Active Voice

Shortly after I introduced the latest round of Active Voice productivity templates for the Hipster PDA (hPDA — available as free downloads here),  I started to think about what the next round of templates would look like.

I wanted them to be different — not just in terms of content, but also in terms of the way they actually worked.

I took a look at how hPDA cards are designed, and how people use them. Most cards are designed to be used either as stand-alone units or together in sequence. But in life, few good ideas unfold in a steady linear direction over time — they tend to go off in many different directions at once.

So, I asked, what would cards look like that were designed to be used, not in straight lines, but in nonlinear networks? What if they could capture the multidimensional, interrelated nature of our ideas as they happen? CardNets are my answer. Maybe they can be yours, too.

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I was looking through some old files this morning when I stumbled on this bit of doggerel that I wrote a few years ago.

I had overheard my wife helping her mom with a Web browser problem, and the cadence of my wife’s voice as she spelled out a URL made the light bulb go off. And about twenty minutes later, I had it all written down.

As Sirius Cybernetics Corporation would say: “share and enjoy . . . ”

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New hPDA calendar templates for the second half of 2008 are now available on the Active Voice Downloads page. Just click on “Hipster PDA Templates” –> “See the Templates.” 

There, you’ll find calendars for the standard template design under “Organization & Lists” and for the hPhone custom set under “Just for Fun.”

Active Voice offers wallpapers and hPDA templates as free .png and scalable-vector .pdf graphics that you can download to your desktop and use in your favorite planner. They are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. 

I read an interesting post on Write to Done this morning offering tips on how to break through writer’s block. The first tip: remind yourself that you’re a writer.

While I generally find the advice on WTD to be both useful and on target, I have to disagree with that particular tip (the rest were pretty handy). Regular readers know that I don’t call myself a wordsmith; but it might surprise you to know that I prefer not to call myself a writer either.

No, I don’t eschew the term in favor of buzzwords like “communicator” or “content provider,” either. When people ask me what I do for a living, I don’t tell them that I’m a writer.

I tell them that I write.

A pedantic distinction? Maybe — but it’s a distinction that can clear up the crippling paralysis of writer’s block once and for all.

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Freelancers who manage multiple projects understand the importance — and the difficulty — of effective time management. But simply dividing your day into discrete blocks isn’t enough.

Writing, editing, and designing all require different mindsets; jumping straight from one type of project to another — say, from carefully proofreading every word in a technical report to staring at the wall for an hour while an article composes itself in your head — wastes more time than it saves, as you try to adjust your frame of reference from one to the other.

Through trial and error, I’ve developed two-step a time management technique that seems to work well. Try it and see if it works for you.

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From “Is Mike Myers’ new film asking for trouble?,” CNN.com, via AP:

“In the context of Sacha Baron Cohen’s uncomfortable in-character interactions with unwitting Americans, Mike Myers’ parody of another cultural minority in the U.S. — as the oversexed, overly ambitious, American-born spiritual leader in the summer comedy “The Love Guru” — would hardly seem cause for complaint.”

Until the Oversexed and Overly-Ambitious American-Born Spiritual Leaders Anti-Defamation League got wind of it and called a press conference.

While I wait for a call-back from an interviewee for an article I’m writing, I thought I’d share my technique for tracking telephone interviews.

Over the years I’ve developed a breadcrumb system that allows me to assess the status of the interview scheduling process at a glance. My note-taking technique is pretty standard, but my scheduling trail is a thing of beauty.

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From “Nokia gives mobile application developers their big break,” by Tom Krazit, in the One More Thing blog on CNET, March 21, 2008:

Without further adieu, the winners:

The award goes to yeu, and yeu, and yeu-uuu . . .

Life hackers love to empty their pockets, bags, and packs and show off their gear. Freelance writers have their own version of every day carry: the essential reference works that, collectively, are the writerly equivalent of a Swiss Army Knife or a Leatherman tool.

Even in this era of instant electronic reference, I still rely on these books — not just because I know them so well, but also because they remain consistently and authoritatively accurate.

And quite a few of them are fun to read, too.

Here’s a list of my “every day reference.” Some of these may surprise you.

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From “Counterknowledge: when fiction masquerades as fact,” sp!ked Review of Books, February 15, 2008:

“Your fellow guests tuck hungrily into a menu of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, junk history and (above all) quack medicine.”

Hopefully, the menu they’re eating has pictures, at least.