#WriterWednesday: Geek Gear To Get You Motivated


I'm waving my geek flag like a crazy lady lately. We've covered how I like my tech from e-readers to smartphones to tablets...but I've found a few new techie tools lately that I really, really love...so I thought I'd share them with you all today because they all have a little bit of a writer bent.

First, my new TomTom - it's the MultiSport, and it's a fitness watch. It tracks my distance running, cycling, swimming...monitors my heart rate, gives me a calorie count and feeds right in to the MyFitnessPal app that I'm using to track calories and stay in my fat-burning zone. What does this have to do with writing? Everything. Seriously. As a writer I sit. A lot. Sitting isn't terrible, but when I'm at the computer for 6+ hours a day, I'm not getting much  movement in. I can set an alarm on my TomTom to remind me every hour or so to get up and move around. Plus, I know exactly how I'm doing with my workouts. Win, win.

Second, Spotify. You've all read countless posts about my playlists. Making a new playlist is one of my all-time-favorite things to do as I'm starting a new project. But I've filled 2 iPods, an iPod Touch and my Smartphone with different songs...I came across Spotify, which is a streaming service, last year and gave it a try. I still buy a ton of music, but this is working really well for me as a playlist keeper.


Third, OneNote. It's a visual pinboard kind of app from Microsoft. I use Scrivener, and I like it, but OneNote is so much simpler - and its really easy to add both images and text. That said, I'm taking a Scrivener class and I'll let you know how that goes - will it overtake OneNote? We'll see. This screen shot is my template for starting a new project - I have tabs for research, chapter outlines, hero/heroine/town/etc images. I break out the main turning points and even make a calendar of sorts so I know where I'm at in the project at any given time.

Scrivener does many of the same things, I find Scrivener most useful for the actual writing...but for the extra stuff - research, images, outlines, etc - I find OneNote much more useful.

Those are the three things I'm geeking over this week...what has your geek heart thumping?

Comments

  1. My Fitbit is still my best friend. I'd like to get some One Note knowledge, but haven't yet. I'm still hyperventilating over the idea of Nan updating me to Windows 10!

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    1. OneNote is fairly simple. Once I'm finished with the Scrivener course, I think I'll blog on the differences. Nan inspired me to request my Windows 10 update yesterday...waiting for it to prompt for the download now...

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  2. KB loves spotify--especially be cause they can no longer stream Pandora at work, but she can listen to her lists from spotify. I'm going to have to try it out. And I'm definitely going to check out One Note and see if that will help me.

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    1. Good luck!! I tried Apple Music when it rolled out a few weeks ago...but it keeps 'forgetting' my playlists. Very frustrating!

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