by Dawn Hawkins

Created on: March 02, 2009

Whether you write as a hobby or for a living, your computer can be your best friend. It is great to be able to track your progress as a writer. Computers make it easier than ever to do that. Having the right programs can make the difference being good writing and great writing. Creating a system that is well organized can be a hair pulling experience.

Having the Right Programs

In order to keep things well organized, you should have two programs. You need a spreadsheet program and a word processing program. It doesn't hurt to also include a PDF program that allows editing as well.

Microsoft has the best spreadsheet and word processing program for these needs. Microsoft Excel and word will allow you to organize much faster and easier than other programs of its type. Other programs can work fine but it won't be quite as easy as these two programs.

Acrobat Reader is on nearly every computer because it is necessary for opening certain files that live on the internet. When you are a freelance writer, you may need to go the extra mile and add the editing capability to it. Many freelance jobs available need the work put into a PDF format.

It is also advisable to obtain an external hard drive for your work to be stored on. This results in two things. If something happens to your computer, you will still have your work available to look at. You can network it to your laptop and work from both computers. This is great if you work from both a laptop and desktop because you will not have to organize in two places.

Organizing Your Work

You will want to organize your work so that it will be easily accessible. If you do not have the previously mentioned programs, you probably do have Microsoft Works (This assumes that you have a PC and not a Mac computer). There is a good spreadsheet and word processing programs there. The following steps are linked to the Microsoft programs for the best organization possibilities. This also assumes that you write for sites such as Helium but can work for organizing any of your work.

Folders

Find the place on your computer where you would like all of your work stored. You should put it all in one place. Use folders and sub-folders to organize. This assures that you will easily be able to find anything you are looking for quickly and efficiently.

Here is an example:

Folder 1- Writing

Folder 2- Helium

Folder 3- Articles

The first folder will be where all other writing folders will live.

The spreadsheet can live in the Helium folder and can be named something

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