Month: November 2010

Ever noting in Evernote

All right, NaNoWriMo is done– for me, at least! After a slow start– a very slow start– I somehow managed to completed my 50,000 words two days early, just before midnight last night.  I’d had a run of astonishing productivity, around 5,000 words a day for several days in a row, and I credit having a schedule with limits for this.  I was spending a few days in a row at my girlfriend’s family’s house in Maine for Thanksgiving, and I knew I could disappear for only so long at a time, so I’d designate three different times per day to really jam in as many words I could in a strictly limited period of time, an hour or an hour and a half, say.

Now that that particular simian has leapt from my shoulders– now that I have once again a clear mind (though NaNo can really induce a clarity of purpose), after NaNo and before that the book tour and before that the runup to the book tour, I can devote myself to organization.  Productivity.  Charging ahead.  All of those proud concepts.  But what a scatterbrain I am– how can I keep on top on all of these things I’d like to file and accomplish?

The answer for me will be my renewed devotion to Evernote.  It’s time for to-do lists again, o happy season, and it’s time for bulging virtual notebooks on various ideas and areas of interest.  I have the full-fledged program on my computer, and a bastard corollary on my Palm Pre (held-back child in the smartphone family; I expect the Evernote functionality on my next phone will be much more sophisticated– but I really should hold off on chasing the next sexy thing for a while… right?  You’ll wait for me, Epic, won’t you).

Let me know if you have any good ideas for using Evernote efficiently.  There seems to be a pretty good body of advice out there in the rolling azure fields of the internet, but hearing thoughts directly from an actual human being is nice as well.  I get pulled in a lot of directions by shiny new bits of informations, so I’m trying to designate separate notebooks by category of info.  At the same time, I’d like to use it on a daily basis for mundane tasks like keeping on top of bills and other necessaries of responsible citizenry.  Might be too ambitious or foolhardy to rely on a single program as a Tool of Everything, much as physicists struggle for a theory of everything, but both seem worthy causes to me.

Tour Success

I’ve discussed it over at the Great Typo Hunt site, but I just wanted to mention what a pleasure it was to meet so many people interested in improving communication during the course of our book tour. Everyone kept mentioning how they thought they’d been alone in their concern for good spelling and grammar, and I kept having to say, Look around you! Here are your kin. I’m grateful to everyone who helped Benjamin and me along the way, by hosting us, coming out to the readings, sending us nice messages, calling into our radio interviews, and spreading the word about the book.

Soon enough we’ll have another project for everyone to participate in, called 50 Typos in 50 States.  You’ve been sending us pictures of typos you’ve found and corrected yourselves, and we’d like to showcase your efforts, because typo-hunting really is a team project.

But enough about that– this is my personal blog, so you’re presumably here to hear more about me, yes?  Fools!  I mean, welcome!  I’d like to share some of the things that I’ve been reading and absorbing lately.   Some is for research for future projects, some just edifying in general, none of which I necessarily endorse personally.  I’m trying to use everything interesting that I come across, sooner or later.  The first is this site about nonviolence.  I came across it while trying to answer the hypothetical question, what do you do to try to change society, outside of the democratic process (voting, etc.), without resorting to violence?

The site identifies nine types of nonviolence:  non-resistance, active reconciliation, moral resistance, selective nonviolence, passive resistance, peaceful resistance, nonviolent direct action, Gandhian nonviolence, and nonviolent revolution.  The differences among some of these are not immediately clear to me.  Will have to examine them more carefully.