So You Wanna Be a RPG Blogger: How to Be Prolific

August 25, 2008 No comments

With apologies to the Chatty DM, I’m going to keep adding my own thoughts to the series he started as ideas come to me. Today I’m going to talk about how I manage to crank out new content 7 days a week on a fairly consistent basis.

As some of you know, I work as an automobile insurance claims adjuster. I work in a relatively secure facility, because we deal with medical records, legal documents, and other sensitive personal information. The computers we use are locked down to approved applications, email is monitored, an internet access is through a portal that logs where you go, even though there’s a whitelist limiting sites that are accessible.

There are four (4) computers, spread out between the break rooms, that have open internet access (there’s a blacklist and some nanny software, but no one’s really dumb enough to wander to those types of sites at work anyway, we hope). Four computers, for about 600 people at this campus. Basically, you log on, check the ball scores, or check your bank balance, or look for that one email you’ve been waiting for, and log off again so the next person can have a chance. This, obviously, is not an ideal situation for blogging.

Personal laptops are okay in the break room, but people look at you oddly unless you’ve got textbooks out and are obviously doing work for a class. Common sense tells me taking that kind of personal electronics into a secure facility is a bad idea. Plus, the time I’d get to blog is minimal; a few minutes before work, two 15 minute breaks, a 45 minute lunch. I don’t want to have to look for an outlet (there are very few in the break rooms), then boot the laptop, and so on. Not worth the time lag. So I have some alternative methods.

Alphasmart
Longtime readers know of my love affair with the Alphasmart. No, I will not shut up about it, ever. It’s a word processor, period. It costs about $250, and weights about 2 lbs. Mine shows 4 lines of text and holds 8 files, accessed by keys labeled “file 1″ “file 2″, etc. Newer models have 6 lines of text. It runs on AA batteries, which I change about once a year. It was designed for classrooms where the school can’t afford computers for every student, it is made of high impact plastic, and it is frickin’ indestructible. Testimonials on their website talk about people taking there Alphasmarts to places you wouldn’t take laptop – climbing the K2, racing the Iditarod, and extreme stuff like that. With the Alphasmart, I pull it out of my bag and press ON and it’s on, that fast. No booting time. I press the file key and there’s the file, right where I left off, no load time. It auto-saves every keystroke. I can write anywhere. When I get home, I connect it to my computer with an ordinary USB cable and send the files to whatever application — Word, OpenOffice, WordPress — that I choose. Easy, easy, easy.

That’s how I write a little bit in the few minutes I’ve got.

Notebook
I used to carry around a Moleskine or a Hipster PDA, and still do most of the time. The problem is, they tend to get crushed and messed up in my pockets. 99% of the time I have some kind of courier bag with me, and those smaller-format data capture devices tend to get lost.

So I bought myself a stack of single-subject notebooks. With the back-to-school rush, they were a 5 cents each. Easy to find in a bag, slimmer than a binder and space-economical. The first caveat is that notebooks are not for writing; it is a pain to sit down and transcribe handwritten notes into the computer. Notebooks are for notes, ideas, lists, a catchy phrase or sentance you might want to include. Do not attempt to write a whole blog post in the notebook.

What I do is brainstorm: things to potentially write about. This could be a sentance: “write something about last week’s game session”. If you have a large idea of what the post will contain, bullet point the thoughts you want to cover. If you envision it as a series, bullet point the posts in the series you see yourself writing. Never take any of this as a commitment, however; you never have to write all of this stuff, unless you foolishly tell your readers you’re going to. You can change your mind as you go; I often find that once I start writing the ideas evolve and change the outline.

When I get a few minutes with the Alphasmart (or at home on the computer) and I don’t have a partcular topic to write about, I browse the notebook and see if anything catches my fancy.

Sandy
Ideas come to me at all times. For raw data capture, I’ve switched from using the Moleskine or HipsterPDA in my pocket to using my cell phone. I’ve got it with me, so it’s one less thing to carry, and it doesn’t get crushed or bent. I’ve got an account with Sandy — IWantSandy.com — who acts as my personal assistant. When I get an idea, I send a text message to Sandy. I could email myself, but I have an unlimited text plan; to send an email costs a nickel a piece. The messages are then collected at my page at Sandy’s site. They’re also emailed to me, and I’ve got a filter set up to throw them into a separate folder. Ready to write and stuck for an idea? Check the folder or the Sandy page.

There are other ways to accomplish what I’m doing with Sandy, of course. There’s Jott, which I never got into, but allows you to send notes via voice mail. I know people who use Tumblr or other blogging services that allow you to post by email or text message and sent a “post” to a semi-hidden blog that collects ideas. The concept is to just capture thoughts so that when you have time to write, you can find a topic to write about.