Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Writing Productively

I'm starting a series of blog posts on productivity tools for writers. I don't claim to have mastered writing yet, but I've had a great career as a programmer/analyst and IT project manager. I have in fact been called "The Efficiency Expert."

No, not this kind of Efficiency Expert! (See "Knowing the Place of Technology.")


My particular talent is understanding business processes and needs, and being able to find ways for technology to meet those needs. My approach is a combination of my background in Anthropology and application development, informed by my insight into human behavior.

The creative process is not the same for every writer. Some feel that any attempt to structure their process will kill it, and others may obsess over structuring their time and process. Most of us are between those two extremes. If you believe technology can be a tool to help you be more productive and financially successful as a writer, then please check out my series, Writing Productively, and see if there are some ideas you can use.

I'm starting with tutorials of how I use Insightly, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system designed for small businesses that includes some project management features. Each week I'll discuss one of the five tabs that I use in the Insightly CRM. I will eventually discuss tools like Scrivener and yWriter, and create some videos, but I can't commit to the timeline on those because they're beyond the next handful of weeks.

I chose to use Insightly after trying several similar systems because I found it both simple to use and flexible enough to meet my needs as a writer. Also, when I made some suggestions for system enhancements, I found them extremely open to suggestions, and their customer service was extremely friendly and helpful - above and beyond what I usually experience with software support. The best software providers I have worked with have always been the ones that are responsive to customer suggestions.

I guess my suggestions got their attention, because they soon asked me if I would be willing to be interviewed by their PR folks to publish a case study on me for their web site. Because of my great experience with them so far, I happily agreed.

Other posts in this series:
  1. Tracking Story Ideas with Insightly Projects
  2. Configuring Insightly Projects 
  3. Insightly Tasks & Life-Cycle of a Story
  4. Configuring Tasks in Insightly
  5. The Tasks Tab 
  6. Organizations Tab

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