writing

Link roundup

I find this stuff so you don’t have to:

Recent writing elsewhere

I’ve been publishing a few bits of writing in places other than this blog lately.

Here’s an article I wrote for our local newspaper – the first of what will hopefully be a regular series:

Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge

I’ve also written a couple of articles for the Business Lincolnshire website, which is run by the County Council. One is on avoiding social media pratfalls and the other is on some of the benefits of software as a service. You can read them both via this link.

The cloud article is one of a series I’m writing to promote the conference we are running in Boston on 12 July – more details here.

Tools for writing

I use a ridiculous number of apps for writing stuff down digitally. It all depends on the context!

Rough notes, ideas and that sort of thing tend to be stored in Evernote. It’s easy, and ubiquitous and everything gets kept in one place.

Blog posts are written in MarsEdit, an offline editor. My local drafts folder is full of half-written, half-baked posts which occasionally get resurrected later on.

Any coding I have to do usually happens in BBEdit, or occasionally something like Nano in a terminal window.

Proposals and other documents which I’m the only person likely to ever edit are done in Pages, and then exported to PDF for distribution. I just like the way Pages works in terms of laying things out and so on.

Documents and reports that I need to share in an editable format with colleagues or customers have to be written in Word. Since upgrading to the 2011 version on the Mac I have found myself getting angry much less!

Longer documents, such as various guides and handbooks I am working on tend to be planned using an outliner tool. My favourite at the moment is OmniOutliner.

I sometimes use a mind mapping tool to plan a document though, which is a bit more visual. My favourite mind mapping app is MindNode.

(As well as for documents, an outliner or mind mapper is really useful for planning presentations.)

For the actual writing of bigger documents, I use Scrivener. This lets you break down the document into smaller bits, which can then be dragged around and re-ordered. Scrivener then sticks it all together into one document for you when you’re ready to publish. It’s great!

Whether using OmniOutliner or MindNode, I can import my outlines into Scrivener by exporting them to an OPML file, which then loads into Scrivener, giving me all the headings under which I need to bash text.

One type of editor that I don’t find myself using are the stripped down, distraction free apps like Writeroom or Byword.

What apps do you use for writing?

The book

So, the contracts are signed and returned, and it’s all official. I’m writing a book.

Sorry to all of my fans out there who were hoping this would be my first volume of poetry – you’ll all just have to wait a bit longer for that.

No, my book is going to be on my specialist subject: the use of social technology in public services.

The story behind this was that I was approached by Gower Publishing a couple of months ago to see if I would be interested in a writing project. Having met up with them and talked about what would be in the book, it seemed like a wonderful opportunity.

So, by August, I need to get 60,000 words written up and in some semblance of order. To help me in this task, I’ll be using the excellent Scrivener app on the Mac. I’ll also be sharing bits of the book as I draft them here on the blog, to get some feedback and make sure I’m not going off in totally the wrong direction. Everyone who comments will be acknowledged, I promise!

Here’s a brief outline of what the book will include (aside from the usual boring introductions and things):

  1. The social media revolution – the changes taking place in the ways people communicate, socialise, work and play.
  2. Digital engagement – explaining the specific context for public services – why this stuff matters to them
  3. The toolkit – high level discussion of the activities and behaviours online, and some the tools used to express them
  4. Designing and implementing your strategy – what the things are you need to consider and include, and some templates and examples
  5. Governance and risk – pretending there’s no risk using new technology is as bad as deciding it’s too risky to bother with! Governance systems, risk logs, policies and training all will be covered here
  6. Building engagement – how to get people to actually look at and interact with your stuff
  7. Measuring success – what to measure, how to do it and what success might look like

I’m also going to be wanting as many real life stories and examples as possible for inclusion, so if you would like to see your name and work in print please do get in touch!

If you’d like to be kept informed about progress and when the book is likely to be published, please do ping me an email – dave@learningpool.com – and I will put you on a list!

Right, I’d better start typing…

How I write

I thought it might be useful to offer a sneaky-peak into my processes for writing this blog. After all, given that I am trying to encourage others to do the same, it’s probably only fair that I let people know how I do it.

Obviously, it’s worth pointing out here that this works for me, and it might not for you. Also, there are probably better ways of going about it. But since I started blogging back in 2004, I’ve got into the habit of working this way, and it seems to produce a fairly steady flow of content for me.

Standing on the shoulders…

For inspiration, I spend a bit of time in Google Reader, checking out what other people are saying, Likewise with Twitter, and Delicious. I’m not necessarily hunting for things to write about, but generally imbibing information and ideas and squaring them with whatever I’m thinking about at the time. Be catholic with your reading habits – don’t just limit yourself to reading blogs in and around your own sector, but find out what people are saying elsewhere. Consider how what they write about can be applied to your interests.

Type first, think later

I spend quite a bit of time writing posts that will never see the light of day. There’s no editing at the ideas stage. Sometimes I only have a sentence, or a whiff of a concept for a post, but I make sure it’s recorded somewhere. My preference is for these to be draft posts within WordPress, but sometimes that isn’t possible, so I’ll use another tool like Evernote, or even just a text editor. I’ll usually aim to get those posts into WordPress ASAP though.

The point is that I very, very rarely sit down and write a post from beginning to end, without having a good think about it first.

So, I usually have up to ten draft posts in WordPress at any one time. I spend quite a bit of time just staring at them, then I read other things, see related content online and how I can work that into the post. Sometimes this changes what the post is about, and the original theme is lost entirely, or reduced to a footnote. What often happens is that I’ll combine two or three of the posts I have in draft to try and produce something a bit more meaty.

Go ugly early

I’ll often hit publish on posts when I’m not entirely happy with them, when the thinking is half-baked or I have a sneaking suspicion I’ve got something totally wrong. I usually get corrected in the comments, or people add stuff to help me make what I’m saying make sense. I must admit, though, that it takes a bit more nerve that usual to do this as it risks exposing me as the fraud I really am.

Your tips

So that’s a quick run through of my writing process. What tips do you have for any budding bloggers?

Load more posts!