You never know when some idea or piece of information for your book will come to you.
So like a diligent Girl or Boy Scout, a writer needs to always “BE PREPARED!”
And if a writer is like a Scout, Evernote is your Swiss Army Knife –an invaluable tool you’ll find is able to help you through any number of situations during your writing week.
Evernote is a ubiquitous capture and organization tool available for Mac, PC, smartphones, and tablets, in which you can store nearly any type of information, and organize it into notebooks, stacks, and tags. A cloud-based tool that syncs across devices, it is available for you to use pretty much anywhere.
Best of all: it’s free!
A Week With Evernote
Monday, you’re home on the web researching space warfare tactics for your next Hugo award-winning sci-fi novel. Prepared with the web clipping tool, Evernote empowers you to save and tag entire web pages to your “Strategy” notebook.
Tuesday, you hit the library and find a fascinating journal article conceiving a bug-like alien species. Prepared with its camera tool, the smartphone app enables you to photocopy the article directly into your “Aliens” notebook.
Wednesday, you need to read what the article said about the alien hive mind. Prepared with Evernote’s powerful search tool, you simply type “hive mind” into the search box. In seconds, the program searches the entire notebook, including the full text of your photocopied article, taking you straight to the first instance of the phrase “hive mind.”
Thursday is Valentine’s Day, and as you’re taking a romantic walk through the park by yourself, it hits you: “Valentine: perfect name for the sister!” Prepared with the smartphone app, you just whip out your phone, and record your epiphany straight to your “Characters” notebook using the voice memo tool.
Friday lunch, you get an idea for what the aliens should look like. You’re a decent sketch artist, but you can’t stand digital drawing, so you draw in your Moleskine. Prepared again with Evernote’s camera tool, you take a snapshot of your new “bugger’s” visage, and save it directly to your “Aliens” notebook.
This is just a brief glimpse into how this powerful “Swiss Army Knife” for writers can help your writing week go more smoothly.
Evernote helps you stop worrying about those brilliant ideas slipping through the cracks by giving you a single place to save and organize almost anything from anywhere. It helps to simplify and streamline your creative process so that you can get your story told and sold.
Download Evernote and “BE PREPARED” for trekking the uncharted wilderness of your creative process.
If you’ve got to see to believe, check out what The Juggling Writer, Christopher Gronlund, has to say in his video on Evernote for Writers.
Or for a quick, general overview of what Evernote can do, check out this video.
Awesome! This seems incredibly useful, if I can get myself to actually use it. >_>
Ha! Well, it will be worth your while if you do! 🙂
Hugely helpful. I’m an Evernote newbie and only just starting to understand its many uses. I didn’t realize the search tool was so extensive or that I could record a voice memo straight to it.
One thing I found using the mobile version is that I can send an article to my Evernote using the email address they assign.
So glad the article was helpful! Yes, the send-to email address is also a VERY useful feature!
I frequently jot down notes on my iphone in bed right before falling asleep, or before getting up and starting my day. I recently lost more than a year’s worth of notes when my phone needed an emergency restore. After feeling empty and lost for a week, I found Evernote. It’s been fantastic! I can create notes and know they won’t be lost if my phone kicks the bucket. I’ll have a saved copy that I can access on my computer or online. It’s extremely useful, and the added protection from syncing between devices is very valuable.
Thanks for sharing my post about Evernote, Adam. I used it, here and there, and then my wife — a historical costumer — got hold of it and really figured it out. I started mirroring some of the things she did. Once I started working on research for a new book, I finally hit my stride with how I like using Evernote.
It’s such a great thing. I know people who swear by Pinterest, now, to keep track of things, but I’m so used to Evernote that it’s become like an appendage. I hope the video helps others figure out how they might use Evernote…it’s such a simple and wonderful thing!
Oh, and like Amanda, I still like handwritten notes. I’ve started taking photos of pages with my phone and storing them in Evernote. All the scraps and other places I jot things down. It keeps my desk clean, and my wife no longer looks at the piles of scraps on my desk and smiles at the mess!
Or, you could use Scrivener (Mac or Windows version) & be able to write into it, too & so much more!
This is a great article. It gives me the inspiration to use Evernote even more. I have been feeling like it is time to go paperless and save all of my work digital. Thanks again.