I have been watching a thoughtful dialog at Zoe Westhof’s blog Essential Prose.  Part of an experiment that Chuck Westbrook has set up, a group of us read Zoe’s blog and comment daily.  We will do this for two weeks.  It helps a fairly unknown blogger get some exposure and treats those that participate to a view inside Zoe’s mind.  Interesting stuff.

Zoe has been doing a series of articles on “idea dumps”, mind mapping, and outlining.  There has been spirited conversation between Zoe and me because of my views of her subject matter.  It is interesting to watch the other bloggers as they comment.  I often think you can learn more from commenters than you can from the actual content itself.   Reading these conversations for the past week, I have made some conclusions about what it is like working on the web.

As a freelance writer, I have to use tools that are both easy to use and quickly available.  Since I have become so interested in social networking, I find that a lot of time is spent meeting these needs.  Twitter can be both addicting and time wasting. Participating in Chuck’s experiment takes more. There has to be a fine balance between work and socializing, and I find that at times I spend way more time on Twitter than I should.  I’m a one man show, and there are only so many hours in a day. What to do?

The answer here is to work smarter, not harder.  I think Twitter is a good resource.  I use it to find relevant links and information that is important to my operating arena.  I make new contacts and find new resources.  This also takes time away from other activities.  Now I must use a variety of things that help me to be both more innovative and more efficient.

I recently downloaded Blog Talk Monitor.  It is very new, and an offering from Jason DeVelvis, although Jack Humphrey is involved in this somewhere.  I am very excited about it due to its ability to search for my keyword phrase, and to do so with a scheduled basis that I set.  It pops up a nifty little window on my desktop as I am writing, and I can instantly see if anything pertinent is coming my way.  I love it.  It works for me and saves me a ton of time. I can set it to track a keyword phrase in time increments, which is very helpful when following hot trends.

Other things I use to make things easier are Zotero, which I blogged about recently.  It is a great research application for organizing web pages and information.  It is a bit complicated and I haven’t taken the time to really appreciate all its great qualities.  I use Google Notebook to keep track of research when developing an article.  Nothing is more frustrating or time consuming than searching through web browser history to find a page that held relevant information.

My best friend, though, is my Hipster PDA.  I’m an old school writer, and still need to have a pad and pen in hand to feel really good about writing.  It is nothing more than a series of 3″ X 5″ index cards held together with a binder clip.  It travels with me everywhere, even room to room.

So Zoe has a great plan for fleshing out an idea.  For me, the time spent building a mind map, sprucing it up and organizing it means time I can be writing.  I think it a great idea on large projects.  Know what?  To me, life is one big project…

Peace,

Charlie~

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