In The Demons’ Head: Creating My Author Notebook
February 17, 2017
What’s up everyone and welcome to another edition of “In The Demons’ Head” I’m sitting here writing this post out while trying to keep my head from fucking exploding due to this insanely stupid strain of the flu. Have I ever explained how much I fucking hate being sick?
February 17, 2017
What’s up everyone and welcome to another edition of “In The Demons’ Head” I’m sitting here writing this post out while trying to keep my head from fucking exploding due to this insanely stupid strain of the flu. Have I ever explained how much I fucking hate being sick?
But me sniffling and coughing like a damn baby isn’t why ya’ll came to read this post today. It’s actually probably quite the contrary. Ya’ll came here hoping for some sort of informational or entertaining piece of writing and I’d like to offer that up to you now.
This could apply to everyone but I really centered this around the idea of writers and authors. A few months ago I created myself an authors notebook. Now, I’m sure some of you are probably staring at the screen thinking; “Well duh, we all have notebooks, what took you so long?” Let me explain the difference between mine and others I’ve seen.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to throw up front I used Scrivener to create this whole thing. That’s because for the last few years I’ve pretty much used Scrivener exclusively for any writing that I have to do. I came up with the idea to go ahead and set this whole thing up because a lot of my things were being strewn about in different programs, different files, and were usually not somewhere I could find them easily. But it was more then that.
I also had a problem cataloging my ideas. I’m talking about having random pieces of paper tossed around, none of them being saved, and it ended up with me losing a multitude of ideas due to just sucking at organizing. Thus I created the one file in Scrivener, and loaded it to my drop box, because I bought the Scrivener app for the iPhone and now I had the ability to sync between all of my platforms.
But I took it a step further, I then created an actual binder where I stored all of this stuff and I called it my Author Notebook. That’s because I wanted something tangible that I could use whenever I wanted to refer to material or something of that nature. Thus the Author Notebook was born. Now the book is broken down into 3 sections, but I encourage you to use whatever you choose because it’s all about your own personal style of organization. But, my three sections were this: Ideas, Notes, and Printables. In the Ideas section it’s literally just a list of my stories. They are snapshots of the idea, maybe one or two sentences that sum up the story so that I can go back and read it and give myself an idea.
The Notes section is pretty self explanatory. I use this section to write any notes that I take either from online classes, or podcast, or anything like that. I then print them out and put them into this section so that I have something to refer to at a later date. Last, is the printable section. This section is full of printed out blog posts, or other documents that I deemed appropriate for this section of the notebook.
After it’s creation I added another section entitled extras. In this section I added my list of goals for the year of 2017, as well as my 3 and 5 year goals. In this section I also added a full printed out 2017 calendar as a means of organizing my goals by month among other reasons.
So far the book has been helpful in keeping me organized as I work toward getting the entire system together as a means of trying to get more productive. Personally, I know this isn’t an original idea, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if people who are reading this haven’t already done something similar but if this whole process is new to you then I hope you learn something from it.
Have you ever created a notebook of sorts like this? If you have I’d love to hear your stories. Share them in the comments section. Would love to see what other options creatives have implemented into their books. Next week, I’m looking back at my first five years in the publishing game. Until then you can like me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter, and sign up to my mailing list. Until the next time you want to take a trip through the gates of hell and into the demons’ head I’m Kyle Robinson wishing you a safe trip back to the surface.
This could apply to everyone but I really centered this around the idea of writers and authors. A few months ago I created myself an authors notebook. Now, I’m sure some of you are probably staring at the screen thinking; “Well duh, we all have notebooks, what took you so long?” Let me explain the difference between mine and others I’ve seen.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’d like to throw up front I used Scrivener to create this whole thing. That’s because for the last few years I’ve pretty much used Scrivener exclusively for any writing that I have to do. I came up with the idea to go ahead and set this whole thing up because a lot of my things were being strewn about in different programs, different files, and were usually not somewhere I could find them easily. But it was more then that.
I also had a problem cataloging my ideas. I’m talking about having random pieces of paper tossed around, none of them being saved, and it ended up with me losing a multitude of ideas due to just sucking at organizing. Thus I created the one file in Scrivener, and loaded it to my drop box, because I bought the Scrivener app for the iPhone and now I had the ability to sync between all of my platforms.
But I took it a step further, I then created an actual binder where I stored all of this stuff and I called it my Author Notebook. That’s because I wanted something tangible that I could use whenever I wanted to refer to material or something of that nature. Thus the Author Notebook was born. Now the book is broken down into 3 sections, but I encourage you to use whatever you choose because it’s all about your own personal style of organization. But, my three sections were this: Ideas, Notes, and Printables. In the Ideas section it’s literally just a list of my stories. They are snapshots of the idea, maybe one or two sentences that sum up the story so that I can go back and read it and give myself an idea.
The Notes section is pretty self explanatory. I use this section to write any notes that I take either from online classes, or podcast, or anything like that. I then print them out and put them into this section so that I have something to refer to at a later date. Last, is the printable section. This section is full of printed out blog posts, or other documents that I deemed appropriate for this section of the notebook.
After it’s creation I added another section entitled extras. In this section I added my list of goals for the year of 2017, as well as my 3 and 5 year goals. In this section I also added a full printed out 2017 calendar as a means of organizing my goals by month among other reasons.
So far the book has been helpful in keeping me organized as I work toward getting the entire system together as a means of trying to get more productive. Personally, I know this isn’t an original idea, hell I wouldn’t be surprised if people who are reading this haven’t already done something similar but if this whole process is new to you then I hope you learn something from it.
Have you ever created a notebook of sorts like this? If you have I’d love to hear your stories. Share them in the comments section. Would love to see what other options creatives have implemented into their books. Next week, I’m looking back at my first five years in the publishing game. Until then you can like me on Facebook, Follow me on Twitter, and sign up to my mailing list. Until the next time you want to take a trip through the gates of hell and into the demons’ head I’m Kyle Robinson wishing you a safe trip back to the surface.