Even though I’m a tech teacher by profession and a geek by desire, my default approach to writing is pen-and-paper. It’s got to do with grabbing a wrinkled piece of paper and jotting a note that I woke up thinking about or shuffled through my brain on a long commute. Something about pen scratching on paper or the even flow of the letters beneath my hand helps me think. But, by the time I’m ready to unravel whatever hijacked my attention, I’ve either forgotten what I meant or lost the note.
For the new year, I’m improving my productivity by going paperless. Before beginning any writerly activity, I’ll take a moment to decide if there’s a digital solution that not only saves me time, but adds less trash to our throw-away society. Here are eight ideas I’ve come up with:
Note-taking
Use one of the many digital note-takers that live as apps on my phone and iPad. It can be as simple as iPhone’s expanded Notes or as varied as the integration of text, images, photos, and videos in Notability.
Digital annotator
Instead of printing out agendas and rosters, I’ll load them onto my phone or iPad and digitally annotate them with the basic simplicity of Adobe Acrobat (free) or the fully-featured approach of iAnnotate (fee).This includes conference schedules and submittals at my critique group.
Brainstorming
There are so many great tools that make brainstorming with colleagues simple. And, if you’re planning your next story, brainstorming is a great way to get the basics down before fleshing out the plot. Start with the title in the center bubble of the canvas, add characters, setting, and plot. Put the details in as you figure them out and drag-drop them to their right place. You can do it as a timeline or a mindmap. Many brainstorming tools are infinite screens so you can pinch-and-drag to put as much information as you’d like on a canvas.
If you click the links for ‘timeline’ and ‘mindmap’, they take you to a list of popular, mostly-free options for either tool.
White Board
If you like to draw out your thoughts, any of the free or fee digital white boards are perfect. Draw out your ideas, add colors and text, with maybe a lined paper or grid background. Most are simple, uncluttered, and focus on getting your ideas on paper without the confusion of nested tools A few are collaborative and most can be shared with others. AWW is a simple, functional start, but there are lots more options here.
Voice notes
This is one of my favorites because it lets you continue whatever else you’re doing while saving that elusive, brilliant idea. One of my favorites is iTalk–a big red button on your screen that shouts ‘Print to Record’. There are other great options for phones here.
Mapping
There are a wide variety of mapping tools that let you track your characters and setting geographically around the planet. Google Earth is my long-time favorite, but Google Maps and Waze are just as good. These have become critical to my plotting and scene development, preventing me from putting a bistro or bus stop in the middle of the Hudson River.
Browser
Of course, most writers now use the internet to research. That goes through a browser. My favorite is Chrome, but it used to be Firefox (until that started crashing all the time). The only time I was a fan of IE was the pre-Firefox days.
Word processing
A digital writing list wouldn’t be complete without adding the tool that turns data into a story. Word processors include MS Word, Google Docs (not great for long manuscripts or highly-visual non-fiction), and fancier tools like Scrivener. All of these make it easy to edit your words, move parts around, and back-up your manuscript so you don’t lose it if the house floods.
These are seven that come to mind as I consider how my writing couldn’t happen without digital tools. How about you? What do you use that wasn’t around when your mom was writing her stories?
More on digital writing:
6 Tips That Solve Half Your Tech Writing Problems
10 Digital Tricks to Add Zip to Your Roadtrip
How to Write a Novel with 140 Characters
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman, the story of her daughter’s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today’s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.
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Thanks for all these tips.
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My pleasure, Joel.
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I can use some of these ideas, Jacqui. Thanks! I have to admit I’ve been almost exclusively paperless for years. Save my many paper notes to myself. ☺️
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Everyone does this writing step a bit differently so I tried to include one for each communication style. Me too–about the paperless. I like saving trees, but just as much I like not searching for lost notes wherever I stowed them.
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My handwriting is atrocious! That’s one of the reasons.
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Ah. Me too. Arthritis. One example of making lemonade out of lemons. Thank goodness it isn’t the 20th century.
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Reblogged this on quirkywritingcorner and commented:
Always helpful to know.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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I’ve been getting right into voice notes lately, Jacqui. Often when I’m on my long afternoon walks I think of ideas so now I just get out my phone and push ‘voice record’. I love all this new technology!
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I love anything that allows us to work wherever we are, rather than at a desk, in an office, or under a chair (my hiding place). Always good.
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I use a lot of digital tools to get my ideas down. It helps to sort them all out. 🙂
Anna from elements of emaginette
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Me too. It’s pretty easy to cut-and-paste to move my ideas and priorities around in a digital world.
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I’m just not able to get all that excited about technology’s gadgets for the preliminary work of writing a book/story. I do use a word processor though because my penmanship is atrocious, and it has its own annotator functions. I also use an online map, but prefer the regular Google one. I tried one of the Brainstorming programs, but found I lost my creativity using it to flesh out writing ideas. Plain old paper and a pen or pencil work better for me.
Obviously my age is showing. 😛
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I started using a timeline because I couldn’t remember what happened when. How do you do that?
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A timeline spreadsheet would be useful, but I’ve been using “chapter summaries”, which seem to be adequate so far.
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Thanks Jacqui! When I started writing reasonably regularly about five years back, I started the pen-and-paper way because that was what I was used to when I used to write regularly, in school. But technology soon thrust itself in. I switched to writing on Word. I started taking notes and capturing fresh ideas on my phone instead of the little pad I tried (and failed) to carry in my pocket. Voice Notes sounds like a great idea too.
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The phone is always with you so anything on there, I know I’ll have easy access to. That’s the Notepad and Voice notes.
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Who wants to remember the world before Voice Notes & Notability? Great suggestions. I confess, I’m very reluctant to give up my white board and learn to use the electronic counterpart – thought it is easier to carry around 😀
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I just spent a writer conference taking wonderful notes with Notability–seamlessly jumping between typing and drawing. Oddly, I didn’t see another person taking digital notes.
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That seems strange. Usually I’m the dinosaur 😀
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Jacqui, you are my first source for all things writerly, and especially techie-digital. Thanks for this useful list.
I wrote my very first book (a children’s book) sloppy long hand on lined paper I then transferred to a typewriter I used at the public library in 30-minute intervals while my oldest was in school, my youngest in pre-school – about 20 words and a million mistakes a minute. A dear friend then re-typed in good typing format. One rejection letter later I was too dejected to continue pursuit of publication for that story.
Minor arthritis makes long hand impossible for me now. I am in love with my computer but still rely exclusively on Word. Still learning to organize sensibly – as in, so I can find stuff I know I wrote.
Love to browse the Internet but also love my 35-year-old World Book encyclopedia set, 10 pound thesaurus, 2 volume dictionary, and many other hard bound tomes, magazine articles, and personal interviews.
I like the sound of Note-taking, may try that one.
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Ah, those were the days, when handwriting wasn’t cramped by arthritis. Sigh. Me too-about Word. I wish I’d switch, but I don’t do it. Despite it’s crashing, corrupting, conniving nature.
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The voice recorder on my phone has been invaluable to me. I no longer have to try and scribble down notes on scraps of paper while I’m driving (which is when most of my ideas occur to me).
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Good addition, Ken. I have one of those, too.
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Fascinating.
I kept writing myself notes and jotting ideas and losing them. I now have a fat spiral notebook I grab fast to scribble what’s on my mind. I date everything. Slogging through the notebook to find something specific is always fun… 😀
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That’s true, Tess. It is fun to reread all that inspiration. That’s why I started a list of descriptive passages (that are by far the most popular lists on this blog). I get motivated just reading them.
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Ha ha. Yes. these notes are inspirational. Sometimes, I wonder who wrote them. At least I have them in a fat notebook I cannot lose like a scrap of paper. 😀
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I wish I’d take the time to record citations, but that would just stop me cold. So, I make them anonymous with a warning.
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Lots of great ideas, I like the idea of the voice notes! That would be very helpful!
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I read so much faster than I listen, I don’t really like taking voice notes, but sometimes, they’re the best option.
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I have never tried it!
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I avoid pen and paper as much as I can–I prefer typing everything out. Except when it comes to sticky notes. I have them all over. They’re great for those quick, random thoughts. I do use “Notes” on my iPhone quite a bit too as well as the voice recorder. But neither keeps me from buying more sticky notes…
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I think I have a lifetime supply of Post-its. Which is my way of saying: I agree!
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Reblogged this on and commented:
Tools for #writers.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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I couldn’t write without a computer. Even I am not able to read my own handwriting. Over the years I’ve used a number of word processors, but MSWord is the one I most often use. For my blog writing I use Apple’s Pages in plain text mode, cut and past over and then use WP tools to add pictures and stuff. For research I just use google search. For notes I just leave tabs open in my browser of things I am interested in at the moment. Since I generally write very short things, this has worked well, but as I start looking into longer works, I’ll need tools better suited to long work.
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That ‘leave tabs open’ gets me into trouble. I regularly have 20+ tabs open of things my mind has wandered to. That sucks up the RAM. I had my computer guru max out my RAM just so I could continue to do that.
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Gets me into trouble too. Hate to admit how many times I’ve crashed my browse by leaving too much open.
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Besides upping my RAM, switching to Chrome really helped.
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I don’t think I could ever give up my special writing tablets and fancy pens, Jacqui. When it comes to calendars, I love to check things off my daily list of tasks on an old fashion Daytimer. I have wanted to check out Mindmap. That’s for sharing the links. 🙂
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You are in the majority of writers I think, Jill. I just got back from a writer conference and I was the only one I saw using an iPad to take notes. Everyone else had a nice fresh yellow tablet.
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