Writing 1.0

Being a successful writer depends on self-discipline. Whatever else you do, you have to actually write, a lot. Most of what you write will never be published. You’ll have a lot of segments of text cluttering up your file system.

Kate

Keep on writing. Work on improving your file system. Make it easy to navigate your files and access your content. It is super easy to write using Kate. Just start Kate up and start typing. You can do the same thing with Notepad on Microsoft Windows or whatever text editor Macintosh is using.

Write a story of a certain length. I usually write enough to fill up the Kate window, set to a comfortable reading width on my desktop computer. I don’t like reading or writing long lines of text. Get some pictures ready. Use Gimp to scale your photos down, so they will fit in your images library and your website, without using up a ton of memory.

WordPress

Copy and paste your story into WordPress’ Gutenberg editor. Add some pictures or maybe a video and edit and polish the story and post it to your blog. I’ve been using the thousands of pictures I’ve taken of my neighborhood here in Northwest America. Sometimes I get pictures from Pexel or iStock. I’ve even used pictures produced by OpenAI’s DALL-E.

WordPress is a good way to get started publishing your stories online. It is relatively easy to learn and there are millions of people using it, so there is a large community that you can reach out to and tap into. I use Bluehost for hosting my website and Kadence WordPress theme. I like them all.

Scribus

If you are interested in writing books and magazine articles, then take a look at Scribus. It is a graphical tool that enables you to typeset and format your book to prepare it for printing in your own home office.

It’s desktop publishing. You produce the book in your home office, properly format it, and export it as a PDF and then, submit it to a publishing company like Lulu.com or IngrahamSpark and get it published as a book, in hardcover, softcover and/or ebook format.

There is a learning curve for using Scribus. Learning how to use it well is valuable work. Write your series of books and use Scribus and whichever publishing company you select, over and over again.

Kile

If you intend to write any mathematical formulas, check out LaTeX and KDE’s Kile text editor. LaTeX is a programming language that enables you to write mathematical formulas and graphs and stuff like that. LaTeX has an even steeper learning curve than Scribus. Kile is a specialized version of Kate. Like Kate, it is a graphical tool that enables you to easily produce documents using LaTeX.

Kile is relatively easy to use. LaTeX is going to take some work. Its a programming language. Take some time to learn Markdown and LaTeX. They are similar. Markdown is a lot simpler than LaTeX, LaTeX is a lot more versatile than Markdown. Get in the habit of using both of them in your workflow. Take your notes in Markdown and write your books in LaTeX.

The sooner you start learning how to use these tools, the better. A big part of my agenda with these stories is to help you understand what questions to ask. I’ll be writing stories about how to use the tools, as I learn how to do it. I’ve published one book on Lulu.com using Scribus.

Right now, I’m studying how to use Kile because, I’m also studying how to understand mathematics. Mathematics is like a prerequisite for thoroughly understanding computer science and neuroscience, which is the main theme of homeoffice.studio.

You

Your human consciousness is the most important feature of your holistic home office. Understanding the interface between your brain and your mind, and your body and the machines you use, is valuable information. That’s what I’m reading and writing about.

And I like helping people. I suppose that my first priority is to teach anyone seeking to improve themselves to love learning. Then, I am making suggestions that you can use to make yourself a high-performance content creator. I hope you will learn faster than me and soon be a lot smarter and faster at this than I am. I’ve done a lot of research and followed a lot of trails. It’s up to you to find your own way.

If you are interested in desktop publishing or website development or both, then I recommend learning how to use Scribus, LaTeX and Kile. When you install Kile, you get a stripped down version of LaTeX. Then, just start writing. Get a book about LaTeX and read it. Read the documentation for Kile. Start writing. Be a prolific story teller about whatever you are interested in.

It’s taken me between two and three hours to produce this story. Of course, I’ve produced a lot of stories, so I am familiar with the system.

The Internet presents you with the opportunity to tell your stories to a global audience. Learn how to use these tools to make a professional presentation of your ideas. And have fun doing it.

Photo: Bob Mccoy