The Writing and Artist's Lifestyle, Part 1, Equipment

First, you can take this article and say to yourself, "run off with your rules and leave me alone." This article lays out how I manage to organize my writing and music work, and this may not be a set of practices that applies to your own way of managing your work. Another possibility is that you might heavily revise the ideas I'm setting out here to suit your own lifestyle. I'm not incredibly concerned what your reaction is to this article, but I would love to think that I might be a good influence on someone out there who loves writing and loves other forms of art.

Part 1, Analog Equipment

1. Between 4 and 8, 70-sheet, single subject notebooks. I like the single-subject ones because they are cheaper, and there is really no reason to buy the expensive ones unless you just like them better. I also prefer the college-ruled, but I inevitably get home from the office-store with some wide-ruled notebooks, and the extra space to write in does on average improve my handwriting.
2. 3 or 4 pens. I've settled on the Pilot Dr. Grip Gel Ink Pen. Unlike a roller-ball, the ink is very consistent, and unlike a ballpoint, the pens don't require a great deal of hand and finger pressure in order to write evenly. The Dr. Grips pens are about 7 dollars a piece. You can buy better pens, but they cost a great deal more, and I'm really stuck on my Dr. Grips.
3. 3 or 4 packs of pen refills. Sometimes a refill will write all the way to the bottom of the refill. Other times, the refill will get damaged, or simply quit midway through the refill, so I try to keep a stash of them in my house. The Dr. Grips Gel refills come in 2-packs of about 4 or 5 dollars a piece.
4. 2 or 3 blank books. At my local Borders, they sell these large canvas ones with a wide-rule, and they run about 6 dollars a piece before the sales tax is added. However, if you want something fancy, no one is stopping you, and there are blank books of every style and size at most local bookstores, and an even wider variety available on order through the 'Net.
5. At least one small soft-tip permanent marker, for labeling CD's and DVD's. It must be soft-tip or it will scratch the CD and ruin it, and it must be permanent, not water-soluble, or the label will simply rub off.
6. At least one large permanent marker, for labeling your notebooks.
7. Scrapbooking materials. I personally don't scrapbook, but some people really enjoy cutting and pasting text and images and making collages, and that can be a really nice way to facilitate the creative process. There are also "how-to," non-fiction books on scrapbooking that can give you some different ideas about what kind of materials to buy or different things to try as a scrapbook artist.
8. Filing Cabinet. This isn't a cheap purchase, but price the office-stores until they go on sale. It is really indispensible for a writer to have a filing cabinet, and then - part two - start using and organizing that filing cabinet.
9. Hanging Folders. Any kind will do, as long as they fit your filing cabinet. I found some high-quality folders on clearance when I went on one of my office-store raids last month.
10. Folder labels. I have tried the traditional folder labels and found them useless. Right now I am using stick-it note folder labels. There are two problems with them, the first being that the glue doesn't hold incredibly well, and the second that the lable has a tendency to rub off. I'm looking for a better solution at the moment, but I haven't found one yet.
11. A straight-edge. I have an engineer's straight-edge, and I recommend something like it because those lay flat and are of a sturdy metal.
12. A 70-sheet quad-ruled pad of graph paper. You may want to make charts and graphs, or you may want to try your hand at blocking out an image of something you are working on. In general, most design artists, comic book artists and so on, block out their image at least in the sketching stages, and a good pad of graph paper is a good way of blocking things out. Visual artistry is one of the least of my skills, but I do try my hand at it, and I use the graph paper when I want to make charts and diagrams as well.
13. Two or three note-card boxes. I learned to use notecards for long works when I did research papers in both High School and at the University, and it is a really great way of keeping long projects organized. I prefer 3 and half by 5 notecards, but it is up to you.
14. A bulk pack of notecards that fit your notecard boxes. I experimented and now like the un-ruled notecards better. I'm mostly just scribbling notes on them and it doesn't make a great deal of difference.

Part 2, Digital Equipment

1. The minimal computer hardware you need should be able to manage at least a small amount of image files, should get you on the Internet, and should have at least 20 gigs of harddrive space. You can get that for around 600 dollars at Wal-Mart. Understanding that many people are into gaming, you don't need an incredibly powerful computer to do the kind of work we're talking about here. If you want to run a good visual art program with a painting tablet, or do heavy-duty photo manipulations, you need big computer hardware, and you will also need that kind of hardware if you plan on doing high-quality electronic music, but you will pay through the nose. 600 dollars at Wal-Mart will get you into this "lifestyle," I'm talking about here.
2. You need a registered Operating System. I have so many idiots in my life whom I expressly told, "If you pirate your OS, then you will have a computer that doesn't work in fairly short order," who pirated their OS and ruined a computer. I understand the feeling, because Mac OS X is less of an operating system than it once was, Vista works pretty whonky, Linux has no hardware management, and UnixBSD distro's for PC's have no hardware management either, but if your OS for your computer is not registered, you will have a very good door-stop or paperweight left over in fairly short order. Call me dirty words out of my sight, but that is the reality.
3. A registered image manipulation software. I use iPhoto, version 2004, and it imports, resizes, and exports basic image formats. That is really all I need at this point, and an image manipulation software of that kind should run between 40 and 90 dollars. If you pay more for the program, you will get a more full-featured program, and for the minimal amount you've paid, it does the minimal amount of work laid out here. The really fancy image workshops are really expensive, and you really need accessories if you are going to use them properly like a painting tablet, a good digital SLR camera, and also a high-quality external harddrive. The reason for the external harddrive is that high-resolution image files that are stored on a regular user drive, or even an attached secondary drive, have all kinds of corruption problems, and a cheap external harddrive is going to leave you just as unhappy. Futher, you can be prosecuted for stealing fancy image workshops, and you will have gained nothing anyway, since the high-res files you hope to produce will be eaten alive by the unregistered program. Remember, an Adobe Creative Suite seat in a professional environment is at least 5 thousand dollars, and the professional companies buy those seats in bulk. Not only might you end up with a door-stop, you might wind up in jail. Remember to say, "Gwyd told me so, " when the prison guards are putting bugs in your cornflakes.
4. A registered copy of Microsoft Word. Arguably you can get away with a version of GnuWord, but that program is actually more unstable than Microsoft Word, and instability leads to data loss, and data loss makes artists and writers - very unhappy. I do not like MSW, and it is the worst document software on the market that doesn't cost around 2 thousand dollars. I'm sorry, but it's a bit hopeless unless you can afford a heavy-duty computer and an individualized copy of Quark Express. Remember, if the registered MSW will eat whole books off of your computer, and I have been there, then an unregistered copy is going to be even less pleasant. Partial solution to your problem appears in next point.
5. An rtf document manager. The pre-packaged Wordpad for WinPC does not support rtf format, but you can buy a perfectly sufficient rtf document manager for 20 bucks, and I have heard good word about the GNU open-source rtf document managers. The nice thing about rtf files is that they are widely supported, and they are very skinny. A 50 page rtf document is usually around 120 kilobytes in size, and you get next to no data-loss. I use the pre-packaged OS X rtf document manager called TextEdit, and I have next to no complaints about the software.
6. Scrapbooking software. For around 40 or 50 dollars, you can buy a nice little package that allows you to scrapbook on your computer. Again, I don't use one myself, but I'm considering giving it a shot, as I do a lot of things with images and text in my use of the computer. I haven't done enough research to tell you which software on the market is actually worthwhile, but I'll get back to you on it, because I'm kind of in the market for some kind of piece of software that allows one to digitally scrapbook.
7. Adobe Acrobat Reader. Just get the free version off of the Adobe site, as the full registered Acrobat is about 800 dollars, and again, I don't like stealing because I don't like thievery, but further, cracked software is corrupt and can damage your files and your computer, and further, when 800 dollars is at stake, corporations have been known to prosecute. You may cuss me in public, and even build an anti-Gwyd website, but when you have to be on good-behavior to get raisin bran and eat flakes without bugs, you can only say, "That @#$% Gwyd, he did tell me so."
8. Finale Songwriter. The non-professional full-featured Finale is around 350 dollars, but you can get Songwriter for 60 or 70 dollars, last I checked. Songwriter does just about everything you would want to do in a pretty limited way, and the only really horrible thing is its percussion playback and notation. The more expensive programs in between the full Finale and Songwriter add some features, but there is really no point, as what you get is "Songwriter, plus a few lame features." I'm hoping to get the full "home," version of Finale sometime next year so I can try my hand at orchestration and play with percussion sounds and things a bit more. Also, you only get MIDI playback with Songwriter, so the playback is kind of like a casiotone from 1996, but it is still a good 60 or 70 dollars to spend. With the full Finale, you have to add a good hardware synth to get better playback, and those are not cheap either. Don't bother with software synths, you will be unpleasantly surprised at how bad you got scammed.