From the Mailbox: “How do I organize my notes?”
November 11th, 2008 by Kathleen Bolton
Recently, we received this e-mail from Jamie Manning:
I have recently started a book and have already become overwhelmed with
post-its, scratch paper, notebooks and computer files. I was wondering which,
if any, writing program is good to help keep my book organized and somewhat smooth out the writing process?
Jamie, I feel your pain. I’ve had this problem since I started writing novels and until now I’ve never hit upon a good method for corralling this:
I asked readers to help me get organized, and they did.
WU reader Lisa Janice Cohen has created an ingenious “virtual index card” program called TiddlyWikiWrite. Each “tiddler” can be tagged for searching and organizing. The downloadable wiki is free and she includes clear instructions on its use. Read part one and part two of our interview with Lisa for more information and hints.
Eric Rothkirk of one of our favorite blogs Quantum Storytelling uses Google Pages to organize his online research. “I usually enter the notes into Mind Manager or whatever I’m using to “track” the scenes I’m writing. If they’re just raw idea notes, I put them in Google Notebook.
Handwritten notes go in the Moleskine -> Google Notebook or Mind Manager, depending on whether they’re specific to a story in the works or not.”
Contributor Ray Rhamey suggested using the comment feature that is already installed on most word processing programs.
I played around with all these suggestions, and the one that fits my style best is using the comment feature on Word. If I get an idea or perhaps I have a scene that needs more research, I flag it with a comment bubble, leave a note to myself, then move on. If I have lengthier issues to address — say, a new plot thread I’m toying with — I’ll put it at the beginning of the chapter for consideration in the second and third draft stage.
I’ve found that the advantage to comments is that I’ve left a note that addresses the issue right where I need it in the manuscript. The disadvantage is that I have so many comments, the sidebar is nearly 100% purple and it takes forever to print. But, oh well. At least I’m not shuffling through reams of Post Its anymore.
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Happy writing, all!
Thanks so much Kathleen, lots of useful information in this!
I also like using the comment feature in Word, but for a lot of my work I swear by Microsoft OneNote - not only for writing, but for everything else I need to track and work on and think about and ..