Technology
David Brewster
My book ghostwriting tools in 2021

Every now and then I’m asked about the various resources I use when I’m working on ghostwriting a book. These things change occasionally, so I thought it would be a good idea to share what I am using as my main book writing tools in 2021. So here they are: from recording interviews to organising to drafting to (almost) collaborating.

My book ghostwriting tools in 2021
Work Life
David Brewster
When to avoid showing your vulnerable side

Being willing to reveal a bit of yourself, especially through a bit of self-effacing humour, will lighten your text and give your readers something to connect to.

But this blog post is not about that sort of vulnerability.

No, this time I want to remind you of two of the less inspiring but just-as-important vulnerabilities every writer faces. Those vulnerabilities are backup and data security.

I was reminded recently about this by a rare computer crash that led to me losing a small amount of work. It wasn’t important and was easily recovered, but it could have been so much worse. Imagine losing a whole book to a hard drive crash!

When to avoid showing your vulnerable side
Write a book
David Brewster
No time, money or skill? You can still get your ...

If there’s one thing you learn from spending a chunk of your career in the world of books and writing, it’s that there are a lot of great stories out there. Personal stories of remarkable success against the odds. Business stories of risk taking and growth. Political stories of intrigue and persistence.

It would be great if all these stories could be told. As Spanish philosopher George Santayana famously wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. Ideally, the stories would be recorded in books because books last. They go onto shelves and into libraries. They won’t disappear or become unreadable with new technologies.

Unfortunately, many terrific stories are never written down. Sometimes that’s because their owners don’t want to share them. Often

No time, money or skill? You can still get your book written
Reviews
David Brewster
The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario

Ghostwriter characters don't make it into fiction very often, but when they do they always seem to find themselves in jeopardy. 

In the 2010 Roman Polanski film The Ghost Writer, Ewan McGregor plays a ghostwriter working for a former British prime minister. In the end he knows too much and ... it doesn't end well. 

In the Netflix series House of Cards, Paul Sparks plays ghostwriter Thomas Yates who, after struggling to extract a decent memoir out of the president, fails to keep his professional distance, you might say. It takes a while – three seasons in fact – but it doesn't end well for him either.

And now we have Australian writer Richard Flanagan's latest novel, First Person, in which the narrator is a ghostwriter hired to author the memoir of a notorious conman. The story was inspired by Flanagan's own experience, very early in his career, of ghostwriting the autobiography of fraudster John Friedrich in 1991.

The ghostwriter's nightmare scenario
Writing
David Brewster
The joy of a good yarn

I love that my work as a ghostwriter gives me the opportunity to help people get their stories told. What I love even more is the fact that working on other people's stories gives me a front-row seat to those yarns.

Take Around the Grounds, for instance – a book that will be released by Finch Publishing on August 1. 

For this book I've been working with former ABC radio broadcaster Peter Newlinds. Peter's story is a celebration of sport, but from the spectator's side of the fence. This perspective gives the story a level of accessibility that most sporting memoirs, written as they are by former players, can't have. Few of us have the ability to play elite sport, but all of us are more than capable of joining in from the relative safety of the stands.

Of course we don't all have access to the commentary box as Peter did…

The joy of a good yarn

Productivity

Crowded mind? Here's how to take the pressure off

Crowded mind? Here's how to take the pressure off

If there is one thing guaranteed to hamper your efforts at writing – particularly when writing is just one of numerous things you’re trying to do – it is an overly crowded mind. How can you expect to think creatively if your head is full of ‘stuff’? It’s like trying to find a gemstone in a rubbish tip.

We all know how it goes. You wake up remembering that you need to ring your mother for her birthday. Then you get on with your day. Mid-morning, that task floats across your mind again. It returns at lunchtime, again mid-afternoon and again just before dinner. Then again … late in the evening when it’s too late to call.

Multiply that one thing by the multiple other things that will cross your mind during the day and you will quickly realise why your brain feels so full all the time.

Productivity guru David Allen has been preaching this point for years.

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A handy weapon in the war on procrastination

A handy weapon in the war on procrastination

Confronting any writing task is a recipe for procrastination. After all, most writing requires some level of research, and that means jumping on to the internet – and while you’re there you might as check Facebook, and quickly find out when that new movie is showing, and what’s news in the football draft, and…

Then there is the challenge of staying focused on a difficult writing task. The challenged mind starts to wander off, body in tow, to greener pastures – a quick coffee, walk around the block or even, in a home office, a load of washing.

Is it any wonder you can get to the end of the week and wonder where the time went and why you don’t have much to show for it?

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5 reasons I find Dropbox essential to my toolkit

5 reasons I find Dropbox essential to my toolkit

It’s getting awfully overcast on the World Wide Web. More and more of everything we do is, or can be, stored in the cloud, accessed from the cloud and run from the cloud. Sure, using the cloud has its risks, as Jennifer Lawrence recently discovered, but if used carefully and knowledgeably those risks, in my view, are far outweighed by the benefits.

Over the years I’ve used various different services for online backup, sharing files and ‘access anywhere’. My favourite, mainly because of its ease of use, has been Dropbox.

Recently, Dropbox Pro, the paid version of the service, has become an even more valuable tool with its (practically) unlimited 1 terabyte storage allowance and additional security features. I really don’t need any other cloud service anymore.

Here are five things I like about Dropbox...

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How to sort yourself out as a writer

How to sort yourself out as a writer

Some years ago I stumbled upon a piece of software designed to help writers of books to, well, get the job done. That application is now central to everything I do as a writer and ghostwriter: books, blogs, articles and speeches. I cannot imagine being able to do what I do without it.

Sound like a big rap? I can confidently say that Scrivener, the software in question, deserves it.

Scrivener is difficult to describe until you’ve used it. A good way to think of it is like having a separate desk for every project you are working on.

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The power of outlining in Microsoft Word

The power of outlining in Microsoft Word

Regular readers will know that I am not a big fan of Microsoft Word. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have some handy features – it’s just that too often those features are hidden underneath layers of complexity.

The ‘outline’ view is a case in point*. Outline view has been around since the earliest versions of Word, yet many people still don’t know about it or use it.

Depending on your version of Word, the outline view can be accessed via the ‘View > Outline’ menu item, the ‘Outline’ tab (some Windows versions) or the ‘Outline’ button at the bottom of the screen (left side for Mac, right side for Windows).

Here are three powerful things you can do with an MS Word outline:

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At last! Email nirvana in two easy steps

At last! Email nirvana in two easy steps

Email has been with us for a long time now – it’s approaching 20 years since it became widely used – yet it is still the bane of many people’s working lives.

Yes, email is a handy tool. But it’s also an enormous time waster. It’s bad enough for those of us working in small businesses; it can be a complete nightmare for anyone working in a large corporate-style environment.

There are, of course, a million things you can do to get more efficient at dealing with email. I’ve tried many of them. Unfortunately most of them are hampered by the need for strict – and, for most of us, unsustainable – discipline either on your own behalf or that of the people you communicate with. Or they only work with certain email clients.

Recently, however, that has all changed for me. Thanks to the discovery of two tools – one for my desktop computer and one for my portable devices – I have now reached the fabled state of ‘inbox zero’ (aka #inboxzero) consistently for 14 days in a row.

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3 ways to share documents without the generation gap

3 ways to share documents without the generation gap

Anyone who regularly shares digital documents with others will be familiar with the occasional cry of “Sorry, I can’t open the attachment”, or words to that effect. While document sharing is much better than it used to be, problems still surface from time to time due to incompatibility issues.

The most common scenario I come across is with Microsoft Word. I send someone a file with the .docx suffix which can’t be opened at the other end. The reason? My correspondent is still running an older version of Microsoft Word that can only read.doc files.

Ever listened to a bunch of teenagers talking on the train and wondered that they seem to be speaking the same language as you, but you can hardly understand a word they’re saying? To avoid going into the technicalities, let’s just say the software generation gap is analogous to this.

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Backup for writers. What's your plan for avoiding disaster?

Backup for writers. What's your plan for avoiding disaster?

Okay. If this blog post feels more like a dry lecture than an article, I apologise. Sort of. The thing is, on the topic of backup it’s hard not to come across all holier-than-thou. But believe me, if you ever have a hard disk crash, or your computer is stolen – and it does happen – you’ll be glad you read this and acted on it.

We’ve all heard sad tales of people losing an entire PhD thesis or book draft because their laptop was stolen or somehow failed. And we’ve probably also been guilty of thinking “that’ll never happen to me”. Today’s computers feel so reliable. But they’re not really. According to research done by backup service Backblaze, 20 per cent of hard disks fail before they are four years old; many more fail in the year or two after that.

How old is your computer and the hard disks inside it?

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Think twice before choosing Microsoft Word as your writing tool

Think twice before choosing Microsoft Word as your writing tool

Back in the day, writers had two choices as writing tools: a pen and paper, or a clunky old Olivetti typewriter (or equivalent – mine was an Olivetti portable). Obviously, and thankfully (for most of us), the desktop computer changed all that. I think the first word processing software I used was WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. It was white type on a blue screen and not much else, but at least you could correct a misspelling without reaching for the Tipp-ex.

Eventually Microsoft Word took on the mantle of ‘go to’ writing tool, and it has reigned supreme for over 20 years. MS Word is ubiquitous to say the least, particularly in workplaces. ... However, there are hundreds of alternatives to Microsoft Word if all you want to do is write. They fall broadly into three groups.

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5 ways to capture ideas on a smartphone or tablet

5 ways to capture ideas on a smartphone or tablet

If you own a smartphone or tablet, you really should be taking advantage of its notetaking potential. Whether you are capturing and sorting your ideas as part of a book project, or simply want to grab  thoughts as they come to mind (and before they evaporate), today's devices are always with us and are perfect for the job. 

Notes taken on a device are easily backed up, easily shared and more durable than the back of an envelope. And no matter how you prefer to capture you're notes, there's an app (or ten) that will help you do so. Here are five different ways you can net those ideas. 

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