by Scott Nesbitt

Creating a list of blogging topics, redux  Clip to Evernote

A while back in this space, I wrote a post about the joys (and sometimes necessity) of creating a list of blogging topics. My experiment with doing that was fairly successful. There were a few hiccups here and there, but nothing major. And they didn’t have anything to do with blogging or the topics I came up with, but everything to do with the chaos that was my life at the time.

The experiment was so successful that I’ve continued doing it as part of my routine. But in the year since I became serious about making the list of topics, my approach to creating such a list has changed.

Let’s take a look at those changes, and a bit more.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Focus on writing, not features  Clip to Evernote

Simplicity

Features in and of themselves are not a problem. It’s about adding the right features and only the right ones.
– Patrick Rhone, in Enough

I receive a lot of criticism for a number of my opinions and for some of the ideas that I advocate. One of those ideas is simplicity. This criticism has little or nothing to do with the backlash against minimalism and more to do with value. Or what people perceive to be value. You can capture that in this equation: more features = more value = more usefulness.

For most writing, that equation doesn’t hold true. At least not for me. Much of the writing I do I can tackle in applications that have few (if any) bells and whistles. I can focus on writing, on my words and not features.

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by Scott Nesbitt

Five books every writer should consider reading  Clip to Evernote

Five books Anyone who calls themselves a writer is also a reader. We read not just for research, but to expand our horizons and to learn more about our craft. In many cases, writers focus heavily on the latter — books and articles and blog posts (guilty!) on writing. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes, though, we need a little more. Here are five books that any writer, of any level of experience, will find useful.

Do The Work and The War of Art by Steven Pressfield – We all run into obstacles that prevent us from doing our work or from producing the work that we not only want but need to produce. In these two books, Steven Pressfield identifies the main source of those obstacles and explains how to take control.

The Information Diet by Clay A. Johnson – We’re drowning in information. There’s too much of it, and it’s coming at us from all directions. But do we want or need it all? Probably not. This book explains how to find the healthy balance between what information you need and everything else.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers – Sivers is best known as being the founder of online music seller CDBaby.com. In this little book, he describes the ups and downs he experienced as an entrepreneur and how he found success not by listening to conventional advice but by following his passion. Freelancer writers (and freelancers of all stripes) can learn a lot from this book.

Take Control of Your Paperless Office by Joe Kissell – Are you like most people who are buried in paper, most of which you don’t need? Then this book is for you. It offers guidance and strategies on how to clean out all that paper, and make it digital. Not just scanning, but how to organize and make it easy to find those documents.

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