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How do you organise your work? Do you allow documents to sit on the desktop within easy reach (so to speak) or are they tucked away in folders? Is your paper work in piles on your desk (if you are lucky enough to have your own writing desk, I’m not) or scattered all around the house?
What system works for you?
When I write for example I write in three colours. Black, blue and red. Black is for cold hard facts. Blue are idea or a brainstorm where I’m not committed to an idea. I use red to go over work I’ve just done and make corrections. My documents are sorted away in general folders and then in sub folders so they are easy to locate. I’ve recently started the habit of dating my paper work and I’ve started using little sticky tabs to show myself when I’ve written the first draft of a story in my notepad. When I finish a notepad I go to the inside cover and make a contents page of everything inside. I hardly ever finish a notepad. I don’t know why. There are always five or six pages at the back that are never used.
This system works for me. It’s neat and tidy (I can’t stand mess) and I know where everything is. I’m really curious to hear how other people organise their work.
Comments
Apart from that i have files (some the normal mac blue, some all different animals shapes and colours) on the desktop all the time, the ones i use all the time - for instance everything to do with my book, all my photos, all my artwork, all my poems, anything to do with the dog, health, about publishing, stuff I'm writing at the minute articles etc.
Nothing is tidy. i clear up the desktop after it gets too untidy and within a day it is covered again.
Two phones, three mugs (OMG!), an old diary, some of Lola's fur, two sets of earrings, a thingy for putting stuff on, pen device wotsit, lots of plastic animals, a book of birds, a glasses cleaning cloth, my own book, a padded envelope, a pot for drawing pins, two pots for pens, a thing to put things in like letters and cheques I will cash when I remember, an iPad, the camera case, the camera, Rent-a kid (a DVd I ordered for us to watch, funny, ours broke and the kids and I wanted to see it again), a letter, two pieces of music, a photo, a thing to charge my sensore a tape measure... scissors, some embroidery cotton in fluorescent yellow, a bit of paper with notes on, a brass dormouse, some sellotape... honestly it was clear before the weekend...
The project I'm working on is in a labelled cardboard or plastic folder/box type thing-including research notes. I use memory sticks for each different big project and one for short stories.
I only print stuff out when I'm almost finished, or I'm at the end of a chapter.
Projects in waiting are on the book shelf in my office area, my current WIP is in the top tray.
I keep notebooks on one of the shelves by me and refer to them when needed.
In my set of stacked sliding trays I keep magazines, and any paperwork I need to have to hand.
Then there will be an assorted stack- filing, writers' club stuff.
I keep my e-readers on my desk too.
If I could figure out how to share a picture on this thing I would show you.
I store all my wip on a chip, back up to a USB weekly, and to the main PC monthly.
Each folder is so named for the story. Within that there are subfolders per draft.
I don't use cloud storage.
It's VERY hard work - 10 minutes on it is the same as a half hour jog.
I think it's because if my desk is perfectly neat and tidy, I start to obsess if my mouse mat is slightly out of line or my jotter pad isn't perfectly in-line with my pen holder. If all around me is in disarray, I just kind of think "sod it" and I can concentrate on what I'm doing.
Strange eh?
I often get up in the morning to find one of my sons has removed the mouse mat, and moved my little notebook that sits just behind my keyboard...
I also have individual memory sticks for each larger project, so it will have the manuscript I'm working on, notes and outlines on it. Plus there will be a printed copy of it all.
But I have to bring my laptop into the living room to go online because the Wifi thingy rarely works through the walls.
You plug one plug in beside where your router is, with a lead going into the plug from the router. Then you have another plug in another room without internet access, and a lead going to your computer from it. You can have as many plugs as you want in as many rooms... and the internet uses the electricity supply cables to get from room to room.
It is perfectly safe and means we can have access in every room, even the bedrooms, and OH has a supply as he is at the other end of the house, a whole cottage away, through very thick (two feet in one case) walls.
The signal in my room was fine until the chap next door installed a two metre TV dish a couple of meters from my window - and he's only there one weekend per month.
I did consider sabotage, or running a cable from his dish to my TV, or poisoning his coffee. but decided not to risk a Tenerife prison. And it cuts down on internet time which is no bad thing.