Wouldn’t it be great to have a way to record those blog post ideas that pop up in your mind while walking through the grocery store? Or that dream that would make a great story line, if only you could remember it until morning? As long as you’ve got a smart phone or device with Evernote downloaded on it, you’ll never lose a great idea, quote or contact’s phone number again. Evernote is a free cloud-based application that can be downloaded on your desktop, laptop, smart phone or tablet so that you can access your documents no matter where you are. You can even reach them when you’re on someone else’s computer, as long as you log on to the website.
(Credit: Google)
Before looking at the ways in which you can use Evernote for your writing, it’s important to understand the structure and terms that are used in the software.
- Notebooks are the collections of individual notes. It’s a good idea to have separate notebooks for each area of your work and life. For example, you can have one for each of your family members, work projects, house projects and autos.
- Stacks are collections of notebooks. Your “personal” stack will include notebooks for family members, “novel” will include all the research and writing for your book and “work” will contain notebooks for various projects you have going on.
- Tags are labels that you put on each note. It’s best to use two or three tags for each note so you can easily find them at a later date.
If you are a freelance writer, you can have a notebook stack dedicated to each client with whom you work. Inside the stack have notebooks for each project. For one client the notebooks include: web copy, press releases, articles, newsletter copy and social media updates. As you work on new assignments use tags such as the client’s name, the topic of the work and the nature of the work. When you get another client in the in the same industry, you can pull up previous work and research in just seconds. Book writers can devote a notebook to each separate chapter and the research needed to complete the writing.
Before using Evernote, writers had hundreds of Word documents with research for all my work, which they had to copy and paste. With Evernote, you can highlight the text you want to copy, left-click on the Evernote icon at the bottom of your screen and the text will be copied to a new note, saving both time and mouse clicks!
If you are mobile savvy, you can record ideas for writing–or grocery lists–when you’re awake in the middle of the night, or at the park with the kids. Upon returning home, you can synchronize the application so the new notes will appear on all your devices.
Family and non-work data can be saved in their respective notebooks and note, so this program very useful to anyone. The fact that every document you need on a regular basis, personal or work related, can be pulled up no matter where you are at, makes this a tool that everyone will wonder how they ever lived without it.