organization

Quick Link: Keeping Organized as a Writer

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Being a pantser comes very easily for me. Finding a story to write and filling out a general plot is never hard. But all the rest of the structure and details and the finer points that make a story worth sharing is a lot harder. Part of that is being organized, cause you don’t need much organization for a basic story you just spit out. Elizabeth Spann Craig has been gracious enough to share how she keeps organized. What is your organizational secret?

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Keeping Organized as a Writer

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Not my car.

Being a writer can involve a lot of clutter.

And I don’t even print things out. I’ve trained myself by this time to work as well on the computer as I used to on paper (that way I don’t have the time-consuming process of transferring notes or manuscript text to the computer later).  But there’s a lot of computer clutter.

I’ve found if I can keep my files organized, it helps me to write a lot faster. That’s because I can quickly access the information I need and keep writing my story without getting distracted by something else on my computer (hello, internet).

Here’s my (current) method, using Word.  I’ve gone through a bunch of different iterations and I’d be interested in hearing how you’ve set your own files up.

Read the full post on Elizabeth Spann Craig

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

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Quick Link: Tracking Your Progress While Outlining and Revising

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

I am a loud and proud pantser, but after reading the post by over at Pub Crawl, I may just have to think my approach. She shares her very adaptable process on how she keeps herself on track and her revisions clear. What tips do you have to keep your writing organized?

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Tracking Your Progress While Outlining and Revising

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Hi all! Julie here. Recently I blogged about How to Finish Your Book, focusing on tips on how to get to The End when writing a first draft. In the comments, I was asked a great question about tracking progress during the outlining and revising stages of the writing process.

The reason I think this is such a great question is because tracking outlining and revising is definitely trickier than tracking drafting. When getting a draft down on paper, for the most part, a daily wordcount goal is all you need. But if you (like me) are obsessed with measuring and tracking your progress, you’re going to want to track everything. Things get a little more subtle and nuanced when you are in the pre-writing and outlining stage, and again at the end of the draft when you enter the revising stage, so setting up a system to track your progress definitely requires more flexibility and reflection when setting goals and expectations.

Once I have an idea for a story, I start creating the story world and brainstorming plot points. For the earliest stages of this process, I find it difficult to set hard deadlines because I feel the idea needs to breathe and grow organically. Eventually, as things take shape, I start adding structure to my tasks.

I generally work on the world first. In the beginning, I might have a single world-building document that explains the world in broad strokes. But as the story world takes shape, specific questions arise, such as “What is the political history of these two nations?” or “How are spiritual leaders chosen?” As I identify these questions, I set a goal to create a document addressing each one.

Read the full post on Pub Crawl

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Quick Links: Staying Organized While You Write–and Finish–Your Book

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

What tools do you write with? I use both MS word with track changes on and Scrivener.  At How To Plan, Write, And Develop A Book, owner Mary Carroll Moore gives her professional advice on how she stays organized while writing.

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Staying Organized While You Write–and Finish–Your Book

By Mary Carroll Moore

No matter where you are in the book-writing journey, at some point the sheer volume of material begins to overwhelm and it’s time to look carefully at how to organize yourself.

A private client recently wrote me about this.  She’s been trying to locate some “islands” (snippets of writing, or scenes) that she’d written a while back, but she couldn’t remember how she’d titled them.  They were virtually lost in the mass of material on her computer.

She asked:  “I’d appreciate your advice on how to save my islands on Word.  Should I title them? Date them? How will I handle revisions? As separate documents or just edits of the original?  Confusion reigns on this front!  Also, in your book (Your Book Starts Here), you mention saving work in files.  What are these exactly and how do I create them?”

I work in both Scrivener and Word.  I find Scrivener easiest for organizing, but I do end up using Word quite a lot for final drafts before submitting.  Here are the methods I use in each, plus some low-tech organization tools learned along the way.

Favorite Tools for Organizing Your Book-in-Progress

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Improve your Work Space, Increase your Productivity

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This post by Marie Leslie originally appeared on her site on 6/10/13.

Do you start your work day with the best of intentions–and then find, hours later, you’ve gotten nothing done?

Your problem just might be your desk. If you improve your work space, you can also improve your productivity.

For most people, your desk makes up the biggest part of your work space. Organizing your desk to eliminate distractions can help you improve productivity. If you need to clean the desk start with the that. Need some help with a desk-cleaning project? I can get you started here.

If your desk isn’t piled too deep with stuff you might just need a little help to improve your work space. Here are four tips to put you back on the path to work space productivity.

 

Ditching desktop distractions can help you stay focused on your work.

 

Read the full post on Marie Leslie’s site.

 

The Benefits of a Style Sheet

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This post by Jen Matera appeared as a reprint on ePublish A Book on 4/8/14.

Some authors write according to an outline, and others have a less-organized series of events they want to describe. There are authors who write their scenes sequentially, no matter how great or small, and those who write major scenes first and minor scenes last. I’ve even known one writer who wrote all her sex scenes first—she said they were the most fun—and then built the rest of the story around them.

But what most writers have in common is that they keep some kind of notes about their story, characters, plot, timeline, and whatnot. These notes, no matter how informal, are what editors use as a foundation for your story’s style sheet.

So… what’s a style sheet? It’s your editor’s notes about your novel—the place where every character’s name, physical description, relation to other characters is noted. But that’s not all. Not by a long shot. There are basically two types of information kept on a style sheet: content and format. Details that refer to your story line, your characters, your setting, your era, etc., are considered content information. Information regarding spelling, punctuation, and grammar is considered format. But the differentiation doesn’t really matter, as long as most of it is recorded somewhere.

Content:

• Character names—for every character named in the novel. Yes, even Sam the driver who was in one scene. We have no idea if he’ll show up again in book three, so he goes on the list.

• Physical description, including any descriptions—eye color, hair color, general build, and anything that’s noted as standing out. No author wants her lead’s eye color changing mid-story.

 

Click here to read the full post on ePublish a Book.

 

The Author Monthly Planner: A Freebie to Organize Your Writing and Marketing Life

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This post by Toni Tesori originally appeared on Duolit on 3/11/14.

We’re stuck in this cycle where, for at least one week every month, one member of our family is sick (I blame Olivia for bringing home the germies from daycare, BTW).

While being sick doesn’t rate highly on the ol’ fun-o-meter, it did give me an awfully convenient excuse to skip out on my regular cleaning routine.

After catching Olivia practically wading through a pile of books in her bedroom, however, I decided that enough was enough. It was time to get back on my game.

So, I made a to-do list. A looong to-do list. Pretty reasonable, right?

The result? My house is still a mess.

Wanna know why?

To-do lists suck.

Listen, if you’re one of those folks who make perfectly reasonable to-do lists and attack them daily with gusto, I envy you. I wish the doggone things worked that well for me!

Personally, I’ve always found to-do lists a bit mocking. Appealing to the procrastination side of my personality, those lengthy lists just beg me to move some of the items to tomorrow’s list. As long as the tasks get done eventually, right?

Hint: those moved items never get done. Because more and more tasks are added and fewer are crossed off. Before long, I simply despise the sight of that stupid list! I become completely overwhelmed with the number of tasks, and my brain decides that surfing Tumblr is a far more appealing use of my time.

Does any of this sound familiar? If you’ve ever used such a list to keep track of your author-ly life to-do’s, I bet you’ve experienced the something similar.

 

It’s Not the List’s Fault

I’m being awfully hard on the humble to-do list, when it’s not the fault of the list itself. The fault instead lies in the to-do list process. Since the list is, by design, a running list of tasks to work on right now, it offers no perspective; it doesn’t tell me why I’m checking off the items. There’s no birds-eye view of where I’ve been, where I’m going or any kind of final destination.

This is especially important for authors: most of us don’t work on this authoring gig full-time, and jumping in and out of an ever-mounting task list is difficult/scary without an overall plan. We need a status update reminding us why we’re doing what we’re doing, where we’re trying to go and what we need to work on right now to achieve those future goals.

Basically: instead of tasks, we need focus.

 

Focus in a PDF: The Author Monthly Planner

 

Click here to read the full post, which includes a link to a free, downloadable author’s monthly planner in PDF format, on Duolit.