Organizing Memories Monday

Writing can be labor-intensive, but family history, or the family memoir, for me, is more difficult than any other kind of writing.  The reason for that is the enormity of the stash of documents, research facts, photos, scans, and on and on and on...

In the midst of composing, the actual writing, I dislike taking my fingers off the keys to capture a fleeting thought that I truly need to remember.  Working on this book, I'm uncovering ways to be as efficient as possible while still staying in the creative zone.  Since I work on a computer, it's a lot easier to keep my notes and reminders on the computer as well.

I've gotten to where, as I'm typing up a storm, if a thought strikes me that I know I'll forget, I punch the enter key four to six times to moved down to an isolated white space, type a couple of ****'s to let me know this is an informational note of some sort, I quickly type what it is I need to do, remember, or research, whatever.  Then I go back up the page to the paragraph or sentence in progress and forget about everything else.  When I feel like it, I'll send the notes or to-dos, ideas, to Evernote (EN).  All I have to do is click the top menu icon.

I've customized my EN program to file every item I send to my "inbox."  No tags or anything.  Just straight to inbox.  The idea is to get rid of the note or idea, get it out of my head, get it someplace safe quickly.  Quick is my keyword.  I can't make a chore out of saving thoughts and ideas when I'm trying to write a story.  Then later I'll assign folders, tags, and the like, or actually perform the to-do I saved and just delete the note entirely.

I also use Scrivener which has boosted my productivity and I've recently figured out an outlining method that keeps me mentally focused and also a good news-feed organizing system.  For the blog-to-book, I've come up with a good way to keep the many photos and documents organized, but right now I gotta get back to work.

Mondays are my "sharpen the saw" days, an idea coined by Stephen Covey.  I like to get my writing and all the parts that go with it organized to start a fresh new week.