Workflow Changes

Given the release of Yosemite for OS X and iOS 8, I’m taking the opportunity to re-examine and revise my writing workflow. I write a great deal, not only books and articles for publishers, but blog posts and email. I am an Admin for a number of large Websites. Two of the Websites include not only site Admin, but Managing Editor tasks, including answering questions from readers and general user support for contributors. Both of these Websites involves email either to individuals or to one of several private email lists. One of the Websites has a forum, a large, vibrant community for writers. Supporting that community requires a fair amount of direct member  support, including writing (and answering) FAQs, emails, private email lists, local message systems, and the Website and blog.

And then there are the Websites I admin for various writers, and my own Websites.

It’s a lot of daily writing. And it’s fairly constant throughout the day (and night).

I have some workflow tools in place:

• I use TextExpander on all my iOS and OS X devices. Smile TextExpander is a huge labor and keystroke saver.
• I use filters or “Rules” in Mail.app, but even so, I receive around 175 emails from individuals a day, and send about that many or more. (I’m increasingly considering an alternative to mail.app, at least on iOS, just to reduce mail-management frustrations.)
• I use custom scripts and and droplets for many of my frequent tasks.

Changes I’m considering:

• I generally draft my shorter articles and blog posts in BBEdit using HTML. I’m going to look more closely at using Markdown, especially because Markdown is thriving on iOS, and BBEdit has built in support for Markdown.
• I already use iOS a great deal for email triage (especially via my iPhone); I’d like to do more with email on iOS, especially responding to email on the iPad.
• I’d like to try writing more of my shorter pieces on iOS. I can write longer pieces on the iPad more easily now with the Brydge + iPad keyboard.
• I do a lot of writing in Google Docs/Google Drive, but for book-length pieces Google Docs is not optimal. I’d like to move to Apple’s Pages as my primary word processor, particularly given the newly released version of Pages with collaboration and sharing via the Web/iCloud and Pages for iOS, as well as on OS X.

I’m sure I’ll discover more ways to improve my workflow as I continue.