My new contract gig begins this week (I’m managing an organization’s online presence), which means I’ll be writing and editing a lot of copy — almost of all of which is headed for online pastures.
And doing so under tight time constraints.
The last year, I nicely boosted my productivity by writing all my online copy in programmer’s text editors (like Emacs and Komodo Edit).
Text editors and Markdown markup (turns out simpler is faster)
I believe in saving my writing time for writing, not fighting word processors dedicated to a fast-disappearing paper format.
And I’m tinkering with plain text markup languages like Markdown, which I make online-ready far faster than HTML (I’m writing this post in Markdown).
What I lack is a hyper-productive system for managing (prompting, editing, circulating, etc) the copy headed my way from upwards of ten sources.
There is, it seems, always a catch.
The Problem Is…
The online project management tools I’ve tinkered with seem focused on complex projects with a definable endpoint.
Like an expedition.
This is more like a daily hike — but one that lasts years.
And I’m unwilling (so far) to burden these users with yet another interface (and login, and place to go online, and…). And unhappy at the prospect of learning a complex interface myself.
In short, I’m still looking.
For now, I’m latching onto that hoary old solution for pretty much everything: a spreadsheet (LibreOffice or Google, not sure which).
I’ll manage the workflow in what amounts to the old fashioned way, and hope something a little smoother happens along.
(Ideas and suggestions appreciated.)
Keep writing, Tom Chandler
man, I dunno. I empathize with you, but I’ve got nothing on this one.
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Definitely one of those “man on the moon” moments (“We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t make panty hose that don’t run”).
I’m hoping something slick pops up; it’s regular contract, so for every minute I gain here, it’s a guilt-free writing minute somewhere else.
And guilt-free counts for a lot these days.
That’s a tough one. Since moving into my second career as a writer, I’ve yet to work with a team.
I spent years in software dev. I wonder if a revision control tool like Subversion would work for content creators? I’m guessing not so much.
The big reason is the different way quality assurance is handled.
I know some of my buddies would argue with me, but once you’ve past the design phase, software development is largely a technical process. You check your code in, it’s automatically compiled and tested on the existing control system. Then, wallah! You get to see what you broke almost immediately.
Writing, good writing not “SEO expert” writing
, is a creative process from beginning to end. You can’t feed a new piece into a working system and have the system spit back that the style or tone just doesn’t work with the rest of the pieces in that section. Only human editors can do that type of spitting.
Google tried to let machines monitor “quality”, look where that got them — headed straight back to Yahoo’s financially unsustainable (largely because of Google) human reviewed web directory
I’m a Joomla junkie. The latest version has a very simple “check in – check out” system. If I were running a content team, I think I’d look for a workflow management system instead of a project management system for exactly the reason you mentioned.
Google Docs has that awesome new revision feature. That’s an option, but I couldn’t imagine running a team using it for the core repository.
In all likelihood, I’d force writers to publish submitted work on a system that allows team members to click an anonymous ‘Hot Or Not’ button. Like I always say, punishment and humiliation before publication.
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Interestingly, I’m looking at version control for my own uses (Git), but since I *didn’t* program in an earlier life, setup has required a bit more time and brainpower than I have to devote to it.
It looks intriguing, and we’re seeing what looks like “version control for writers” appearing in products like Celtx Studio, etc.
Still, I’m not working with writers (scientists and organizers), and their organization recently “upgraded” (note the quotes) to the latest version of MS Office, so text-based documents are not in my future [sigh].
In fact, during the recent build of their website, the vast majority of my “content” time was spent untangling their words from all the tables, columns, codes and other crap foisted on the reading world by MS Word.
(Thank god for Emacs and Komodo Edit).
I expect I’ll be untangling the coming stuff in much the same way.
What I really wanted to:
1) Avoid was losing stuff in a confusing furball of emails and replies
2) Get the text cleaned up, edited, and back to the originator for approval (that’s why the interest in Markdown) with a minimum of fuss
3) Keep some semblance of a schedule for upcoming work (be cool to keep files attached to that schedule)
Before anyone points to the “Track Changes” function in word, bear in mind that most of the files I receive aren’t attempts at articles as much as they are stream-of-consciousness thoughts and a handful of notes.
In short, lots of information, but typically not much worth tracking.
The search continues.
I growing very fond of Microsoft OneNote as a sort of hunter-gatherer-storer of information from different sources. It’s very helpful for pulling together research for blogs, articles etc. It’s not quite what you’re thinking of but useful all the same.
For version control, I have a much simpler approach. I just number files v1, v2, v3 etc. I will typically get to v3 or v4 before I send it to a client. The first version will be a skeleton, the second version will be a ‘fat’ document with research notes etc in it and the third will be an edited first draft. When I get feedback from different stakeholders, I save them as different versions with notes in the file name, e.g. ‘file name v6 (client name)’ etc. When all the feedback is in, I carry on numbering for the next draft.
I have some long-term documents that need to be regularly updated, e.g. copy for a client website that has been running for two years and must be translated into 12 languages, and we’re on v34 now! In a living document like that, I also write change notes for each version. This allows clients to see at a glance the main changes but they can also use ‘diff’ or Word’s compare versions to see the changes in red line between different versions. This is very helpful for translation.
It’s low-tech but it works well for me. I’ve tried online collaboration, e.g. Basecamp and Google Docs, but clients are reluctant to use them; mainly through laziness and unfamiliarity. Although one of my clients is Microsoft and they won’t use competitor projects for obvious and understandable reasons!
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Thanks for describing your workflow. Being a Linux partisan I haven’t mucked around with OneNote, but am taking an interest in Evernote.
I manage to accomplish some of the same things using TabCorral (a tab-management plugin for Firefox that syncs across multiple machines) and Tomboys (Linux note-taking application), but the problem isn’t my workflow, it’s theirs.
I don’t every really expect a client to learn something like Basecamp, but I think I would expect them to visit a published Google Doc spreadsheet listing their responsibilities, upcoming content ideas, etc.
I think back to all the “specialized” interfaces I’ve invested time and effort into over the years — and how few of them lasted long enough to really pay back all the effort.
I do wish I could break my client of their nasty word processor habit, but I’m also aware that’s kinda crazy talk in the world of office suites.