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My supervisor at a college where I once taught said to me one day as I was freewriting in my journal, “Ah, the life of a writer. Sitting along the bank of a river, leaning against a tree, feeling the breeze in his hair as he writes.” Well, maybe that was his ideal writer’s space. (I was actually sitting at my desk in a cramped office at the time.) It’s not mine. Do you have a writer’s space? Where is that one physical place where you can return to day after day to concentrate on your writing and researching? In these Covid-19 times, that place probably is your home whether you like it or not. But the quarantine will end. Life will resume to some sense of normalcy. Let’s Visualize […]

Last week I introduced you to USB thumb drives and the cloud (“Backing Up Files with a USB Flash Drive and the Cloud”), two important options for backing up your files. This week I’ll be talking about the external hard drive and then offering a few final words. External Hard Drive Pros and Cons External hard drives offer the advantage of local control. Unless someone breaks into your house and steals it, information on your external hard drive can’t be hacked or stolen. In addition, they cost less than ever. After you pay the one-time cost to purchase the device, you’re done. You don’t have recurring subscription and bandwidth-usage fees that are typical with cloud storage. And their transfer speed is faster than the cloud. You can pay more for […]

Last February, my wife Emily and I visited friends, Nick and Wendy, who had recently moved to Mexico. One night we went out to a restaurant for dinner. I left my knapsack on the floor in the backseat of their Jeep hidden under a thick blanket. Nick locked the door. When we returned less than an hour later, the back door was unlocked and my knapsack, with laptop inside, was gone. I never saw it again. Happy Ending to Near Disaster This story has two happy endings: My insurance covered the cost to replace my stolen equipment. My files were backed up. Within a week of our return to Michigan, I had a new knapsack, appointment book, and laptop, and I had retrieved all of my files. A week later, […]

I discovered I was a notetaking addict in the middle of a college poker game. “Ken, are you in?” someone asked. I was in. In deep thought, writing about an incident that had occurred earlier in the day that I didn’t want to forget. I wrote in my journal, which I always had by my side for taking notes. How do you take notes? Notetaking Equipment Today Today we have so many more options for note taking. You can take notes or speak them, at all times of day under all social circumstances. “I don’t have time” loses its meaning. Here are a few options: Tablets Easier for note taking than laptops because they turn on with the press of a thumb, don’t need to warm up, and are less […]

Greetings, Author Friends, Are you looking to become a better writer so you can write your book? Mark your calendars for February 27, 2021 when I will debut my new “You’ve Got the Time” series of articles, stories, and interviews on the topic of how to write and publish that book that is already inside you. Writing a Book a Reachable Vision Have you ever considered writing a book? Did you dismiss the idea immediately as being unreachable? Then this journey is for you. I’ll share my version of wisdom compiled from over fifty years as an author, editor, publisher, union activist, scholar, book coach, speaker, and celebrated hitchhiker and dishwasher going back to the Vietnam era underground press. Some entries will be adapted from my book, You’ve Got the […]