I’m a Writer, and This is How I Workflow
The path of technical least resistance.
From Evernote to my MacBook Air…fasten your seatbelt, keep your arms inside the application at all times, and here we go…
Hardware
First off, I’m a Mac guy. I use a MacBook Air, an iPad Pro (10.5), and an iPhone 8 Plus. These work seamlessly with the apps that I choose to work with. The hand-off from device to device is great, not to mention my favorite aspect — battery life!
Though I am using Apple devices, all of the software that I will run through below exist in the PC world as well. As for you crazy Linux evangelists, as usual, do your thing and make it work (you know who you are).
Software (the goldmine)
I’ve written before about dabbling in a variety of apps, but I keep going back to Evernote as my mainstay writing platform.
There are a couple reasons for this:
1) Works wonderfully on all three of my devices
2) Online app handoff in Chrome (more about this later)
3) I can add links that carry over in copy/paste
4) I can add to articles no matter where I’m at or what device I have with me
A normal workflow day consists of starting my article in the Evernote application on my laptop. I then switch over to Evernote online in my Chrome browser.
When I do this, the article is AUTOMAGICALLY there the instant I switch. This may sound redundant, but I do this in order to use the Grammarly extension in Chrome. It works within the online version of Evernote and it’s gold at catching my literary hiccups.
I would say that I use about 98% of the suggestions made by Grammarly, with a 3% deviation to satisfy my rebel side (see what I did there, REBEL).
I then copy/paste the article into Medium. From here, I use either the inline photo app from Unsplash or I go to Pixabay and grab a photo. If I want to add a little text to the picture I pull it into Pablo (I wrote about how to use Pablo here).
If I need to make a couple of quick corrections to a photo or need to mashup a couple of pictures, I go to Pixlr. This is a great online photo editing app, kind of like Photoshop’s little-free-online-brother.
After pulling in the pictures, I read through the article one more time and try and find ways to break up the text. When I read — and I’m being brave and assuming that others do this as well — I tend to look at text in chunks.
Reading articles on any medium is difficult when the paragraph feels like a written version of “This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friend…”
Our eyes need a break from the blocks of text. Use Titles to separate main sections of the article (highlight and hit the big “T” in Medium’s editor), or pull out a section of text to quote (highlight the text and hit the “ icon, again in Medium’s editor). I add some italics to words and bold key words here and there to further break up the text.
And voilà! There you have it! Easy-peasy stuff!
Taking the time to make your post VISUALLY DELICIOUS is the difference between eating a burger and eating a steak (or a square of tofu and a really good, uh, veggie steak — for my vegan friends)!
Good luck and keep writing!
Bonus Info:
Add a subheading to your title. Under your title, type a subheading explanation of your article, highlight the text, and hit the small capital “T” that pops up. This really helps in explaining what the article is about.
Bonus Bonus Info:
Make sure and add tags to your articles. These are located under the “Publish” tab at the top of the page when you’re in edit mode. Why worry about adding tags? This helps to identify your article and make it more likely to show up in front of readers that are interested in that topic.
How does your workflow work for you? Do you use anything different to get your content into Medium? Share!!!
Links:
Evernote
Grammarly
Grammarly Chrome Extension
Pixabay
Pablo
Pixlr
