You must be able to use the tools including touch typing

As a creative, not only do you need to be talented and well practised at your art, be it as a novelist, actor, musician or filmmaker but you also have to be able to use all the relevant tools for marketing and ideally making your art yourself. Basic video, audio, photo editing and website admin skills are vital to keeping your costs down as you make the push to market every piece of work. However in my view the most important of all is the ability to touch type. I am fast at a few fingered typing & one fingered iPad typing but I definitely have moments of ‘No! It’s all in capitals’ as I don’t touch type. The hours I could save on writing blog posts, scripts, press releases, my 28,000 word thesis, let alone being a quick 60 words a minute typist would shave daily time off my emails. I just wish I had been taught at school or university but despite doing a Bachelor of Science they didn’t seem to think we needed it!

Enter TypeKids, a new online typing course for kids. I have been playing with it with my niece and it is a great blend of typing practice, lessons, ongoing cartoons for encouragement and games. There are individual lessons and then exercises to practise the basic hand positions and the increasingly difficult letters where I always seem to lose a finger! The more you practise, the more coins you earn to unlock and play games. My particular favourite is the Hammer game where mice jump out of barrels with a letter on their head and as you hit the right key they get hit on the head with a hammer. Yes I know I am not six years old but what can I say, it’s fun 😉 Inevitably practising letters in different patterns can get a bit dull so for each mini exercise you do a cartoon pirate climbs further up a boat or you step across stepping stones over a river. So there is a quick win/reward system going on which works for me. It may be aimed at kids but I am using it to learn touch typing too 🙂

From a parental point of view the parent gets email reports on each level as well as letters that need practising. Plus there are breakdown reports, I now know my E letter is good but my ; can go a bit wild 😉 There is a free trial of the first 3 lessons Here
I really wish I had started typing at such a young age and tools like this are great. It is also great for teaching on a very clear level that practice makes perfect, again as a child my piano and singing practise was very all or nothing and those habits of mine are still hard to break. A recent blog post covers this in detail On ways I am battling against this and winning 😉 Being able to see just for myself how I was progressing on my typing skills and finger dexterity was fantastic and equally I know if I practise daily then I will inevitably improve.

Returning back to the tools you need, if you are not reliant on your graphic designer for your flyers or an expensive editor for your showreel you really are in far more control of your own career success. You don’t have to wait for them or explain what you need, or you can do a quick mock up and then get them to refine it. When you can afford a great graphic designer or need a professional editor to make the snazziest version of your showreel then of course the money you pay the experts is generally well worth it. However on a day to day basis being able to do it well enough on the fly will save you time, stress and let yoir creativity really soar.

People often ask me my ‘tips’ on being a working actress and if there is a secret sauce it is about being as independent as possible in producing and promoting your own work. Maybe one day I will be part of a huge promotion machine for a big budget Hollywood movie but til then I am my own PR 🙂

• I have made mini video trailers for my solo theatre shows
• YouTube videos to accompany music I have written
• Re-worked professional artwork for local shows
• I podcast and do all the work of that
• I have set up 3 website and blogs including this one
• I edit my own voice-reel
• I have become better at lighting and recording my own self tape auditions

Examples include:

• Being able to quickly mock up a flyer of a show or even of a new award you have just won
• Editing footage of your show or launch that you can edit immediately overnight and make it a video link which you can post for your audience to see and share.
• Adding press, photos and video to your blog or website without waiting for or paying for someone else to do
• Putting together a couple of radio interview highlights, or even your own podcast
• Seeing a casting for a policewoman so editing together all your photos or video of you playing similar authority figures
• Setting up quick websites or blogs for new projects
• Buying domain names for you future projects and get them locked in.
• Adding reviews to your flyers
• Sending up to date newsletters or special offers out to your email list

List of Tools you need to be able to use
Wordpress
Photoshop or Pages (Mac) or a similar photo editing software
Video editing, iMovie on the Mac is free
Audio editing, GarageBand on Mac or Audacity on PC, you don’t need to be able to use Logic but a simple audio editor is a fantastic tool!
Learn to touch type!

: Image courtesy of Just2Shutter at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I have reviewed TypeKids as I really wanted to check it out and  no money has passed hands 😉