, short stories, essays and such.

What do you think about this?

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The Three of Us

When I first started this blog almost 2 years ago, it appeared to be the only one around that focussed exclusively on productivity for writers, surveying software and tools for writers and exploring a broad compass of topics relating to the business of writing. This arena is so new that the Writer’s Digest 101 Best Resources of Writers doesn’t even have a category of it.

Now there are THREE OF US!

The Writer’s Technology Companion, maintained by Dustin Wax, joined the fray last year and has already established itself as a major blog for writers seeking advice about productivity.

I recently wrote about Juiced On Writing, the newest blog in this sphere, hosted by Michele.

I do not consider these as “competing” blogs. In fact, I’ve been amazed at how little we overlap in actual content. We each seem to have our own perspective and interests, and we constantly dig up differing material. In short, I recommend that you follow all of us. To make this even easier, I have just added continuously updating headline links to their five most recent posts in my sidebar. Just click on a headline and go right to the site to read it.

One last suggestion: how about recommending ALL THREE BLOGS to Writer’s Digest for its next list of best resources for writers. Maybe the magazine will even add a category for us! You can send WD an email from HERE.

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