A comprehensive catalogue

When I first started writing, I was advised by my course tutor to focus on writing articles rather than fiction, since articles actually paid good money. I took this advice, and the articles did pay; not heaps, necessarily, but a reasonable amount.

One of the books I read during this time was Writing Articles that Sell by G J Matson. The book was one of five smallish books that came as part of the writing course. It was a book I read and re-read, and it proved its worth.

I've just come across an extract from it that I copied back in 1993 in which he discusses the need to keep cuttings or clippings of articles and newspaper notes. These clippings were useful not just for article ideas, but as backup material for when you did write articles. Evernote serves the same purpose for me now, though I don't write much in the way of articles anymore. And of course it's vastly more easy to catalogue and search. I do write blog posts, of course, and the 'clippings' are useful for that too.

Anyway here is Matson talking about his cataloguing system:

This [initial] classifying was a crude arrangement, and the titles of the various folders, as near as I can remember them now, were Anniversaries, Natural History, Stage and Cinema, Religion, Celebrities, Unusual Experiences, History, Geography, Science, Art, Literature, Domestic Law, Handicrafts, Customs, Political and Miscellaneous. As soon as a folder became uncomfortably full, I divided the cuttings again, this time into foolscap envelopes. Thus Natural History was divided into Ants, Dogs, Elephants, Grouse, Mice, Rabbits and so on. 

A few of the subjects, selected from my collection at random, may be of interest: Air Mails, Antipathies, Basket Making, Bibles, Careers for Boys, Chiropody, Corks, Dew Ponds, Duels, Entertaining with Table Napkins, Foolhardy Feats, Giants and Dwarfs, Handwriting, Horse Brasses, Icebergs, Jest-books, Keeping Cool, Lighting, London Oddities, Marbles, Miniatures, Newspapers, Noses, Olive Harvests, Pacifism, Peat, Queen Elizabeth I, Refrigerators, Rings, Safe Deposits, Seaweed, Teasels, Unclaimed Fortunes, Valentine Day, Wassailing, Yom Kippur and Zebras. It will be seen from these examples that the range of subjects covered is a very wide one. It is because I collect cuttings on every subject I possibly can. It pays me to do it – and it will pay you.

What a marvellously diverse list! I had both folders and foolscap envelopes in my much less organised system at one point, so I must have paid some attention to Mr Matson, though I can't say I ever went quite so wide in my choice of subjects. I think his point was that you can write about anything if you have the background information to get you started. 

These days, we'd probably categorize Foolhardy Feats under The Darwin Awards. And if you don't know what a Teasel is, it's apparently a tall prickly Eurasian plant with spiny purple flower heads. It seems a slightly curious subject to write about, but perhaps they were more common in gardens back when Matson's book was written. 

clippings.io

I've been using Clippings Converter for two or three years. It began as a way of uploading clippings from my Kindle into a format like Word or Evernote (I prefer the latter) and being able to access them more readily while using my PC. They've now shortened their name from Clippings Converter to clippings.io, and are heading for another step up in their online journey, with added features that will enhance their site considerably. The main addition is the Google Chrome extension, which you can use to speed up the shift from the Kindle itself to your PC or Mac. There is a small charge per month for this extension (previously Clippings Converter was free), and no doubt there will be many people who take advantage of it. At $2.49NZ it's a good deal. With this extension you no longer have to plug in your Kindle to your PC; the extension will read clippings from your phone or iPad or other Windows devices. It'll be interesting to see how that works. 

If you're already a follower of this site, you can encourage others to use it through Twitter, FB or Google+. Just click on any of the links below. 

Follow us on twitter
Friend us on facebook
Follow us on Google+

Visit our website www.clippings.io

Wings almost clipped

When it comes to service we tend to remember the times we've had cause to complain about something far more than the times we've been well-treated.  So by way of amending that approach, I want to tell you about ClippingsConverter.com and Jim, who's the man behind it (he's a Brit working in the US).  I'm not entirely sure of Jim's role, but I suspect he may be Clippings Converter.

Anyway, those of you who use Amazon Kindles will know that you can make notes as you're reading, or highlight passages, or do various other things.  The  'My Clippings' file includes some other things which I don't use much, so I can't remember what they are offhand.   I don't tend to use the features when I'm reading a novel, although occasionally a phrase or word will catch my eye, but when I'm reading non-fiction, I use the clippings feature a lot.  It's the equivalent of scribbling in the margins or underlining in a 'real' book.

Bird with clipped wings by iglazer

I came across ClippingsConverter.com because I'd been trying to sync the clippings for a particular book (Hannah's Child, by Stanley Hauerwas) and for some reason - and this is the only time it's happened - the notes wouldn't sync to my computer, however much I tried.  You can read the notes and highlights online at Amazon's Kindle pages, but normally I would read them in relation to my 'copy' of the book on my computer.

ClippingsConverter.com offers to upload your My Clippings file (once you've transferred it to your computer (in the My Kindle Content folder, a folder that arises automatically once you've got Kindle on your computer) and turn it into an Excel file or a Word file or even to send it to Evernote.  (Since, for the first time ever, I've used up vast quantities of my monthly allowance on Evernote, I thought I'd forgo that option this time round.)

I went to ClippingsConverter, got the file, uploaded, and then found I had to register.  No problem, except that from then on I couldn't get back into the system with my username and password.  I asked for a resetting of the password and got the most horrendous and unmemorable password you've ever seen (certainly one that's hacker-fullproof, I'd think) but this wouldn't let me log in either.

I emailed the feedback section and Jim emailed me back, saying he was puzzled about why the password wouldn't work, as it worked at his end.  Finally he offered to check out remotely what was happening on my computer when I tried to log on.   Which meant he had to set up a 'meeting' online and ring me on my ordinary phone.   At his expense.

The problem was very quickly solved: somewhere between my original registering and my subsequent attempts to log on, the username had been changed from what I'd put in to my email address - the username is similar.  I don't think the system did it; I suspect in the confusion of going back and forth I may have gone for the email address instead of the username proper.   And according to Jim, that should be acceptable.   The system should take both.

He was grateful that working through my problem meant he'd found something that wasn't quite working according to Hoyle.  So that was pleasing all round, as I guess he may have had other people with the same issue who've given up on the site.   But what was most pleasing was that someone would take their time to deal personally with a problem. even if it meant a call from New York to Dunedin, New Zealand.

Good on yer, mate!

Progress?

In the past, even before I began writing for publication, I would keep files of clippings out of newspapers and magazines. I even used to try and put them in some order, or keep a primitive form of database so as to know what I had.

In fact, what would happen is that I'd come back to them some years later, find all these clippings which varied in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually toss them out. The only time they got used was if they were used when I first found them. After that, they usually became excess to requirements.

When I first started my current job, back in late 2007, part of my work involved scanning articles of interest onto the computer and databasing them. Sound familiar? However, it quickly became evident that it was much easier to find the article online - most newspapers have websites these days, and most magazines. That saved the tedious process of scanning (the scanner has gathered dust mostly since then) and also saved databasing, since Google Desktop did that side of the job much more effectively for me.

And then along came Zotero, and articles could be copied in the blink of an eye, as soon as you found them online (because now we were catching up with the information less from newspapers and mags and more from the Internet itself). No more cutting and pasting; just a click of the appropriate button and we were away. The databasing isn't so good, and will have to be reconsidered, and sometimes it's better still to use the slightly older method of putting the item on the computer itself.

But with Zotero you have access to the articles wherever you are: at work or at home, or anywhere else.

All this is well and good. You know what's funny, though, don't you? I'll come back to these pieces in a few years time, find they vary in interest from 'none' to 'moderate' and eventually delete them. The only time they'll get used will be if i use them when I first find them. Sound familiar?