Why I have two office work areas

Every writer has a place to call their own, where they get away to focus on writing without distraction.  Many of us have two or three work places.  And with continued improvements in technology, it is possible to create some pretty special places.

I have a primary work area.  It is a bedroom converted to an office shared by my wife and myself.  It is typical of many writers and other professionals.  I have a desk and office chair, with several book cases nearby.  My desk holds a Windows laptop, 23" monitor and speaker system.  The phone, scanner and printer and NAS are located nearby, but I am connected to them via wifi.  The rest of my desk can be used to write notes, set up my Mac when I need to do something with it, or be a spot to accumulate receipts, brochures and other things until I put them away.  My primary book and blog writing occurs here.

Primary work area

I also have a secondary, portable work area.  It is a comfortable IKEA chair and footstool, with a lap desk, and side table.  I work on my iPad with keyboard and my Mac, and also use it for reading physical books.  These items are easy to move inside and outside as the weather permits.  I attached a small box to my lap desk to hold things such as a pen, yellow marker, Post-it stickies, earphones, small notepad, iPad stylus and glass cleaner.

Portable chair and lap desk on balcony

This is a very relaxed position.  I am more prone, leaning backwards, but perfectly situated for comfortably using the iPad, Mac and reading.  By moving between the two locations, I can work for extended periods of time without cramping.   Changing positions helps to relieve pressure on one set of muscles and joints.  By switching between the two locations, I recover and rest one set of muscles while continuing to use the other.

Yesterday I put in 14 - 15 hours at my main desk, sitting straight up and continuously typing.  The only time away from my desk was to go shopping, carrying heavy things and then putting them away.  Today, I have spent 8 hours at my desk editing.  I took a break to make breakfast, and then another one do some heavy lifting errands and prepare dinner.  I spent a lot of time in the kitchen slicing and dicing food in a similar position to sitting at my desk, putting additional stress on my back.

I now want to work again and write a couple blogs, but was not physically willing to sit at my desk.  This is where my secondary work area comes in.  From my portable chair and lap desk, I usually read, mind map, do social media, research, and read physical books.  I use my primary work area for writing, using Adobe applications, taking training (with exercise files which reside and are used by apps on my laptop), social media and coding.  Initially my primary work area was for writing and data input, while my secondary work area was for reading and research.  But I am currently physically challenged to use my primary work area, yet want to blog.  So I have decided to write my first blog from my iPad and you are reading it now!

With the iPad keyboard, I can type significantly more quickly than when using its touch keyboard. Also via wifi and using cloud-based applications, I am less dependent on my laptop (and main desk) for access to critical apps and data..  I am doing far more writing, editing, note-taking and other things on my iPad and portable lap desk.  I also do substantially more social media from my lap desk. After a few hours at my portable work area, I can go back to my desk and work with the Adobe apps again.

Over the last few months, I have been optimizing my writing workflows, and have significantly increased my productivity.  I have also moved more and more to cloud-based systems which can be suitably utilized across many different platforms.

I started this on my iPad, but have now had to move back to my laptop to finish it off.  I encountered an error with positioning the cursor at the bottom of my blog.  Every time I try that on my iPad, I am positioned at the beginning of my blog post.  Using Blogger on my iPad will not let me get to the bottom of a longer post.  This is unfortunate as I was hoping to have a real success here.  I use Evernote, Dropbox, Acrobat, Safari and Firefox across platforms relatively seamlessly, but there are still some differences and problems.  However, they are reducing as all browsers, operating systems and most apps evolve.  This is the first time I have used Blogger on the iPad for writing a post, so not sure if it is an issue with Blogger, IOS or Safari.  (I am still on IOS 6 and the iPad 2.)

I am certain that I will be able to do more and more across any platform.  But for now, I have favorite things to do based on if I am at my desk using my laptop or at my portable lap desk using my iPad.  My desk is really now defined as what is inside my laptop and iPad, not by what is on my physical desk.

My next few blogs will continue to expand on how I work, what technology I use and how my productivity continues to soar.  Just being able to have a secondary work place I can retreat to allows my to keep working while relaxing one set of muscles and joints!  And the 30 minutes I spent there has recharged me for working at my primary work area again.

Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Facebook page
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My wine blog SAZ in the Cellar
Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)
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Scrivener and Evernote - a perfect pair

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post on how Scrivener has more than tripled my writing productivity.  I continue to optimize my writing workflow daily as I become more comfortable with Scrivener.  While most of my writing productivity gains are from Scrivener, they also come from the integration of several other tools, such as iThoughtsHD for mind mapping a new book outline (and key points / notes) on my iPad.  I then export the mind map in OPML format to Dropbox to sync with my laptop for importation as OPML into Scrivener.  It works beautifully!

I also use Scrivener Compile to ePub, then use an ePub editor Sigil to make final HTML formatting changes for a very few things the way I like it beyond what I been able to figure out in Scrivener.

But outside of Scrivener itself, it is Evernote used in conjunction with Scrivener that provides the biggest productivity improvement.  For my current non-fiction book, Wine Sense, I researched over twenty different books on wine, including both physically printed books, and books in Kindle mobi format.  I also used some PDF files in my research.  Previously, I was tagging my physical books with Post-it stickers and highlighting my Kindle books and then reviewing my notes on the Amazon Cloud.  My notes (and my thoughts) were all over the place.  Plus I would have to put in significant effort to source and provide accurate citation for quotes and direct references to others work.  This on its own was going to be a tremendous effort.  I frankly was getting to the point of wondering if it would be possible to finish the book .  And I still had about eight of my most complex books to research!

Taking notes in Evernote on iPad

So I starting using Evernote and created a Note called 'Wine book to-dos' to capture everything I was doing outside of just writing in Scrivener.  It also let me 'tag' and source immediately upon reading any note I thought I may reference later.  Once synced with my laptop, I enter Evernote on the laptop and cut and paste all my notes into a work Binder in Scrivener.

Notes on iPad Evernote now sync'ed to laptop Evernote

These notes can have anything to do with my research or just be random thoughts (such as "Should I use the word 'mouthfeel' or two words 'mouth feel' in the book?") which may be added to my general editing to-do Binder.  Therefore, whenever copying in my notes, I always first copy the notes into a Scrivener Binder entitled 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos.'

Notes from Evernote copied into 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder in Scrivener

Once I copied the notes from Evernote into my Scrivener 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder, I then delete the notes from Evernote on laptop (which then syncs and deletes them from my 'Wine book to-do' note on the iPad also.  Then I start the process again as needed.

One of the great things about Scrivener is the ability to establish non-manuscript Binders and I have a Folder of 'To-Dos' including To-Do Binders for a wide variety of things required to turn my writing into a finished work.  Instead of accumulating (or worse, forgetting) these tasks, they are now integrated into my workflow in an organized manner.  Therefore, I am managing my work and doing it in the most efficient manner possible.  And one of these Binders is the one I created for Evernote as described above.

Then from my 'Evernote In-Box To-Dos' Binder, I copy out specific notes as required into the Chapters (represented as separate Binders in Scrivener), to be dealt with when I was either initially structuring, writing, or substantiating (by validating or reinforcing the content of my writing with specific points).  In this case, the note encircled in red is copied into Chapter 7: Wine and Smell (as are most of the notes in this collection of Evernote notes are).  I parse out the notes based on their intended use.  Since I was reading about wine and smell, in this case most of the notes are being copied into my Notes associated with Chapter 7: Wine and Smell.

Original Notes on Wine and Smell now in Notes for Chapter 7 to be dealt with when rewriting later

Therefore, from the very first time I research a topic, I am able to trace the concept into where it should reside in the book with proper sourcing and citation (to be able to easily build the Bibliography and Footnotes).  Using this process, I was comfortable that I had researched and had the content I required to address the topic of my book and that I would be properly sourcing my material. This was done in one integrated workflow, instead of previously having multiple, non-linked workflows that I was always trying to keep consistent.

I had to cut and paste between Evernote and Scrivener, but this was very easy to do.  My next step in optimizing this work flow will be to write a script using specific Evernote Note name ('Wine book to-dos' in this case) and Scrivener Binder name ('Evernote In-Box To-Dos' in this case) to export the Evernote note as a .rtf file and then open my Scrivener Project and import the .rtf file into the Binder defined.  But this process is so easy to do manually, that I do not have a great deal of incentive to write the script!

I know a number of authors who love using Evernote and Scrivener together.  You may have thought about using Evernote with Scrivener, but uncertain about how it would work.  If that is the case, then hopefully this post has helped show you one method of using the two apps together for improving your writing work flow.  The only think I love more than Scrivener is using Scrivener with Evernote!

Steve Shipley
SAZ in the Cellar Facebook page
Twitter: @shipleyaust
My wine blog SAZ in the Cellar
Steve Shipley Pinterest Boards