Simon Whaley’s Business of Writing: August 2023
Welcome to my August 2023 newsletter.
I’m currently writing this newsletter from my neighbour’s dining room table. There are two reasons for this:
1) I have very nice neighbours, 😁
2) We’re in the middle of having the property rewired (and apparently the electricians like to turn off the power when they do that sort of thing!)
It’s giving me an opportunity to catch up, having returned from tutoring at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School (pictured above), where I was running a short course on Travel Writing, and also a one-hour workshop on Photography for Writers.
The photography workshop was interesting because there were so many questions from delegates. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and I wasn’t able to share my tips on how writers can use their smartphones for research.
Seeing as some of the attendees are signed up for this newsletter, this seems the perfect place to rectify that, especially as every writer has to carry out research at some point.
“The best camera to have is the one that’s with you.”
Chase Jarvis
With so many of us carrying our smartphones with us everywhere we go, it means we always have a camera with us. That allows us to use our smartphones as visual notebooks.
Information Gathering
Whenever I’m out and about, I always photograph information panels. Often these are visual, but sometimes, particularly in museums and exhibitions, many of them contain a lot of text. It’s much easier to take a photo of it with my phone. It often makes reading it easier because I can zoom into the image!
There’s also another useful thing our smartphones can do (depending upon how new your phone is - I’m using a 2020 iPhone SE, so certainly not the newest model available).
Text Extraction
Text extraction can be extremely useful. The smartphone camera will detect text in the image and offer to copy it. As you can see in the picture below, all I do is tap on the three lines in the square box (circled in red on my photo).
When I tap on this, it then brings up the option to ‘Copy All’. One touch of this and the text is copied.
Next, I go into my Notes app, open a new note and tap ‘Paste’ and—voila! The text from the information panel appears in the note.
I then file my note in the relevant project folder, so it’s all kept together. But what makes this really useful is that I can append the photograph of the information panel to my note, so I know the text is from the panel.
The next time I’m searching for a particular topic if the subject is mentioned in the information panel notes, it’ll be returned in the search results. It can be surprising the connections you can make with different ideas this way. (It’s sparked a few new article ideas for me.)
Copying Reference Material in Libraries and Museums
Your phone can also be useful to take photos or scans of documents housed in libraries or specialist collections. (Always seek permission to take photos first - some organisations may not allow this.)
But if you are allowed to take photos, here are my top tips:
Abide by any rules the museum/library issue (such as turning off the flash on your phone as this may damage old paper).
If you’re in a public area of a library or museum, switch off the ‘click’ sound the phone makes when you take a photo.
Lay the document/book you want to take a photo of as flat as possible (or as flat as you’re allowed to), because this helps with text extraction later.
Hold the phone directly overhead (be aware of any light sources though, as you could cast a shadow of your hand and phone onto the document you want to capture).
If you’re going to take photos from several different sources, take a photo of the front page first. That way, you’ll know that the photos that follow afterwards are from that source.
Once you’ve taken the photo, check it. Is it sharp enough? Is it clear? If not, delete that and take another one. Better to spot this now rather than later.
In low light conditions (often a problem in some museums and libraries) rest your phone on something (such as a pile of books) and set the image timer to 2 seconds. That way, any vibrations caused by your finger pressing the shutter button will have dispersed by the time the phone takes the photo, which will reduce any blur.
Before taking photos of documents, consider whether your camera is the best tool. There are many apps we can use on our phones that are designed to capture documents and receipts, etc. Although they use your phone’s camera to do this, the app will then flatten out any distortions, and square up the document, before saving it as a PDF document. (This may be better than a photo for archiving and research purposes.)
Apple users can use the Notes app to do this, and Readdle’s Scanner App works well. Android phone users can use Microsoft’s Office Lens. Adobe Scan, CamScanner, and SwiftScan also work on both iOS and Android.
Finally, if you’re a novelist, having a visual library of settings, characters, and items of interest can be extremely useful for jogging your memory while writing scenes.
My cosy Mortiforde Mysteries are set in the fictitious town of Mortiforde, which is based on the Shropshire town of Ludlow. So I have a Mortiforde Folder on my phone’s photo app where I collect and store images.
It’s an ideal way for me to check whether a certain street has yellow lines down the side, or which side of the doorframe is there a blue plaque. These might be small details, but as so many of us know, it’s the small details that readers latch on to!
Did They Really Say That?
Here’s a free link to read an article I wrote for The Writing Cooperative, about the importance of checking quotes and sayings. These can be a great way to back up an argument you’re making in your text, but only if the quote is genuine and correctly attributed.
Unfortunately, there are many websites online, and accounts on social media, that use incorrectly attributed quotes, so it’s very easy to get it wrong! A little investigation is always worth the effort. Ideally, find the primary source of the quote, rather than simply accept someone else’s assumption online!
I hope you’ve found that useful.
Until next time, keeeeeeeeeep writing!
Best wishes,
Simon