This post was guest blogged by Justin Consuegra of The Men’s Gift Guide, a shopping blog dedicated to finding and suggesting unique gifts for men.
How do you keep your blogging life organized? I have a blog box. You see, I write a shopping blog, so I am constantly on the look out for products to talk about. However, I don’t have the opportunity to blog everyday; I tend to write a weeks worth of posts at the same time. So I keep everything ready to go in my blog box for whenever that opportunity presents itself.
What is in my blog box? Let me break it down for you. The box itself is a small, very portable plastic box that could be picked up at any office supply store. It’s waterproof and can easily be grabbed and taken with me anytime I need it. Inside I have taped a monthly calendar. I am a lone blogger, so my goal is to have something new on the site every day. The calendar lets me see which days I still need posts and I mark them off with a sharpie when a post is completed. I then keep my blogging material inside. I pull pages out of magazines and catalogs and put them in the box. Sometimes I’ll print off things from the internet and throw them in the box. When the time or mood strikes, I want to make sure I have lots of options of what to write about. I’ll sit down, thumb through what I’ve got, and pull out the things that strike me at the time. I will have to clean it out sometimes. Some things get old, or I think “why did I pull that out?†and it hits the trash. But needless to say, I’m ready to blog at almost any time.
Also in my blog box is my AlphaSmart 3000. This is probably the best blogging tool out there and I’m sure most people have never heard of it. It’s actually a professional writer’s tool. I came by mind from a deceased family member who was trying to become a novelist. The AlphaSmart 3000 is a portable wordprocessor only slightly bigger than a sheet of paper. It’s powered by three AAA batteries. It’s instant on and instant save. I can flip it on, write a few sentences, and not worry about losing my work if I get distracted. This gives me the flexibility to blog anywhere, not just at my computer. I use it to blog outside, in the car, or while watching cartoons with the kids and not have to lug my laptop around.
When you are done, you simply plug the AlphaSmart 3000 into your computer via USB. I open Word (or another word processor) and the AlphaSmart retypes my writing into the document. It’s almost an instant transfer. Then I can spell check in word, edit a little, and move my posts into word press and actually create the posts. I can tell you that if I had to sit at my computer to blog, there is no way I would have kept it up. I simply don’t have the time, and I would have ended up doing something else on the computer. The AlphaSmart allows me to set aside blogging time, go somewhere (anywhere) I want and bang out posts without distractions.
The AlphaSmart 3000 must be an older model because it no longer is available on the AlphaSmart website. If you are interested, there are some newer models you can try, but I found a few AlphaSmart 3000s on eBay for around $50.
Oh, and the AlphaSmart 3000 just so happens to fit perfectly into my blog box.