Image by ilmungo via Flickr

One of the profound ironies about writing a site about being a productive, efficient writer is that the better I am at what I write about, the less time I have to write about it. The last couple of months I’ve been getting more work than ever, even while I struggled to deal with a difficult semester (my day job is teaching anthropology and gender studies to college students) and an even more difficult break-up and move.

My guest writers helped a lot – Aaron Peters, Kelly Kilpatrick, and Stephanie Stiavetti stepped in to take some of the load off as I got moved and then buried under end-of-the-semester grading, and I’m immensely grateful to them all. It’s been fun having guest writers on the site, and I’m definitely up for more.

The Writer’s Technology Companion has changed quite a bit since I started it. When I launched the site last March, I thought I would be primarily reviewing software and writing how-tos. Those kind of posts have been common on the site, of course, but I find that the ones I enjoy writing the most are the ones about being a more productive writer, and so that will be a bigger focus in the year to come. These posts take quite a bit longer to write, especially since – as anyone who follows my work at Lifehack will have seen – I’m struggling mightily with the notion of “productivity” and how to integrate efficiency, meaning, and passion in our lives. But I think it’s a worthwhile pursuit, even if it means slightly longer gaps between posts here.

To help fill some of those gaps, I’m going to try to do regular posts bringing together some of the best posts around the Internet on writing. I come across tons of great stuff out there, and it’s time I start sharing with my readers. Now, as a general rule, I hate link posts, so my promise to you is that I’ll never post just a set of links; I’ll always make an effort to bring some kind of value to the material I’m linking to, so that even if you never click a link, you’ll walk away with something useful.

Since goals and resolutions are on everyone’s mind as we move into the new year, I thought I’d start by sharing with you some of the great posts I’ve come across on that theme.

Better Resolutions for Writers

No-Fail Freelance Resolutions: How To Succeed in 2009: Jenny Cromie offers some great advice for setting writing goals for the new year. Especially welcome is her emphasis on spending some time to know yourself as a writer – check your commitment level and learn what motivates you now, so you’re ready when the writing flags and just about anything else seems preferable to working towards your goals.

“He shoots…he scores!” (or, writing goals): Jane of Seven angels, four kids, one family offers a crucial piece of advice to writers setting goals for 2009: focus on things you actually have control over. You can write the greatest work ever and the most stunning queries of all time, but in the end you cannot control whether your book gets published. “Get book published” might be setting yourself up to fail; “Submit manuscript/proposal to one publisher or agent every month this year” is  something you can make sure happens.

Writing Goals and New Year’s Resolutions Tips for Writers: Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen offers her take on writers’ resolutions for the new year. with a special emphasis on financial goals. Writers often ignore finances (which makes us especially easy to take advantage of, unfortunately) – if you want to make writing your life’s work, though, you’ve got to take the money side seriously.

Stress Relief for Writers: Four Ways to Achieve Your Writing Goals: Angela Booth tells writers to relax – and provides some strategies for doing so. Though many writers seem to thrive on chaos and deadlines, the reality is that our minds think and work best when they’re at peace. Clear your mind and let the ideas flow!

47 Ways Copyblogger Can Help You Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions: Although this is primarily a “sneeze post” for Copyblogger (a “sneeze post” is a post written primarily to direct you to other work in the site’s archive – it’s a good traffic generating tool, but typically not especially exciting content), Sonia Simone provides lots of good advice for writers in between the links to other Copyblogger posts. And, to be honest, you can do a lot worse for yourself than to spend some time with Copyblogger’s usually excellent writing posts.

Top 10 Resolutions for Writers: A simple, to-the-point overview of the ten resolutions that should top a writer’s list of resolutions.

Ten health hazards for writers: Writing seems like a pretty safe work option, compared to say driving the ice roads of the Arctic or doing humanitarian relief work in a warzone, but it’s not without its own particular on-the-job hazards. Tumblemoose Writing Productions offers tips for avoiding 10 health risks that can stop your writing in its tracks. Don’t fall short of your goals because you’re too sick or injured to write!

And don’t forget my own post, How to Set SMART Writing Goals, which isn’t about resolutions per se but which has plenty to say about setting goals that work.

So I’m swamped. But not for long, I hope — I’m hoping to be back soon with more tips, tricks, and advice. In the meantime, if you’re new around here, you might enjoy some of these popular posts:

• 22 Blogs Every Writer Should Read
• Build Your Blog’s Traffic and Impact with Resource Posts
• Word Passive Voice Highlighting Revisited: Now for Word 2003
• How to Set SMART Writing Goals

Dustin covers all those techy things which you should know as a writer, but were too scared to explore, like MS Word styles and Master Documents.

Check out Angela’s site — there’s a ton of great advice for writers, including lots of good information to help you make money writing.

• 25+ Pieces of Writing Software You Should Know About
  Ali at Daily Writing Tips offers up no less (and possibly more) than 25 applications that writers might get some use out of. There are apps for collaboration, word processing, writing novels and screenplays, organizing your research materials, and more. Some are free, some are somewhat expensive. Not all of them are apps I would recommend, but you might have a different opinion.
• The Benefits of Writing a Pillar Post
  Tay at Super Blogging pays a visit to the territory I covered in my Build Your Blog’s Traffic and Impact with Resource Posts, with 4 very good reasons to think about writing your own pillar posts, and a few examples to get you started.
• Junk for Writers
  Paperback Writer lists 10 office supplies every writer will want to clutter their writing space with. Pure office supply porn!
• 24 Rebellious Resources for Freelancing
  Quiet Rebel Writer is tearing it up lately with more rebellious resources than you can shake a stick at! (Not that you’d want to – what would that accomplish?) Here, Amy Lillard sends you off with the message that we writers, we can write ANYTHING – and gives you 24 places on the web to make that platitude a reality.
• 6 Productivity Tools for MS Word
  Ah, MS Word, the savage witch-queen of the writing profession. WE hate you, yet are compelled to bow down before your greatness. Samuel Dean at Web Worker Daily gives you a handful (if you’re polydactylic) of tips to help you tame the beast.
• The Hidden Freelance Writing Job Market
  Jodee Redmond at Freelance Writing Jobs suggests ways freelancers can find work by taking a step or two out of the ordinary.
• Could The Freelance Writer’s Most Important Tool Be The Lowly Spreadsheet?
  Tom Chandler at The Copywriter Underground tells you how to use a spreadsheet to help keep you on top of your freelance work. Spreadsheets are all mathy and stuff, and writers tend to want to forget they even exist, but as Tom reminds us, there’s some real value for writers who remember that they’re running a business, too.

And a couple of self-promoting links, if you don’t mind:

• Smithereens is holding a contest to find the wittiest twitterer on Twitter. To enter, tweet something witty and copy the tweet and the link to the comments of that post. I’m judging entries, along with James Chartrand of Men with Pens.
• James and I are judging another contest, this time at my fellow Lifehack writer Joel Falconer’s site, Joel is looking for someone to write a great post on how bloggers can use FriendFeed. Check out the post for more information. (For the record, I have no idea why James and I are suddenly the go-to pair for judging contests – we actually don’t know each other. Coincidence, I guess.)

What have you come across this week that might interest your fellow WTC readers? Or, better yet, what have you written that you want to share with the rest of us? Leave a link or three in the comments!

Resource posts build traffic and they also help you establish yourself as an expert in your niche, whatever that is. What’s more, they establish goodwill between you and your readership, since resource posts represent at least a little bit of work that you’re offering up to your site’s visitors.

You can expect to put a little more time into a resource post than a usual post,though that depends a little on how careful you are in your blog writing, If you obsess over every line of a short story you’re posting, it could in fact be much easier and quicker to write up a resource post.

So what kind of posts can you consider resource posts? A strong tutorial is a good one, or a list of all the websites you know of that deal with your particular topic, or a list of 40 (or 80, or 107) books in your niche with capsule reviews — anything that gives people a reason to come back and check it out again and again. Here are some more specific ideas:

• Science fiction writers could do a list of 50 trilogies, or 100 books set in the present, or every steampunk novel they know of.
• Children’s book writers could do a list of children’s illustrators who have websites, or 60 books that aren’t racist, or books about rabbits, or a guide to writing dialogue for young readers.
• Travel writers could write 20 tips for taking great vacation photos, a howto on packing light, a list of off-the-beaten-path vacation spots, or a guide to a great museum.
• Literary novelists could do a list of lesser-known novels by Booker finalists, or a post about getting a literary novel published, or a list of 100 French novelists whose work is available in English translation.
• Freelancers could write a series of posts on time tracking, instructions for creating a perfect home office, or a list of 90 free online resources for self-employed workers.
• Fantasy novelists could write a Borgesian list of 50 fantastic creatures in contemporary fasntasy, a guide to another author’s imagined world, or 37 Charles de Lint fansites, or a howto about world-building.
• Poets could compile a list of 100 spoken word albums of poetry read by the original authors, every possible stanza form, or all living poet laureates.
• Textbook writers could create a tutorial for parents and teachers on how to teach a child some topic, list 60 important events that didn’t make it into the history books, or show readers how to do 20 great science experiments.
• Nature writers could introduce every species of American turtle, tell families how to hike safely with their children, or describe 100 sites to see before you die.
• Technology writers can list the best site to get reviews on each of 75 categories of electronics, how to set up a new computer, or review every tech manufacturer’s customer service record.
• Any author could write a list of 100 authors in their field that didn’t deserve their obscurity (or that do deserve obscurity, for that matter — I’m looking at you, Ayn Rand!), 50 writers who are famous for the wrong thing, or their 32 favorite writers’ blogs.

And so on. The idea is to be big, bold, and most of all, truly useful. And opinionated, if necessary — there’s nothing wrong with a little controversy! It will bring new traffic, and people will respect you for taking a position (though it pays to have a tough skin — online anonymity can provoke some pretty hateful responses).

Doesn’t make sense on the face of it, does it? How can sending people away from your site build traffic to your site?

Well, there are several ways linking to other sites can help build up traffic for your own.

1. Outbound links add value: If you post a link and explain why the site or page you’re linking to will be important to your readers, you’ve just done them a favor. They’ll remember how useful your site is.
2. Links let them know you’re there: When someone clicks a link on your site, your web address shows up in the referral log (a list of every site that’s sent traffic to a site) of the site you’ve linked to. If they start noticing a lot of traffic from your site, they’ll eventually come check it out, and hopefully become readers.
3. They’ll link back: The urge to return favors is strong in every human society. When someone notices you’ve linked to them, they may very well link back to you. If they have a lot of traffic, that’s a lot of people finding out about your site.

There are some ground rules, here. 1) Link to sites or articles that are really useful for your readers. 2) Link to sites or articles that you’ve read. 3) Don’t let your site become only links to other sites — this is common in sites that have run out of new things to say. 4) If you notice someone’s linked to you, link back to them — if they’re useful to your readers. 5) Don’t trawl for links — it’s unseemly.

Now’s as good a time as any to cover how to link to another site. If you’re using the visual editor in WordPress (it works like a word processor, with buttons for formatting text and other operations), click the button that looks like a chain link; if you’re in the code editor (where you write HTML code directly), click the “link” button. In both cases a window will pop up asking you to insert the URL of the link and the text you want your readers to click on.

If you’re writing HTML code directly, you use the anchor tag, <a>, to link out. The anchor tag looks like this: <a href=”http://www.dwax.org”>Dustin’s website</a>. “<a>” tells the browser it’s an anchor tag, “href” tells it what site to link to. You’ll insert the URL, with the “http://” at the beginning, where I have the URL for my site. Don’t forget the quotes. Replace “Dustin’s website” with whatever text you want your readers to see. The “</a>” closes the tag.

Common problems:

• The link doesn’t do anything: Check to make sure the URL is in quotes and has the “http://” part at the beginning.
• The link goes to an error page: Make sure the URL is correct and the page you’re linking to is still there.
• The whole paragraph is a link, now: Make sure you added the closing tag, </a>.

photo credit: *L*u*z*a*

In honor of the launch of The Writer’s Technology Companion, I put together a huge collection of resources for writers at Lifehack.org today. Topics covered include:

• 10 Free Apps Every Writer Should Consider
• 10 Online Apps and Services Every Writer Should Check Out
• 10 Sites Every Writer Should Bookmark (Besides Lifehack)
• 30 Lifehack Posts Every Writer Should Read
• 5 Online Communities Every Writer Should Join

Here’s a little bonus, an online community I didn’t include in the Lifehack piece:

Nothing Binding: An online community for writers, with a forum and a special emphasis on audio and video content by writers and about writing. They also run a kind of “review exchange”, where writers can send a copy of their book to a reviewer and get a review they can use in press kits, on their website, or wherever they want. Nothing Binding is still pretty new — they have about 500 members so far — so there’s not a lot of content yet (and, less forgivably, the blog is still empty), but it seems like a fun and knowledgeable community.

Check out The Ultimate Writing Productivity Resource, and leave your own suggestions in the comments.

First, my friend and social media maven Muhammad Saleem kicks off a 10-post series at FreelanceSwitch on Social Media and Simplicity aimed at helping freelancers figure out how to use social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon to promote their work and themselves. The first post is called simply Reduce: reduce the number of social media sites and services you participate in and focus on the ones that offer the greatest return for you. This is the real inside scoop on social media, from someone who really knows this stuff inside and out. The 10 posts all together will be the definitive guide to today’s web, I promise.

Second, ProFreelancing offers up a list of Everything You Need to Be Free — that is, every website, post, and online service a freelancer needs to stay productive, organized, and motivated. Lots of good resources to check out and bookmark, with each section offering a variety of tips and a great selection of tools.

Enjoy!