Writing In Public

Writing in public, at a café or park is productive activity. Not only do you produce more content for your website, you also get to meet the people in your neighborhood. Work on developing your high performance creativity system. Produce a lot of content for your websites. Get in the habit of writing. A lot!

Get yourself an easy to carry 13 or 14 inch laptop that you can create content with, while you are traveling around town, or country for that matter. You will have to figure out your most productive routine.

Writing takes discipline. You must write. If you’re like me, most of the people around you will try to discourage you. You should get a job. And that may be true. You may need to get a job. You know what your situation is. Be realistic. Take your laptop with you, while you are looking for a job and write some stories while you are out and about.

Go out and work in public, a lot. Sell your network marketing opportunity every chance you get. Turn your laptop into a writing tool. Cultivate productive habits.

Write a blog post at least once every week. Let your blog evolve organically. Its your journal, your news platform. Produce at least one blog post and one regular story every week. This is the work of your business.

Writing

Reading these stories will help you get through some of the trial and error stage of developing your, “writing in public,” strategy. Getting used to working with your tools is a major distraction. One of the most important facets of your success is going to be persistence. Keep plugging on.

Write a nice long story. Say whatever is on your mind. Then go back and rewrite it. And while you are rewriting it, add headings. Move some paragraphs around. WordPress’ Gutenberg Editor makes moving paragraphs very simple and easy. Get all the paragraphs about a particular topic under a heading for that subject.

Even if the story you’re working on is not coming out very well, keep writing. Write at least one page, even if it is gibberish. Stream of consciousness, non-fiction writing is a valuable skill. Take lot’s of pictures and videos and organize them so you can use them for your websites.

Managing your files

Getting and keeping your content well organized in your computer’s file system is an ongoing struggle. With at least two computers and at least two websites, you’re going to need to have some kind of well organized and synchronized file system.

Microsoft OneDrive is one option that works fairly well. I’ve been using it for years. I can upload and download my files from any of my computers or my smart phone. In fact, I can log in to OneDrive and access my files from any computer.

I’ve been keeping all my pictures in my computer’s file system. I only load pictures into Gimp when I want to edit it. I use Gwenview for simple cropping tasks, to get photos to fit into my website the way I want them to fit.

Commingled Code

My 15″ laptop has a really cool Linux setup on it. It still works, but it has a broken hinge and it is really too big for carrying around town and writing in public.

At this point, I usually work in my apartment and that is okay for now. I’m having fun, developing a mobile, very high performance, free and open source content creation and management system.

I sprinkle photos around in the stories. Some of them are my own photos, others are photos I get from Pexels or iStock. I want the photos to match the content of the stories. Most of my personal photos are eye candy to make the website more interesting.

I have many free and open source tools installed in this desktop and I use them often. Inkscape is one of my favorites. I’ll be using both proprietary and free and open source tools and writing about what I’m learning.

I’ve been using Linux almost exclusively lately. The Windows machine is here and available, but I finally settled into using the free and open source tools most of the time. It’s more comfortable. The only advantage the Windows desktop has is the large monitor and the connection to all the proprietary cloud services available for Windows.

I’ve been using Linux, almost exclusively for about 18 years now. Every once in a while, usually when I get a new computer, I try out Windows. Using Windows always reminds me of why I use Linux. It’s really obvious that Microsoft is in control of Microsoft Windows.

You should use whatever combination of free and open source and proprietary software that you like. Concentrate on building a profitable website. Plug several streams of income into your website. Selling your books and affiliate marketing are a couple of options. I’m sure there are many others.

Image Manipulation

Start studying photography and get good at taking lots of pictures, and editing and posting them, and writing in public about them. Get in the habit of taking pictures all the time. Pay attention to what is going on around you. Be a quick draw photo taker, with your smart phone.

Get used to taking screen shots and recording things you are working on. Get used to writing in public and using your content creation and editing tools to produce lots of educational and entertaining content for your website.

You’re going to be reading a lot, to learn how to use the tools. When you’re not reading, use the tools you’re reading about, to do the actual work of your business. Use the camera on your phone to take a bunch of pictures. Get them organized in digiKam and then, write some stories about the pictures. Start using your tools.

Get yourself a decent set of ear plugs. Connect them to your smartphone with bluetooth and listen to audio books about home office technology while you are moving around. Learn how to improve yourself. Make yourself a very high performance sales executive.

You’re going to have to manage your time. Keep reading a lot. Read the Manual! Start producing a lot of content, including writing and pictures and video. Use your tools to organize the content well. The best way to learn how to use Bluehost and WordPress is to actually build a website using the tools.

Write stories about the pictures you take. Learn how to use digiKam to manage your pictures. Reading the help directory for digiKam will be a good story to read. It may not be the most exciting story, but it is worth the effort to learn how to use that valuable tool.

Experiment. Watch some video tutorials. Learn how to use your tools.

Your Website

Start mass producing content for your websites. Repetition and mass customization is the best strategy for learning how to be productive.

Everything else supports your work of producing a lot of high quality content. Regular stories can be either an independent story or a book page. Blog posts and other stories will involve pictures, video and writing. Get in the habit of writing around your pictures.

Build one or two websites this year. Making it into a conversation with your audience is one option. You’re only going to have a finite amount of time. You may or may not have a lot of time for interacting with your audience.

I do have a regular job right now, so I’m working on this website part time. It is a lot of work. You will have to decide whether you want to concentrate on building one high performance website or a small cluster of websites, each one specializing in a different topic.

Of course, you’re always interacting with your audience, but the interaction can be like a chat, with immediate feedback and response, or not. You’ll have to decide how much and what kind of interaction you want to have with your audience.

Sources:

Credit: Bob Mccoy
Credit: Bob Mccoy
Credit: izusek iStock