How? As this 43 Folders article says, this include finding automation and economies of scale. Some examples:

• add info on your Contact page explaining what people can expect from you
• use auto-responses and email template sstating when you are away or can’t be reached
• where necessary send short responses to clarify when you’ll be available again

It’s all about setting expectations.

Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.

WritersTechnology.com

The simplest way to track submissions is using a spreadsheet program like Excel. You could also use an online spreadsheet like Google Docs. Create a new spreadsheet and put the following as column headers:

Title of Piece | Length | Genre/Type | Query or Submission? |Market Submitted to | Market’s Address | Pay | Date Sent | Response Time | Response (Y/N) | Accepted? (Y/N) | Due date | Publish date | Pay date | Paid? (Y/N)

Source

Tune in to their site their site for future articles on this topic.

• Full-screen editing usable from any computer
• Automatic backups of your documents
• Write full-screen on the road and sync your document back up once you reconnect to the Internet

I have long used full-screen text editors for banging out fiction. Having the old-school dark full-screen — free from distractions — makes for the ideal writing environment. Some of the full-screen editors I have used in the past:

• Q10 (Windows)
• DarkRoom (Windows)
• WriteRoom (Mac)
• Scrivener (Mac)
• JDarkRoom (Windows, Mac, Linux)

I like to store my writing in Google Documents. The portability can’t be beat (you can log in and read and edit your documents from any computer). And best of all, Google Documents provides built in version control so you can always go back and find old text you’ve (perhaps accidently) deleted. So in the past I’ve used one of the above software packages to write my fiction, and then pasted it into Google Documents after the fact.

Google has recently added a Full-Screen mode. (Hint: it’s under the View menu, or you can click Ctrl-Shift-F). They have also added a feature called ‘Edit CSS’ (CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet — a feature to change the look and feel of web pages). This, combined with the Google Gears software allows you to write full-screen from any computer with or without Internet access.

How? By using the ‘Edit CSS’ feature, you can add CSS code.

Note this part in particular — this is monitor size specific. You may want to increase or descrease the “260pt” to change the side margins and make corresponding change to the “520pt” width until you get the settings right for you monitor:

.pageview body {
background-color: #000000 !important; /* Make the background color black */
width: 520pt !important; /* Page width */
padding: 0pt 260pt 0pt 260pt; /* Side Margins */
margin: 0;
}

To the right is the resulting look and feel. In full-screen mode you no longer have access to the menus, so it’s useful to know Google Documents’ keyboard shortcuts and to remember that Esc brings you back to the normal mode.

To style the search bar at the bottom of the screen black, you can download and install the NASA Night Launch Theme for FireFox.

Here is the full CSS code I use to achieve these font effects:

/* Full Screen Editing Style (for 1240×1024 resolution monitor) */
body {
background-color: #000000 !important;
font-family: Garamond !important;
font-size: 18pt !important;
color: #D0A000;
}

.pageview body {
background-color: #000000 !important;
width: 520pt !important;
padding: 0pt 260pt 0pt 260pt;
margin: 0;
}

h1 {
padding-top: 26px;
text-transform: uppercase;
font-family: Garamond;
font-size: 22pt;
color: red;
border-bottom: 3px double red;
}
h2 {
background: url(’File?id=ad8wdwbvms_905cwjztrfc_b’) no-repeat top left;
padding-top: 12px;
padding-left: 32px;
font-family: Garamond;
font-size: 18pt;
color: #003300;
border-bottom: 2px solid #003300;
}
h3 {
background: url(’File?id=ad8wdwbvms_906cb8g4mgj_b’) no-repeat top left;
padding-top: 0px;
padding-left: 32px;
font-family: Garamond;
font-size: 14pt;
color: #003300;
border-bottom: 1px solid #003300;
}

Is not a book.

For the first time in the awards’ 30-year history, top honors go to an audio Bible —- The Word of Promise, a 21-hour New Testament read by performers including Jim Caviezel as Jesus. Caviezel played the role in Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association announced the award Sunday at the International Christian Retail show in Orlando.

Last year the top honor went to a novel — Ever After, by Karen Kingsbury. It was the first time a woman has won and the first fiction winner.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association award winners in the six categories:

• Bible: Discover God Study Bible, Tyndale House;
• Bible Reference & Study: An Old Testament Theology, by Bruce K. Waltke, Zondervan;
• Children & Youth: Teen Virtue: Confidential by Vicki Courtney, B&H Publishing;
• Christian Life: When the Game is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box, by John Ortberg, Zondervan;
• Fiction: In Search of Eden, by Linda Nichols, Bethany House/Baker Publishing Group;
• Inspiration & Gift: Step into the Bible, by Ruth Graham, Zondervan.

Read more about this here and here.

OpenOffice.org’s excellent software suite has now release version 2.4. This is available from OpenOffice.org, or get a portable version for toting around on a USB drive or to use on locked-down worked computers. OpenOffice now supports extentions (like FireFox) to extent the software’s features. Here are some of the best extentions for Novelists and Writers:

1. TestFonts — Reporting for missing font faces, all used fonts and get statistic available system fonts.
2. OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs — Export and Import your documents to and from Google Docs.
3. Writer’s Tools — Back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics.
4. OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs — Export and Import your documents to and from Google Docs.
5. Linguist — Provides an easy way for users to create a list of new candidate words to the existing spellcheck dictionary.
6. Alternative dialog Find & Replace for Writer — Advanced search capabilities including regular expressions, multiple search and replacement in one step, and more.

O3Spaces is another service you should look into. O3Spaces Workplace brings document management and document collaboration features to OpenOffice.org, including real-time version control, check-in/check-out and document security.

The OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension is free, works anywhere you’ve installed OpenOffice.org. Web site DocSyncer is looking to do similar things for your Microsoft Office docs, but right now it’s in an invite-only beta. Needs Java 6 to work.

Join me in my marathon. How? Drop by my site once in a while. Check out my writing progress throughout the month (note the graph on the side of my blog). Post an encouraging comment or email me. It’s the virtual equivalent of handing a winded runner a paper cup of gatorade as they round the final stretch.

Wish me luck!