In this episode, I talk about the principles that will help you use any writing system effectively and efficiently. Links mentioned in this podcast: Centauripublishing.com Scrivener EndNote Aeon Timeline Bullet Journal Ulysses Campfire Where you can find me: centauripublishing.com Twitter Instagram Reedsy LinkedIn This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License [Transcript begins] Hello and welcome to Practical Writing: How to Organise Your Writing Projects. My name is Catherine, and I’m a freelance copyeditor. You can find me at centauripublishing.com. This is the first episode of this podcast, so I wanted to talk today about what I see as the general principles of organising your writing; the ‘guiding lights’, so to speak. In this podcast, I will talk about systems for organising your writing. What I mean by ‘system’ is your filing and writing system, for example Word, physical notebooks, Scrivener, etc. All of these systems need a certain amount of organisation to be used efficiently (yes, even Scrivener!) So when I talk about principles of organisation, I mean the principles that will help you use whichever of these systems that is best for you. These principles are: Organise in a way that works for you and how you think Keep it simple Keep expandability in mind, and Future-proof. If you apply these principles, no matter what kind of organisational system you use, it should work well. So, first of all: How do you think? Many people use whatever system is popular, or that their friends use, or that has been relentlessly marketed to them. But just because your favourite writer uses such-and-such a program doesn’t mean it will be right for you. After all, we all think differently and have different needs. A key example of this is Scrivener. People who love Scrivener really love Scrivener. I really love Scrivener. But it’s not the right program for everyone. I’ve heard some people express the opinion that there’s something wrong with them or they are missing something because they don’t ‘get’ Scrivener, but nothing could be further from the truth. Those people did nothing wrong: Scrivener is just not the program for them. The same applies to every other program or system out there that can be used for writing. There is not a single way of writing and organising writing that works for everyone. If you try something and it isn’t right for you, move on. Don’t keep going deeper into that wrong tunnel. In fact, moving on and trying something new is the very best way to find that best system. Try on lots of different systems. Write a trial short story or blog post in a new potential system to give it a whirl without committing to using it for months. You’ll find your best way to work soon. You may think that moving systems is a huge hassle, and it can be if you try it at the wrong time, like half-way through a draft. Yeah, don’t do that. But if you move and try using something else at the right moment, say, between projects or between drafting and revising, it’s not that difficult. Keep in mind that your needs will change over time and what is the best writing system for you now may not be the right system in 5 years time. A long time ago, I used to work in Scrivener on desktop at home and in an iOS app called Index Card on my commute to and from work. It worked OK, for a while. But I had one too many compatibility issues between Scrivener, Index Card and Dropbox. At the time, there was no Scrivener iOS app, so I moved to Evernote and stayed there for a long time. I was great at drafting in Evernote, but come revision time I was in a pickle. Evernote doesn’t have Track Changes, so I was exporting to Word and revising there. But I don’t like Word all that much. The end result was that I didn’t finish my revisions. I ended up with notebook after notebook of drafted stories in Evernote and not a single finished project. I had moved beyond what Evernote could do for me. So, I took another look at my options. Scrivener by then had an iOS app, although I heard it could still have compatibility issues as it still synced through Dropbox. But I didn’t have that deskjob and lengthy commute anymore. I work from home now. I suddenly realised that even if I never managed to get a good mobile syncing option for Scrivener, it would be OK. I can just be a desktop writer now. In the end, I did try Scrivener for iOS, and I was pleasantly surprised. While it is not as fully featured as the full version, it has all the basics I need. Also, while sync issues can occur, modern Scrivener is far better at resolving conflicts than the old Scrivener/Index Card combo was. So I have my mobile option after all, which I mostly use for making brief notes while I’m parenting and unable to quickly get to the computer. So, don’t be afraid to iterate to find your best writing system, and don’t be afraid to iterate again if your situation or needs change. The next principle is: Keep it Simple The reason it is best to keep things as simple as possible is Procrastination. Many writers are horrible procrastinators, myself included. Writing takes a lot of thought and effort, and so it’s easy to rely on ‘writing adjacent’ tasks to feel busy and accomplished while putting off engaging with the actual difficult part of, well, writing. Social media, moodboards, research, and yes even organising your writing are tasks that are important in moderation but can be detrimental to your productivity if used as a crutch. Let’s talk about some things that might be too complicated with your writing organisation that you could streamline or leave out. Using unnecessary software that could be replaced with brief notes could be a big problem for you, such as organising your research references with EndNote or similar when you are not an academic; using special timeline software like Aeon Timeline when you just have a simple novel structure and not much backstory to include; or using special mindmapping software to map concepts that could have been quickly whipped up on paper or a notes app you already use. Also, filling out every single field in your character sheets, even for minor characters, can really hold you back. Just fill out what’s necessary for the character’s role and move on. Then there’s the pursuit of perfection, of course, which wears many guises. Unless you’re an artist as well, you don’t need to spend time drawing the perfect image of your character or location for your moodboard. Just find an image on the internet, use a profile pic builder, or mock up a character in a game like The Sims and take a screenshot if you really need a visual aid. Needless to say, these copyrighted visual aids are just for you, and can’t be used on your website or in your books! Be responsible and use Creative Commons or royalty free images for your public-facing profiles and work. Also, you really don’t need to waste any time making anything pretty. If you use notebooks or folders, you may be tempted to spend time ‘theming’ your pages, like some Instagramable bullet journal. But just think: all that time you would need to spend to do so, how many words could you write in that time? Ideally, you want to make sure you only need to spend a few minutes per writing session, max, filing and organising your writing. Any more than that and you are stealing writing time from yourself. The next principle to keep in mind is: Expandability You will never know off the bat exactly what you are going to need for any writing project longer than, say, 20,000 words. There will always be a new category of research you only realise you need later, a facet of the project you suddenly realise you need to dig into and brainstorm further, or a new section such as a prologue that needs to be tacked on after you have begun writing. If you use any digital writing system at all this should be no trouble to organise. Add a new page or folder in any writing app, a new file in your writing folder, or even just a new heading in your Word file. You will be sweet as. But if you prefer the tactile experience of writing your documents to get your thoughts in order and so you use an ‘analog’ writing organisation system, you are going to need to think about expandability. It’s not such a tricky thing, really, because your options are limited. If you use a folder, my recommendation is to use repositionable tabs (like sturdier post-it notes) on cardboard sheets to make your dividers rather than a pack of divider cards that are precut, because if you need to reorder your sections or add one in between, you can keep all your tabs in a tidy order. If you use a notebook, my recommendation for keeping your system expandable is to use the Bullet Journal method invented by Ryder Carroll. You can find everything you need about how to make a Bullet Journal on the website. I’ll link it in the show notes. The last of my general principles for writing file management is: Future-proof Your physical notebooks and whatnot are inherently future-proofed, assuming your belongings keep safe (touch wood). When it comes to your digital files, though, you need to keep future-proofing in mind when you set up your files and whenever you back them up. If you use Word, you are probably sweet. Microsoft is not likely to go under, and they do a good job at version compatibility these days. Same if you use Apple Pages. However, if you use one of the more specialised writing apps like Scrivener, Ulysses, or Campfire for your projects, do keep in mind that these apps are made by much smaller companies than Microsoft or Apple. They may not last forever. After all, we’ve all had that experience by now, right? Some app or service we were using disappears one day, or turns into something that doesn’t do what we need it to anymore. My city’s bus network outsourced their GPS data to a third party app to provide real-time arrivals for iOS, and about 4 years ago that app went defunct and now I have to look up bus arrival times in a web browser on their clunky website. I’m still pissy about it. Anyway, you do not want that to happen to your writing. But if it does, you at least do not want to lose all your writing. My recommendation is to check what file formats you can export your work to from your favoured writing app. Most of them can export to Word, or Rich Text, or at a pinch PDF. Even XML will do. Every now and then, export a backup to a more future-proofed file format and archive that version carefully. One day, that backup may just be a life-saver. That’s it from me today. In future podcasts I’ll drill down further into some of these principles and how they apply to specific pieces of software. If you’d like to learn more now, I have a free ebook available to newsletter subscribers. Go to centauripublishing.comand sign up on the front page or the side bar of any other page and you’ll be sent the link to The Essential Guide to Organising Your Writing Like an Expert. I look forward to speaking with you next time. Until then, happy writing! [Transcript ends]

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