1. A portable (read: small ) tape recorder if your budget is stressed. These cost less than $25 and can be bought with a telephone connector. Tell your subject you’re taping the conversation so that you’re sure to report their points accurately.
2. Digital recorder if you want to spend the money. It never runs out of tape – most record for a couple of hours, anyway. No hissing.
3. Headphones – invest in a quality pair of telephone compatible headphones. You’ll save all kinds of body aches that come from leaning your head over to pin the phone onto your shoulder. Try several brands – I like Plantronics - until you find one that sounds good on both ends of the conversation. Call your friends to test it out. Return it to the store if you have any sound-quality issues and try another. You don’t have to spend hundreds here – about $20 to $25 bucks gets pretty good quality.
4. Computer or netbook. This is what I work with. I use my laptop and have taught myself to type very quickly, almost as fast as normal people speak. I seldom miss anything – typing while listening to my sources. If I do miss, I just ask them to go back and repeat what they were saying.
5. Pencil and paper – some writers swear by this ageless method. Use a hands free or headset and just take notes.
6. Hands free phone, otherwise known as speaker phone (most people don’t like to have a conversation with one of these, they echo like the Grand Canyon) but there are writers who pull it off.
7. Call Corder software with a free trial version. Very robust and full featured. One button recording right to your hard drive. Worth a try.
8. A phone service that doesn’t charge you for long distance calls. Lots of busy experts will “forget” to return phone calls. If you phone them, you have a better chance of success. Choices include Skype or all inclusive long distance like an AT&T land line for about $40 a month or cellular service with free long distance, from about $29.

Learn to type while people speak – you can create shorthand of your own to reduce the number of characters you have to type. Some established writers hire a transcriptionist, but for me, going over a long transcript that I didn’t set up would be difficult, since I wouldn’t remember where in the conversation key facts came out.

WriteItNow’s good points

I liked the spell check, import and export features, readablility checker and word count – things every writer wants at hand. The ability to save or export manuscripts as in a variety of formats like PDF, text, rich text and HTML is helpful and streamlines the end process.

For the experienced writer, this package may be like an art kit is for a painter. All of the tools you use are together in one container and you can rotate easily from working on a concept, to polishing a chapter, to setting a scene. Then, using the charts tab, you can see how they manage the relationships between elements or even between characters. Just an an artist wants paint, brushes, cleaner, pencils and sketch ideas all together at hand when it’s time to work, so an author can benefit from having this neat package. WriteItNow allows you to work productively without searching all over your hard drive for the last set of notes you made, the final graph of chapter 12 or your missing character sketch.

If writer’s block rears its ugly head and you’re stuck, there is an idea generating feature that’s cumbersome, but workable once you get used to it. You select the characters involved in the situation you’re trying to create, then choose which type of event will be central, and WriteItNow will theoretically hand you an idea of where to go next.

There’s a free trial download http://www.ravensheadservices.com/download.php.

Note: WriteItNow’s producers offer free background editor add ons intended to reduce research for certain novels. Currently, they have one for Tudor Britain and the other Ancient Egypt. The editor is pre-loaded with cultural and physical details of those subjects. The company will accept additional subjects from anyone who wishes to share their research. An interesting value-added idea.

WriteItNow’s tragic flaws

The tutorials run very quickly and are a bit of a challenge to follow – they really need audio in order to be of much use. Additionally, the screen size is too large for even an upscaled laptop, requiring the user to scroll in order to see the call outs in the video or to find the controls for the video. My laptop screen is a 17″ wide format and I could not see the entire movie screen at one time. The documentation is not well organized and, again, not very intuitive. It is not easy to learn this program and I can see where some users will give up and find something else.

It’s interesting that customers must download and install add-ons, ten of them, to get the full funtionality of the software.

Conclusion

At price points of $19.95 to $59.95, depending on whether you’re upgrading, doing a new install or buying a CD version, WriteItNow is competitvely priced.

If you have never used writing software before, this is probably not your best choice as it isn’t intuitive or beginner- friendly and has a substantial learning curve. I’d like to see the producers redo their tutorials as step-by-steps with sound. If you are a working writer who has written manuscripts before, this program may serve you well in helping to organize and track your pieces and elements. WriteItNow isn’t the best software out there for writers working to understand and perfect the process of creaitng a novel, nor is it the worst. It’s a set of capable organizational tools for working writers.

Image by Mike Licht (flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/)

Writer and professional blogger Ali Hale created a digital course called Staff Blogging to help other writers develop yet another reliable revenue stream in these times of economic hysteria – I mean challenges. I had a chance to use and review the staff blogging course. Here’s what I found. 

From the discussion of setting goals to the one on writing headlines that sell your writing, Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course is not a marketing tool to sell her website. It’s a useful, information-packed study of staff logging – writing regular blog entries for specific sites for pay. Ali has been a corporate trainer, has written training classes and seminars and is a working staff blogger who earns her living by practicing what she offers her students.

 The best of Ali Hale’s Staff Blogging Course  

• The Staff Blogging Course is well organized, easy to follow – gets right to the meat.
• Work at your own pace
• The writing is clear, well thought out, intuitive. As soon as your mind forms a question, Ali has answered it.
• The exercises walk you through what you need to know, whether you’re a beginning writer or a seasoned pro.
• The Staff Blogging Course stays on topic, wastes no time.
• Author Ali Hale names names and tells all. Many e-book courses tease with “learn all you need to know” rhetoric, but never give a clue about finding markets or selling your work. Ali gives specific examples that lead you to discover additional resources.
• The course is inexpensive – less than $20. 

Things that could be improved in the Staff Blogging Course

I couldn’t come up with a thing and no, I don’t know Ali personally.  

The course pays attention to detail and shows pride in the workwomanship. It can stand against any other out there, and I have seen most of them. Ali is good at marketing and respectful of her readers’ intelligence. She doesn’t hammer you with sales pitches – she’s professional, adult and appropriate. Other online marketers could learn from her.

If pushed to criticize, I’d say she might consider doing less blogging and writing more courses! As a matter of fact, I secured two new staff blogging assignments after working through her course. And maybe she’d consider a livelier color scheme…