iGoogle for Ideas & Reference

One tool that I use everyday has proven invaluable to my writing. It also has value in other areas, but for the purpose of this post, I will address iGoogle for writers. If you are not aware of iGoogle, it would behoove you to change that.

iGoogle allows you to personalize your information searches. You can gather, track and monitor all areas of interest, and all in one place, on one page. You add widgets or modules to a certain tab, which you can also create. I have a writing tab where I place all modules concerning writing. This saves a great deal of time if you surf the net searching for certain information needed to complete your writing project. If there are certain sites you visit frequently, check to see if they have a widget you can place on your iGoogle page.

You also have the power to rearrange, by clicking and dragging, all the widgets under any given tab, and also drop it to another tab, and by clicking a plus or minus, you may choose whether you want their content opened on the page, or closed as a title bar.

My only complaint is that they made a recent change in the location of the tabs--to vertically on the left, which doesn't work for me, so i use the Canada version of iGoogle, which works like the old one. I have heard from different sources that iGoogle is working on making all those formatting choices available so the user can have the layout however desired.

I currently have 9 different tabs in my iGoogle page, and I use them all everyday.

One word of warning: once you see how iGoogle will streamline your writing day, you run the risk of developing an addiction to it.

iGoogle for Ideas & Reference

Retarded Houdini

Where do my ideas come from?
Often, I get them while sleeping and dreaming.
For example, this morning, this opening "voice" was given to me just before I woke up.

I'm hanging upside down, wrapped in tarp, like some retarded Houdini.

How did this happen, you ask? (I heard you ask). Well, it all started with me, walking along the sidewalk, minding my own business. I always mind my own business because I know there are plenty of other people out there who will mind it for me, if I let them, and I don't feel they're more qualified to fuck up my life than I am.

Retarded Houdini

Drive-By Writing

If you're a writer, you are probably familiar with the tendency to try to write ideas down while driving. I seem to get my best ideas when I'm driving, and it's the most inopportune moment to do it. Surprisingly, I don't always have a pen handy. That's why I bought one of those key chain attachable sharpie markers...

But then there's not always paper. I know this sounds crazy for a voluminous writer like myself not to have paper and pen....there were times when an idea was so good, I considered to pricking my finger and writing it in blood. That would be a blood-blog.

Today, for example, I was writing not only on envelope, but on the back of the cardboard box the envelopes came in. And periodically honking the horn, because I was using my steering wheel as a desk.
It got so that every time I thought of something, I felt it might be prudent to just pull over. But with all the ideas I had today, I would have never reached my destination....which, paradoxically, was the office supply store to buy pens and paper.

Then, when I got home, I was burdened with the challenge of deciphering what looks like hieroglyphs on the cardboard.

Years ago, when I did quite a bit more driving than I do now, I used to use a tape recorder. I suppose I'll have to go back to that. Writing things down is just too frustrating, and things I intend to save may be lost because I can't read it. Never mind the lives I might endanger.

I can see the headlines now:
Local Author Burns a Swath Through the Median while Honoring Her Muse.

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For more of those ideas I had while driving, see Remote Control Yourself and Texting, Texting, One Two, 9...Oops at my other blog.

Drive-By Writing