{"id":2800,"date":"2014-09-23T14:42:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=2800"},"modified":"2014-09-24T22:10:15","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T21:10:15","slug":"writing-the-book-what-toys-am-i-using","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/writing-the-book-what-toys-am-i-using\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing the book – what toys am I using?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I promised in my last book update<\/a> that I\u2019d be open about the process of writing, so I guess I\u2019d better start with what tools I\u2019m using. After all, everything else flows from that. No matter how good my intentions, if I can\u2019t carry them out, there\u2019s no point.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hardware<\/span><\/h1>\n

In the office? A big \u2018ol Mac.<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not brand new (in fact it\u2019s about four years old, I think) but it\u2019s not old and knackered, either. I\u2019m expecting to replace it some time in the next year or so but there\u2019s no urgency about that, as everything works.<\/span><\/p>\n

Added to that is a second monitor. When my younger daughter\u2019s PC died I hung onto the screen, always intending to repair the main box, but never got around to it. I\u2019ve recently spent \u00a36 and a bit on Ebay to buy an output to convert to VGA, plugged the spare monitor into the back of my Mac and turned on. <\/span>It\u2019s a Mac: it just worked, obviously! :) \u00a0 What it means for me is a significant increase in screen space.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only had that set-up for a week or so but so far I\u2019m finding it very handy. In front of me is whatever-I\u2019m-working-on and off to the left is the additional monitor, showing me background stuff. On a bad day that\u2019s Facebook -but hopefully that\u2019s more likely to be research\/source materials<\/span><\/p>\n

\"IMG_0741\"<\/a>On the road is my MacBook Air and – for when I have ideas when I\u2019m out and about, my iPhone. (Currently a 4S, but about to be upgraded to a 5s, just as Apple bring out the iPhone6).<\/span><\/p>\n

So\u2026. good kit but nothing particularly<\/em> special.<\/span><\/p>\n

Software<\/span><\/h1>\n

This is even more simple!<\/span><\/p>\n

For writing<\/strong><\/span>, I\u2019m using Pages, Apple’s equivalent of Word. Pretty much everything else is the default stuff too – nothing fancy that I\u2019ve got to pay for!<\/span><\/p>\n

For talking<\/strong> <\/span>to people – Skype.\u00a0 It\u2019s free and it works – what\u2019s not to love!?<\/span><\/p>\n

For capturing bright ideas<\/strong><\/span> – Evernote<\/a>. I love Evernote. The book has a notebook of its own inside Evernote allowing me to easily capture ideas and notes wherever I am. As soon as I\u2019m online, my iPhone, Macbook and the Mac in the office all sync up so everything I\u2019ve thought, anywhere, is available everywhere.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it happens, because my mobile phone etc is provided by O2, I get the Premium version of Evernote for free for a year but I can\u2019t think of anything I\u2019ve used so far (or can envisage using) that isn\u2019t also available on the free version. I’d have to be seriously<\/strong> hammering it to go over my space allowance, for example<\/span><\/p>\n

Conversations and managing the project –<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Well now… this is a bit more of an issue, because I\u2019m not necessarily very disciplined about this kind of thing. I\u2019m experimenting with Contatta<\/a> (free while it\u2019s still in beta testing) and I\u2019ve got a $9\/month account with Insightly as my CRM\/Project Management tool. Insightly doesn\u2019t have particularly good project management facilities, but as I\u2019m paying for it anyway as a CRM, I\u2019m going to stick with it as a backup to the unknowns of Contatta.\u00a0 Hopefully Contatta will prove to be as good as it feels so far and I\u2019ll not have to enter everything twice! :)<\/span><\/p>\n

File store<\/strong><\/span> – every things on GoogleDrive.\u00a0 Why wouldn\u2019t you?! :) \u00a0 It\u2019s free and it means that all the chapters are available everywhere. Plus, it effectively counts as a form of backup. Most of my work stuff that needs to stay in the cloud is on DropBox, this is something of an experiment – but I can’t imagine\u00a0it’s going to be a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Summary<\/span><\/h1>\n

So that\u2019s it – nothing hugely fancy! I’ll let you know how well I get on with it as we go.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I promised in my last book update that I\u2019d be open about the process of writing, so I guess I\u2019d better start with what tools I\u2019m using. After all, everything else flows from that. No […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2785,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-of-success-presenting-book"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2800"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2827,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions\/2827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}