Get Organized Month
January is Get Organized Month, a great month for writers, though we may not appreciate it so much. As a writer, you have to keep yourself organized or you’ll make your writing life a lot harder than it has to be.
Organize Your Research
If you’re writing a book that is heavily dependent on research, you’ll need a way to organize your notes so you can find what you need, when you need it.
Lisa Janice Cohen uses a “wiki” to organize her notes. A wiki is a collection of web pages that can be modified by anyone with access. Wikipedia is one of the best known wikis. You can read her posts on how she uses a wiki . And she put together a PDF with screenshots to give you a better idea of how it works.
Infocollector is another online application for collecting and tagging information.
Jason Penney shares how he uses a mind map to organize his novel notes.
Organize Your Novel
There are a lot of details to track when writing a novel. Creating a Project File might help.
I use yWriter software to organize and write my novels. (Love it!) It’s a free download and here’s a good review of the software.
Organize Your Submissions
Greg Knollenberg shares how to track your submissions.
Sonar is free manuscript tracking software from Spacejock Software.
The Writer’s Technology Companion reviews Sonar as well as Slushomatic and Writer’s Database.
LitMatch is an online submission tracking application.
Organize Your Business
Shirley Jump gives some tips for how to keep the business side of your writing organized.
You can also download 1-4-all Account software to help you keep your books, manage your writing business and more.
Paperback Writer shares thoughts on tracking writing expenses.
What tools do you use to stay organized?
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3 comments
Walter on December 29, 2008 at 5:03 pm
I use QueryTracker.net to organize my query and agent info.
Cheryl on December 30, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Hi Walter,
Thanks for the tip on QueryTracker.net. It looks like a great resource for extensive agent information.
John (1 comments.) on December 30, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Hello,
Pixily (www.pixily.com) will be offering specials throughout January to promote Get Organized Month.
Pixily is an innovative new online service that provides consumers with their very own digital personal assistant to effortlessly and securely scan, file, search, organize and manage any and all of their paper and electronic documents.
I think this would be a great tool when working on writing initiatives where you would want to quickly access your research data.
Happy New Year!