fbpx
Browsing Tag

organizational tool

Tool Time Tuesday: Calibre e-Book Management Software

Tool Time Tuesday February 13, 2018

Once per month, on Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: Calibre e-Book Management

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux (+portable version)

Cost: Free!

What calibre does:

Calibre is open source software to manage your e-book collection, in ALL the ways.

As a reader, calibre is a perfect tool for keeping track of all your e-books. It’s not just a bookshelf, though. You can organize your collection in whatever way is most intuitive for you. You can create tags for all your books, download metadata (or create your own metadata), and sort and search by just about anything.

One of my favorite features (and what I originally downloaded it for years ago) is calibre’s ability to convert files from one type to another. Have an e-book in .pdf and want to read it properly on your Kindle? Convert from .pdf -> .mobi. Have a book in Kindle format and want to read it on your non-Kindle device? Convert to ePub. This is also a nifty feature for authors, if you want to see how your manuscript will look as an e-book (and when you’re ready to publish it too!).

Read on your phone? I use calibre Companion on my Android and it’s also available on iTunes for $3.99 in both places. Worth the money 🙂

Where to get calibre: Website

Have you used calibre? What do you think? Leave me a comment!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

Keep writing!

 

 

 

All calibre images are courtesy ofcalibre ebook management.

Tool Time Tuesday: 2018 Revision & Writing Tracker

Tool Time Tuesday January 16, 2018

Once a month, we talk about different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: 2018 Writing & Revision Tracker

Platform: Any spreadsheet program

Cost: $10

What it does:

It’s a writing tracker! 🙂 If you’re a reader of this blog, and especially of TTT, you might recognize that I did a post very similar to this one about a year ago. There’s a new version of the writing tracker spreadsheet, so I felt that warranted a new Tool Time Tuesday!

As you might know from the post last year, I am a huge fan of this writing tracker. Not only does it allow you to track words of your first draft, but you can also track revision pages. And since revision is the biggest part of writing, being able to keep see how much you’ve done is critical to realizing your productivity. I’m not going to break down all the individual features, since I’ve done that already. But I will share a bit of how I use it.

Click to enlarge

New Stuff

Jamie has added the ability to track ten different projects within the spreadsheet over the course of the year, each with a column for writing and for revision.

I currently have seven of the projects labeled. I am tracking my blog posts, my pre-writing (for any and all stories), a pair of short stories (which I’m counting as one project, since they’re related), and four novels (one of which I’m only going to track revision pages of). I made my pre-writing a separate project, because I want to track how many words I create when I’m prepping to write my stories. I don’t necessarily need to track the pre-writing by story.

And that’s what makes this writing tracker so great. You can use it in whatever way works best for you.

Jamie even created a video to show how the tracker works. Check it out:

Motivation is created by action. When you look at what you’ve accomplished, it can help light a fire under your butt to get going. I’m writing this post on Jan 8, and (not counting this one), I’ve already written over 7000 words of blog posts and pre-writing. I haven’t even starting actually writing on the short stories yet (which are my first active project this year). I already feel incredibly accomplished and it makes me want to keep going.

The Writing & Revision Tracker is a big part of my writing process. You should check it out!

Where to get it: Jamie Raintree’s website

Have you tried the 2018 Writing & Revision tracker? Did you use the old writing tracker? Let me know what you think!

Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Keep writing!

 

 

 

Unless attributed otherwise, all images are courtesy of Jamie Raintree.

Tool Time Tuesday: Aeon Timeline 2

Tool Time Tuesday March 21, 2017

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: Aeon Timeline 2

Platform: Mac & Windows

Cost: $50 and comes with a 20 day free trial

What it does:

Lets you map the timeline of your story, along with all your characters and where they fit within that timeline. You can also manage the relationships among characters, all with a great visual display.

This is a really cool tool, especially if you’re writing a larger, complex story. You can create characters, include pivotal moments on their personal timelines, and track their appearances in your story.

Looks! Pictures! 🙂

Like to see what your characters look like? You can also include pics (and links) in your entries.

You can do the same with settings — create an entry for them and then associate scenes with that setting. You’ll never lose track of where an event happened in your story ever again!

Create characters, settings, and events.

As implied above, you also create events or scenes along your timeline, and you can see your entire story as it looks in time. Another cool feature of Aeon Timeline is the ability to nest events, so you can see exactly what contributes to each scene. This also is a great help in making sure you’ve closed all your subplots and don’t have plot holes.

When you create events or characters, you can give them a “birth date” and so you can track the age of the character or events through the entire story. And you’re not limited to our own time or our way of tracking time. If you’re working with a spec fic story, you can create your own calendar with your own dating system, as needed.

Aeon Timeline 2 & Scrivener! Two great tastes that taste great together 🙂

One of the coolest aspects of Aeon Timeline 2 (and what eventually led me to get it) is that it integrates with Scrivener, so you can have your entire timeline right there, as you write.

That was a huge factor in its overall use. I don’t really like having to open multiple files to handle a project. I like everything to be in a single place. And this integration allows that to happen for my timeline. Great, great perk of this software! 🙂

Where to get it: The Aeon Timeline website – A note: One cool aspect is that when you purchase the program through the website, it covers both Windows and Mac licenses, so you get copies of both. So while Aeon Timeline 2 is available in the Apple AppStore, if you download it from there, rather than the program’s website, you won’t be able to get a complimentary copy in Windows format. So just keep that in mind as you’re buying 🙂

What do you think about Aeon Timeline 2? Do you have a writing tool that you absolutely can’t live without? Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Stay awesome!

 

 

 

Photos courtesy of Aeon Timeline.

Tool Time Tuesday! OneTab

Tool Time Tuesday March 7, 2017

Every other Tuesday, we talk about the different writing and organizational tools available for writers to make life easier (theoretically 😉 ).

Today’s Tool: OneTab

Platform: This is a browser extension and is available for Chrome and Firefox. (Sorry, IE users!)

Cost: Free!

This one isn’t strictly writing related, but it’s a great organizational tool for your research or for when you have all those tabs open and are feeling really overwhelmed.

What it does:

OneTab gives you the ability to take all your open tabs and shrink them into a single, easily used webpage with links to each of your previous tabs. Here’s how it works:

To send all your open tabs to OneTab, simply click the funnel icon that shows up in your browser’s toolbar. This creates a Onetab with all of those sites in one grouping.

Photo courtesy of OneTab

To send a single tab to OneTab, right-click on the site and choose OneTab -> Send only this tab to OneTab. You also have the option to send all tabs except that one to OneTab, or all tabs to the right or left of that tab to OneTab.

Once your tabs are in OneTab, you can drag and drop to reorder them, including moving them to other groupings. The only way to create separate groupings, though, is to send more than one tab to OneTab. But once you’ve created the new grouping, moving the links is simple.

I really find this grouping feature to be the most useful, and I think it’s especially helpful for writers as an organizational tool. You can group all of your research tabs by subject; you can group together conferences and conventions; you can have an ongoing list of blogs you like to read. This makes OneTab pretty powerful for keeping all that information organized and easily accessible.

 

OneTab is defaulted to deleting the link once you click on it to open a tab, but you can disable this in the Options. What doing that means is you can have a grouping of commonly used links and keep it, without having to re-send it to OneTab every time you use it. If you choose to leave the default of deleting the link once it’s opened, you can always override that on an individual basis by right-clicking and opening the link in a new tab. This will keep a single link in OneTab without deleting it.

Want to share your OneTab? That’s super-easy. You can click on “Share all as web page” in the upper right hand corner. It will create a web page with all of your OneTab groupings/links on it. You can share by copy/pasting the URL or, if you want to share via your phone or tablet, you can scan a QR code to get the URL. Handy way to share your new organizational tool, huh?

Where to get it: You can get it for the Chrome browser or the Firefox browser.

Do you have a writing or organizational tool that you absolutely can’t live without?

Drop a line to me down below and tell me about it!

 

Stay awesome!